Beyond the frame

2021 ◽  
pp. 63-86
Author(s):  
Cecilia Sayad
Keyword(s):  
Horror Films ◽  
Found Footage ◽  
Surrounding World ◽  
Documentary Studies ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter finds in the found-footage horror cycle an alternative way of understanding the relationship between horror films and reality, which is usually discussed in terms of allegory. It investigates theories about framing, considered both figuratively (framing the film as documentary) and stylistically (the framing in handheld cameras and in static long takes), as a device that playfully destabilizes the separation between the film and the surrounding world. The chapter explores the idea that documenting an event has the potential to contain it, which is relevant to both horror and documentary studies. A variety of found-footage horror films is considered, including the Paranormal Activity franchise, The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, and [•REC].

Living Dead: Fearful Attractions of Film

2010 ◽  
Vol 110 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Lowenstein
Keyword(s):  
Historical Trauma ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
Horror Films ◽  
Temporal Relations ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
Living Dead ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Relationship

This essay analyzes the relationship between fear and film by exploring the theoretical concept of "attractions" and its value for a historical understanding of three seminal American horror films directed by George A. Romero: Night of the Living Dead (1968), Land of the Dead (2005), and Diary of the Dead (2008). All three films belong to the same "Living Dead" series, so the essay focuses especially on their shared temporal relations to historical trauma through issues of deferral, belatedness, and retranscription.

The Cinematic Rising: The Resurgence of the Zombie

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stacey Abbott
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Horror Films ◽  
Found Footage ◽  
Critical Success ◽  
Language Of Science ◽  
Contemporary Media ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Selection Of

This chapter discusses how between 2002-2005 a selection of films emerged that sought to re-imagine the zombie film through the lens of 21st century cultural and scientific pre-occupations. The global blockbuster, and critical, success of these films served to launch a renaissance of zombie cinema that continues to dominate contemporary horror films. Like the vampire, the new zombie film has been reconceived through the language of science via discourses of virology and pandemic, but also through the language of 21st century media, in the form of the found footage film. This chapter discusses this new, post-Romero, zombie film in the light of 9/11 and the growing culture of apocalypse that dominates contemporary media. Case studies include [REC], 28 Days Later, Resident Evil, Land of the Dead, Diary of the Dead, and Dawn of the Dead.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Cecilia Sayad
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Spatial Relationship ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Horror Films ◽  
Image Capture ◽  
Analog To Digital ◽  
Found Footage ◽  
Film And Video

The book’s introduction revisits questions around the ontology of photographic and filmic images in order to lay out the role of technology in making supernatural entities become part of everyday life. An examination of theories about the transition from analog to digital image capture considers the potential of photography, film, and video to expand our senses, enhance our perception of the physical world, and work as evidence. The indexical link between the object placed before the camera and its image extends to a discussion about the spatial relationship between the contents of the framed image and the surrounding physical world, which informs discussions about framing techniques in found-footage horror films and participative spectatorship in experiential cinema and video games.

Film and Horror

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsey Decker ◽  
Kendall R. Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Horror Films ◽  
Horror Film ◽  
Substantial Body ◽  
Wide Scale ◽  
The Relationship

The term horror film refers to a wide variety of films generally understood to focus on frightening topics like ghosts, monsters, and murder. Horror films have been consistently popular among filmgoers since the earliest days of cinema in part because the genre has developed so many diverse variations in terms of theme, style, and tone. Popular horror films have employed supernatural elements, alien invaders, homicidal individuals, and wide scale apocalyptic themes. In part because of their variety and endurance, scholars from various disciplines have inquired into their nature and appeal. A substantial body of scholarship has grown up around the horror film. Scholars have inquired into the nature of the horror film, the reasons it might appeal to audiences, the evolution of the genre across time, and the relationship between these frightening films and the broader culture.

Acoustic Startles in Horror Films

Projections ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-66
Author(s):  
Valerio Sbravatti
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Psychological Factors ◽  
Startle Response ◽  
Acoustic Startle ◽  
Sound Field ◽  
Horror Films ◽  
The Relationship

The acoustic blast is one of the most recurrent sound devices in horror cinema. It is designed to elicit the startle response from the audience, and thus gives them a “jump scare.” It can occur both in the form of a diegetic bang and in the form of a nondiegetic stinger (i.e., a musical blare provided by the score). In this article, I will advance the hypothesis that silence plays a crucial role in contemporary horror films, both perceptually, since it leaves the sound field free for the acoustic blast, and cognitively, since it posits the audience in an aversive anticipatory state that makes the startle more intense. I will analyze the acoustic startle using a neurofilmological approach, which takes into account findings from experimental sciences in order to better understand the relationship between physiological and psychological factors that make such an effect possible during the filmic experience.

