Laura Mulvey Male Gaze Theory

“The gaze is male whenever it directs itself at, and takes pleasure in, women, where women function as erotic objects” 

-Laura Mulvey.

The gaze what the viewer/audience see the people who are presented. There are 3 types of gaze:

• How men look at women
• How women look at themselves
• How women look at other women

Laura Mulvey's theory is of the Male Gaze, where she believes that in a media text the audience is viewing it form a male perspective. An example of this is the camera seems to linger on the woman figure (the curves) so in reality the female audience are viewing the content secondary. As a lot of events and reactions are shown though a males point of view and in turn appeals much more to men.

Even in situations where the woman is in a serious situation, there is still some subtle focus on the woman and her beauty, to appeal to men. This theory tends to describe woman as being subjected to being seen as an object.

Mulvey's theory suggested that women are only use for the visual pleasure for men, therefore implying that he film is constructed with the idea that the audience are all male. The typical male audience member is able to relate to the male protagonist in the film so is able to see everything through his eyes and put themselves in his shoes.

There are some criticisms of this theory:

• Some women enjoy to be looked at and admired.
• The gaze could be aimed towards the same gender for other reasons other than sexual, body image and clothing.

This applies to my genre (psychological horror) as in many horrors certain girls seem to get killed early on rather than the men. Girls who take drugs, smoke, drink and are quite promiscuous. Taking these in to consideration,the fact that they get killed early on acts as a sort of punishment for being this way. However even if a male has the same characteristics as he woman, he does not seem to get punished for his actions like her. Most horror films portray women as a weaker sex, so are usually the first few victims who are brutally murdered (the murder most likely being male). Horror films usually show similar scenes such as a beautiful young woman who is gets murdered at the beginning of the film.

It has been suggested that woman are always portrayed as needy, weak and always needing someone who is usually male to rescue them. However from 1974 we have seen changes in this as now in most horror films there is at least one woman who is able to defend herself, rescue others and fight back against the antagonist in order to protect those closest to them.

The structure of horror movies as male centred/driven entails the female audience to forcefully identify with the young female who survives the attacker and usually ends the ordeal/threat, this female is most likely to be the woman who stands out from the other women in the film as they are all promiscuous and rebellious, one woman is an innocent, and this woman is usually the one to pull through and come through for others.. It can be seen that even though the narrative dominant subjective perspective may be male in the story the male audience is still wanting the female to overcome the killer.

Alfred Hitchcock

Sir Alfred Hitchcock 1899-1980 was a famous English director, best known for his psychological films and the techniques he used to make them so suspenseful and thrilling.  Hitchcock has a recognisable style in his films such as the way he uses the camera, he made it move in a way that mimics a persons gaze. He framed shots in order to increase the fear and empathy. He is also knwn for using icy blonde female characters who were usually on the run from a crime. A lot of is films ends with a twist along with thrilling plots that involve violence, deaths and crimes. Within 60 years Hitchcock directed more than 50 feature films and he is frequently regarded as films most significant artist.

In 1926 Hitchcock directed his first thriller called The Lodger:A Story of the London Fog, it became a huge success in the UK, it was a film that was influenced by the 'Expressionist' techniques that Hitchcock has in fact seen in germany first hand.

In 1929, Hitchcock was working on his 10th film called Blackmail, while in the early stages it was decided by the BIP (British International Pictures) to convert is to sound. And because it was an early 'talkie' this film acts as a landmark film as the first British sound feature film. Blackmail was the start of the Hitchcock tradition of using famous landmarks as a backdrop for suspense sequences.

The the series 'The Men Who Made The Movies' Hitchcock said that he used early sound recording as a special element, emphasizing the word 'Knife' in a conversation with a woman who was suspected of murder.

In 1934 in the film The 39 Steps, was one of the first films to use the 'MacGuffin' concept, which is essentially a plot device which is what the entire story seems to revolve around, but overall has nothing to do with the true meaning or ending of the film story.

In 1941 Hitchcock produced his first film called Suspicion. It is about a wife who becomes increasingly suspicious of her husband because of his actions, lies and strange behavior, and thinks that he is planning to kill her for the life insurance. In this film there is a well known scene where hitchcock has used a lightbulb to light up what may be a fatal glass of milk.

One of Hitchcock's most famous film has to be Psycho. A black and white film about a man who has a psychological problem where he has a split personality. This film contains a shower scene with violence and blood, the demise of the heroine, innocent lives destroyed by a disturbed murderer were all trademarks of Hitchcock. Another famous hitchcock film is Birds. About an infestation of birds that attack the people of that area. This film also contains blood and violence but is essentially a mystery as the answer as to why the birds attack is never answered to highlight the mystery forces of unknown.

