Panashe Sibanda Blog

Repetition of these signs become Horror genre conventions, however overuse results in taking away the signified meaning There is a constant repetition of conventions in different types of mediums and in this case, horror trailers, but the more prominent they become, the more typical and eventually audiences start to not realize the valued meaning behind these conventions as over exposure to the same ones becomes tiresome to them.  Saussure's theory of the signifier and the signified is used constantly in horror. The signifier is the physical form of the object and the signified is the concept or idea that it produces. Horrors constantly use this theory to help layer their subtext and infer meaning into their details. Barthes has a theory of denotation and connotation which means to understand the face value, literal meaning and sub text to find the less obvious deeper meaning and sub text behind it. For example, the denotation of a knife is that it's used to ...

Horror is a film genre meant to illicit a form of negative reaction by playing on the audiences primal fears, but this can only work on certain audiences that appeal to the horror genre. In this essay, I will explain and evaluate the different ways my summer horror trailer did or did not affect my target audience. One of the theories known as the effects model is that consumption of media, in this case horror, has an effect or influence upon the audience. This effect is normally a negative one and audiences are passive and powerless to prevent the influence. This influence is caused by the message within the text.  In the context of my horror trailer, I do not feel as though my horror trailer does this effectively as there isn't much of a strong underlying message in the trailer. The central themes are teen punishment and loss of purity however, these are not conveyed properly as rather than show reason for punishment and loss of purity, it just happens and therefore the audien...

Theorist Mulvey researched representation of women in horror movies and discovered what he calls the male gaze in which the females body is on display for pleasure of the viewer who are mainly males. My summer horror trailer does in fact include this "male gaze" at the end of the trailer when the final girl character is seen laying on the floor, almost lifeless with her legs open. The shot is framed as a close up  camera pans across her entire body in close up so the audience gets a clear view of her body. This was done to create a sense of impurity and loss of innocence as that juxtaposes her character and this represents the objectification of women by presenting them as mere glorified objects to be stared at. Theorist Clover came up with what he calls the Final Girl theory which relates to the last female character alive to confront the antagonist in a horror film, typically slashers. The final girls is typically virginal and takes on the innocence of the group. My hor...

In this essay, I will explain how genre relates to the horror trailer I created over the summer holidays. Theorist Daniel Chandler says that the audience will be able to identify the genre based off of certain conventions present. My trailer does include this and an example of a convention that I used would be the mise en scene, particularly the costumes they wore. There was a character in the trailer that wore leggings, a long sleeve white top and glasses. The white especially is meant to represent purity and an innocent nature, and from this the audience would be able to infer that this is in fact the final girl character trope. Theorist Altman says that there are a set ofmpleasures for the audience and that they are expecting certain conventions to make them like the film. Altman would argue that my trailer did not do this as one of the pleasures he came up with were visceral pleasures which are meant to give physical reactions to the audience. This could have been done by impro...

1. Which colour schemes look best?  2. Would rather the whole cast, antagonist or protagonist be on the poster?  3. Should the poster be ambiguous in what the movie is about?  4. Should it be simple in design or detailed?  5. Should any characters be present?  6. Should the antagonist's prop be present?  7. Which typography do you prefer?  8. What form of lighting do you prefer?  9. Should the title be on the poster? 10. Should a tagline be included?