scholarly journals Achieving mutual accessibility through the coordination of multiple perspectives in open, unstructured landscapes

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Sean Smith
Keyword(s):  
Salient Feature ◽  
Local Features ◽  
Line Of Sight ◽  
Multiple Perspectives ◽  
Surrounding World ◽  
Interaction Field ◽  
Field School ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Field Geology

Whenever actors perceptually engage with the surrounding world in concert with others, they routinely attend to the degree to which their perceptions (whether visual, aural, tactile, etc.) do or do not overlap with their co-participants. In making a perception publicly accessible then, participants must not only attend to potential perceptual gaps, but have-at-hand a range of discursive and embodied practices for closing those and making what is perceived by one mutually accessible to others. In this paper, using data collected from a geological field-school, I investigate the embodied and mobile practices that participants use for coordinating perception via perspective in open, wilderness settings. I focus in particular on the visual practices that participants use for making what one “sees” in the landscape or activity “seeable" for others. These practices are in turn analyzed with regard to how they highlight the camera’s role in documenting the embodied means by which these practices work. In the analysis of data, we will see the participants’ perspective or line of sight, i.e., the axis of their gaze become a more explicit and salient feature for coordinating the interaction. Field geology provides a perspicuous setting for not just investigating how participants reconfigure themselves vis-a-vis local features in the landscape in order to perceive those features, but also for examining the relationship between the videographer’s perspective as documented on camera and that of the participants.

scholarly journals ‘I Wasn’t Born with Enough Middle Fingers’: How low-budget horror films defy sexual m orality and heteronormativity in Bollywood

2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aditi Sen
Keyword(s):  
Small Towns ◽  
Basic Function ◽  
Horror Films ◽  
Male Sexuality ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
Sexual Morality ◽  
Rural Market ◽  
Actual Content ◽  
Canonical Literature ◽  
The Relationship

Queen’s UniversityIn the early 1980s the Ramsay Brothers gave Bollywood a new genre of monster flicks with blockbusters like Purana Mandir, Hotel, and Veerana. Following the work of the Ramsay Brothers, low-budget horror films that were made exclusively for the small towns and rural market increased in the decades of 1980s and 1990s. These films are primarily known for their unintentional humor owing to poor production and acting, but they have never been acknowledged for their actual content. This article argues that Bollywood low-budget films fulfilled the basic function of horror movies—that is, they subverted mainstream moral order and sexual morality. These films opened up space for dialogues that the mainstream cinema had totally neglected; particularly, in the areas of incest, female lust, ‘othering’ of male sexuality, and transgendered identities. On a different register, the relationship between low-budget horror films and mainstream Bollywood can be compared to folklore and canonical literature, where folklore repeatedly resists the conformities endorsed by the mainstream prescriptive texts.

ATTITUDES TO RADICALISM AND PREFERENCES OF FILM GENRES IN YOUTH

2020 ◽  
pp. 41-52
Author(s):  
Elena P. Belinskaya ◽  
◽  
Ekaterina A. Rudik ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Dominance ◽  
Relative Deprivation ◽  
Consumer Preferences ◽  
Horror Films ◽  
Affective Component ◽  
Low Intensity ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Film Genres ◽  
Aesthetic Preferences

The results of an empirical study of the relationship between radical attitudes and consumer preferences in the field of film production in a sample of young people are presented in the article. Attitudes to radicalism were operationalized through indicators on the scales of relative deprivation, social dominance, and authoritarianism. Horror, melodrama, and arthouse films were considered the preferred film genres. One of the stages of the study was an attempt to determine the possibility of organized influence on radical attitudes through viewing movie trailers of preferred and non-preferred genres by respondents. It is shown that initially the choice of genres of melodrama and arthouse cinema is not associated with any of the supposed components of radical attitudes, and the propensity to watch horror films is associated with a low intensity of the behavioral component of radical attitudes. When organizing the impact by watching trailers, it was found that respondents who prefer the genres of melodrama and arthouse cinema are almost not affected by their socio-political attitudes by consuming film products, while the affective component of their radical attitudes increased among fans of horror films, but only if the genre of the viewed trailer coincided with the preferred one. Thus, the results obtained do not allow us to unambiguously assert that there is a relationship between consumer preferences in film genres and radical attitudes in youth. In general, they indicate an extremely vague relationship between aesthetic preferences and attitudes of the sociopolitical spectrum.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document