10/31/2018 (Halloween Blog)

In the spirit of Halloween, today in class we discussed how a director's choices creates horror. We were given some times to ourselves to answer a "do now" question of "what makes a good horror film? What makes a bad one?" We were to do this individually and write down our answer in or notes. After 5 minutes Mr. Rivers brought the class together and we discussed our answers.

This is what the chart looks like

What makes it good?	What makes it bad?
Jump Scares	Predictability (for example the “everybody gets shanked in the shower)
Good acting	Stupid Characters/Annoying characters
Building suspense	Abandoning the plot

After discussing the elements that go into making a good horror scene/movie, we watched an opening scene from the original Jurassic Park movie. (If interested in watching this scene go to you tube and type in "Jurassic Park, Shoot Her Scene") After the viewing , we described what choices the director, Steven Spielberg, used and what was the effect of it, we described this first in our groups than as a class. 

An example of the answers the class came up with is 

Choices	Effects
The low lighting and the use of heavy fog	Creates a sense of suspense and uneasiness
The background music and certain diegetic audio such as people screaming and the dinosaur roaring.	The music gives an ominous tone while the non diegetic noises creates a tone of horror
The futuristic weapons	Gives the audience a better understanding of how dangerous the dinosaur is

Right after discussing the choices and the effects we watched the opening scene from the movie Get out, directed by Jordan Peele, from comedy central Keele & Peele. The scene can be viewed via You tube. We did the same thing for this scene as we did for the Jurassic Park scene. 

An example of the choices and effects chart for Get out. 

Choices	Effects
The low lighting	Creates uneasiness
The cheery background music, played when the main character is being abducted.	Creates a small sense of comedy, which reminds of the director, but mainly a tone of creepiness. The music actually talks about “if you don’t get out your gonna die.” The explains what's going on perfectly.

As we finished the objective we discussed how the end scene reminds us of the end scene for No Country for Old Men. We also discussed how the decisions of the director contrast each other. For example, Spielberg uses the classic horror style music while Jordan uses a cheery music which is not very common in horror movies.  The setting of the scene is also different because when we see Keele's choice for the setting there is no futuristic weapons or heavy fog surrounding the characters, its just a plain suburb neighborhood at night. 

But our analysis for the scene from Get out doesn't end their. After comparing and contrasting the scenes we further break down the Keele's scene and discuss how the scene relates to the real world. A young African American adult male walking at night, in a suburban neighborhood gets attacked reminds of the countless cop shootings of an unarmed African American. The movie was released around the same time the "Black Lives Matter movement" was prevalent. 

What we did in class; doing all the objectives related to horror, relates to the real world, specifically today, because its Halloween. "Spooky Spooky"