Both of these films used unconventional music. one of the most famous being from Psycho, where the screeching of strings is played during the shower scene. In birds an unaccompanied song sung by school children.

Research methods

Primary 
This research method is where information is gathered by yourself (primary data), this is usually done through questionnaires. Researching this way means you can ask about the specifics of your topic this way the data is controlled . However using this method can be very time consuming, aswell as the fact that poeple may not be answering truthfully mostly because they say the answer they think you want or because they are not taking the research seriously.

Secondary
This is where you use other peoples research to help you, for example using websites, magazines and other blogs. Unlike primary is is not that time consuming, it is also doesnt cost you as much as the data has alreadfy been collected. However sometimes you cannot get all the information you need as the original research may not be based around the same thing you are doing and some data may be out of date causing the results to be incorrect.

Qualitative
This method is where you are in a small group of people who also have strong views and opinions on the subject. This is done using focus groups, using this method can help you gain a broad understanding of the topic being discussed, however biased views are unavoidable.

Quantitative
Quantitive is where you collect an in-depth overall view on the subject, using this method means that a trend can be identified, this can be done through surveys and questionnaires. It also helps the researcher gain accurate results. However sometimes you can not obtain explanations as they are just statistics.

I will be using secondary research most of the time suring this project mainly due to the short amount of time we have and my low budget. I will be using websites in order to research and collect the appropriate data that will help me in my project. I will also be watching many psychological horror films and trailers, to enable me to understand my choosen genre in depth and all the conventions and storylines that are most popular in order for me to determine what i can do and what will appeal to my target audience.

Narrative

 Plot of the film

Evil spirit-possesses and haunts this souple who are students.-to turn against each other.

I have decided on what the film that my trailer is promoting will be about. I choose psychological horro because i belive this is the best genreto produce a trailer for. One main reason being that nothing too scary actually has to be filmed and shown as psychological horrors are all about tension and suspense. My genre is about what is not shown rather than what is. What i mean by this is that most clips in a psychological trailer are the build up scenes to a scary scene and not the actual scene itself this creates fear for the viewer as the clips do not give anything away.

My Storyline
2 University students who are a couple living together in a house. There lives are typical, happy and trouble-free. That is until one person The girl has to research her family history for a university project, when doing this she finds out that she had an ancestor who killed a woman who was thought to mad in that time period as she believed in spirits. She then tells their boyfriend about it, they find it interesting but all end up making fun of it, but overall they do not make much of it. Over the next two days they complain about the house being quite cold and on the third day the guy has gone out to pick up dinner while she stays at home. She is washing up and the spirit turns up. And from there on the spirit of the woman starts to appear everywhere tormenting the couple by possessing them and scaring them, by writing on the walls, screaming and various other things. They have to find a way to destroy her, but when she possesses them she makes them turn on each other.

Trailer

Clips

• Shows clip of the couple talking and laughing 2/3 clips various locations and times.
• Clip of the Girl finding out that she have an ancestor who killed a Woman, and that Woman's last words were "Sins of the father shall be visited upon the son a thousand times even unto the third and forth generation of them that hate me"
• See them make fun of it
• The girl in the kitchen by herself humming facing the window washing up, then hears a noise
• (Music cuts)
• She slowly turns around and nothing is there
• turns back around and scary figure is standing there outside the window (this is a shown very fast, this is also the only time you see the spirits face)
• She screams
• Montage of clips with the couple, screaming, running and being possessed, but we dont actually see what they do while possesed, just the build up.
• Ends with scan of empty room with the evil spirit sitting in front of a fireplace facing away from the camera saying "Sins of the father shall be visited upon the son a thousand times...a thousand times...a thousand times. fades out with voice over still speaking this.

Music

• Heart beat getting faster as it gets more dramatic.
• Maybe over some music on the montage.
• Heartbeat cut out at the end like a hospital heart monitor.
• Or heartbeat stops and is replaced by scared breathing.
• Some clips dialogue will be overlapped onto another clips sucha the laughing from one scene can be overlapped with the next one.

Shots

• Close ups on scared faces during montage
• 360 pan shot of rooms beginning and end

Psycho Trailer Deconstruction

Psycho

How does this film relate to horror and the tropes and memes it has developed over time?

This is a trailer for the film Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock which was released in 1960. It is essentially a psychological film but with slasher elements. It is a film that started the phase of slasher film an in a way the first slasher film made because of the murdering and stabbing element of it, however it is a psychological film as it involves a lot of suspense and has the mentally ill murderer. The idea of a mad man having two personas seems to have derived from the film Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in the 1920s where a doctor has a split personality and believe that everyone has a good and bad side. In Psycho the motel owner has a split personality as he not only acts like himself but he also dresses up like his deceased mother. At the end of the film we find out that he actually believes that he is  his mother as we hear him speaking in his head with an old women's voice (his mother). The Shower scene is most iconic scene in the film, as at the time no-one had ever seen something like that before and not only could the see the knife and the blood going down the drain hole but they could also hear the sound effects and the music played this then added to the suspense and scared the audience even more. . The knife is an important piece and trope with in the horror genre, i think that it has become a convention because of Psycho and it has in turn inspired future horror films. And has become the most popular weapon of choice. The music is such as iconic piece and has still well known today because it is so dramatic and chilling. Jack the Ripper can also be linked to this film, is the newspaper articles violent and graphic details were given about what had happened to the victims this then gave people a taste for the slasher genre. Here is a newspaper article from August 10th 1888 from the London Times about a Jack the Ripper murder. It is in very graphic detail which you would not find in todays newspapers, It wants to get readers interested fascinated by this event. 


































Above is another snippet from a newspaper article which is even more detailed than the first. In this time this is really the only source of media, and so this i in a way there 'films' or 'books' which they can get there 'Kicks' from. This the start of slasher films and has inspired future films such as 'Saw'. Alfred Hitchcock takes this idea of jack the ripper and 1920 films, shakes them up and takes ideas from them to make it original and artistic.

How does this trailer show conventions of horror trailers?

The clips in this trailer are not in order and The build up to the dramatic scenes are shown, not actually the important part of the scenes. The shots of the tall and creepy house in the dark is a typical trope of horror films and horror stories. Throughout the trailer eerie and scary music is used to build suspense. The fact that there are clips set in the rain gives the impression of a dark and scary story. There are a lot of close ups used, the most iconic probably being the close up the male chewing something and turning his head as this gives of a 'weird' impression of him as the shadowing and lighting used has made him look quite scary and psychotic. Another trope of horror trailers is where there is dialogue voice overs and this is used frequently in this trailer

History of Horror

1890's to the 1920's

The first viewings or descriptions of supernatural events are shown in many silent shorts in the late 1890's created by George Meilies, one of the most famous ones being 'Le Manoir du diable' which is also known as 'The Haunted castle' (1896) it has been known and called the first horror movie. In 1910 the first version of Frankenstein was created by Edison Studios.

In the early 20th century, the first monster was shown in a horror film called 'Quasimodo' and 'The Hunchback of Notre-Dame'. Quasimodo then appeared in other films such as 'Esmeralda' in 1906, 'The Hunchback' in 1909, 'The Love of the Hunchback' in 1910 and 'Notre-Dame de Paris' in 1911.

German Expressionist film makers went on to have a major influence later films and not only horror, films that had an impact are 'The Golem' (1920) and 'The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari' by Robert Wiene. In 1922 the first vampire themed movie was produced called 'Nosferatu' by F.W.Murnau.

In Hollywood drama, horror themes would be used such as using versions of the hunchback of ND and the monster.

Other films from the 1920's:

• 'Dr. Jekyll And Mr Hyde'
• 'The Phantom Carriage'
• 'The Lost World'
• 'The Phantom of the Opera'
• 'London After Midnight'
• 'Waxworks'

1930's to the 1940's

During this period Gothic horror was becoming very popular and successful. A film such as 'Dracula' by Tod Browning then influenced other films as it was quickly followed by 'Frankenstein' both in 1931. Some Gothic horror films with linked and mixed with sci-fi films for example 'The Invisible Man' in 1933,featuring a mad scientist, this was shown to be mirroring earlier German films. Theses films were produced and designed in order to trill while also implicating serious elements. Frankenstein was a very popular series as it lasted for many years.

After this many other studios were influenced by Universals films. films such as 'Dr.Jekyll and Mr Hyde' is iconic and remembered for the use of colour filters to create the transformation of Jekyll in front of the camera. 'Mystery of the Wax Museum' by Warner Bros and 'The Island of Lost Souls' by Paramount were also important in the history of horror.

1950's to the 1960's 

In the time technology was evolving so this caused the theme of horror movies to change from Gothic to contemporary concerns. This is where the two sub genres horror of Armageddon and the horror of the demonic came into existence.

Many films now had the theme of humanity defeating threats from 'outside' such as alien invasions, mutated people, insects and plants. This is evident in the Japanese film released in 1954 'Godzilla' where a mutation has occurred due to nuclear radiation.

'The Thing from Another World', 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'  both used the paranoia of the cold war to give an atmospheric creepiness to the film. The combination of sci-fi and horror where continued for decades with films such as 'The Incredible Shrinking Man' which was called a pulp masterpiece, even though more it was more sci-fi based it had elements that conveyed fears that people had such as the atomic age and the fear of social alienation. This shows how the makers were using peoples real fears to make these films scary.

Probably on of the most famous horror films of this time and in history is Alfred Hitchcock's 'Psycho' in 1960, which had major psychological elements.

Ghosts and monsters continued to be the main them of horror films, but many films used the supernatural idea to show the horror of the demonic, films such as 'The Innocents' and 'The Haunting'. 'Rosemary's Baby' a psychological horror made in 1968, was set in New York where the devil was made flesh. A major influence in this time period was the film 'Night of the Living Dead', this was a horror or Armageddon film and was about zombies which mixes psychological insights and gore sub-genres, this bought horror into everyday life.

1970s–1980s

In 1964, the low-budget gore films successful income, and popularity of 'Rosemary's Baby', led to the release of more films with similar ideas and stories in the 1970s. 'The Exorcist' made in 1973 being one of them, this film is a historic horror film and was a major success it then made the convention of possessions by the devil/demons.

'Evil children' and reincarnation became popular themes after that film. A well known and popular Satanic horror movie was 'The Omen' in 1976, it involves a man realizing his 5 year old adopted son is actually the Antichrist. Satan became the villain and main monster in many horror films.

In 1975 director David Cronenburg made a movie called 'Shivers' which was a reinvention of body horror. 'Jaws' was created by Steven Spielberg and was the film that started off killer animal films which became a big hit.

In 1979 'Alien' was released and has scenes of graphic violence combined with sci-fi. This is also seen in the movie 'The Thing'. B movie' (Low Budget) horror films seemed to become popular in the 1980's and later became classics in the history of horror.

1990's

Many of the genres that were seen in the 80's were followed on on the 90's and the slasher films such as 'Friday the 13th', and 'Child's Play' got sequels. And new slasher movies were made like 'Silence of the Lambs' and 'New Nightmare'.

Films such as New nightmare was part of meta fictional horror films this means that it showed the relationship between fictional horror and real world horror.

In the 90's Horror went backwards and the two main problems for this is the fact that the genre wore itself out by producing slasher and gore movies too much in the 80's and the second problem was that there was now a new generation to the one in the 80's and this generations were more interested in sci-fi and fantasy films. So in order to make horror a popular genre again and appeal to its new audience, films were made to mock the genre itself. Films such as 'Braindead' which was over-exaggerated to make it humorous and 'Scream' which mocks previous horror movies and merges them with ironic humour. 

2000's

This period in time was a quite one for horror movies. 'Final Destination' was a successful film and was made into a sequel, as was 'Jeepers Creepers'. Other films such as 'Orphan', 'Wrong Turn' and 'Cabin Fever' were also films that started to increase the ratings and audience in the theatre. Foreign films became a huge success and trend in the 2000's for example 'Let the right one in' made in Sweden in 2008 was later remade in Hollywood called 'Let Me In'. The use psychology was another trend that was very popular, as it was another way to scare the viewers rather than using gore. A successful psychological horror film in 2001 was 'The Others'. And then there were the remade Asian movies such as 'The Grudge' and 'The Ring'. 

Zombie trends seemed to make a big comeback in horror movies. A video game called 'Resident Evil' was made into a film which was then made into a sequel. '28 Days Later' was released in the same year and was a more modern version of 'The Return Of The living', the style being aggressive zombies, this also became a sequel. Another remake of a previous film was 'Dawn of the Dead', which was then adapted into a comedy called 'Shaun of the Dead'.

Violence and gore which was made on low budget returned to the screens with most films taking inspiration from 'The Last House on the Left', 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' and 'The Hills Have Eyes' made in the 70's, films such as 'Wrong Turn', 'Wolf Creek' and 'Audition'.

This sub genre was then extended and films were made with emphasis on torture and violent deaths this is often known as torture porn. Examples of this are films such as 'Hostel' and 'Saw'.

In 2009 we saw 'Paranormal Activity' arrive on our screens with inspiration being taken from the classic 'The Blair Witch Project'.

Practice

To practice making a trailer i went on this website and made a short trailer where the clips are given to you with a choice of soundtrack and then it is up to you where to place them and what to use. It was avery useful website as it gave you an idea of how to put trailers together and how cuts are best when they match the beat of the soundtrack music.

http://www.filmeducation.org/thor/make_the_cut/