Daily blog 11/2/18- Vaughn Thomas

Synthesizing Horror Films

In the beginning of class, Mr. Rivers went over how to synthesize different horror movies by comparing the director's different choices that change the suspense and tone of the film. Synthesis means to combine the ideas of theme. We then talked about how the 5th period class revised our chart on the differences of a good and bad horror movie. This is what they helped on:

Horror Genre

Good	Bad
Atmosphere- soundtrack build suspense	Predictability
Different from other horror movies Deliberate jump scares	Different based on a hot topic
Interesting story line	Overuse of jump scares Too much, distracting from plot
Lack of sound: choice	Stupid characters(laziness)

After, we re-watched the opening scenes of both the films Jurassic Park directed by Steven Spielberg and Get Out directed by Jordan Peele. While we watched, we had to give examples how the director's camera, lights, and sound choices effected the suspense and tone. This is what I did:

Jurassic Park choices	Get Out choices
Camera Zoom into curtain character’s facial expressions Constant cuts (dramatic)	Camera Constant shot (no cuts) Camera angle causes to only see what it wants us to see causing suspense
Lights Pitch black with work lights	Lights Low key lighting with only street and car lights
Sound Intense crescendos in music Intense sound effects and dinosaur noises with screams	Sound Diagetic happy music playing from car but non-diagetic violin at the end to set tone

In the end of class we paired up with one or two people to synthesize Jurassic Park opening scene and Get Out opening scene. This is what my group came up with:

Get Out and Jurassic Park both use different aspects of mise-en-scene to establish horror and suspense. Get Out, directed by Jordan Peele was a very successful horror film because of its use of setting, lighting, and shot angle to express the suspense of the situation. The first scene is a single shot(without any cuts) that shows an African American man walking on a sidewalk in the dark suburbs. He is muttering street names to make us feel as though he is lost. A lone car passes him and then turns around behind his back. The car then pulls in front of him on the street and he turns around immediately. The camera only shows his expression as he turns around until we hear the door open and the upbeat diegetic audio coming from the car. The camera slowly turns around to see him being chokes and put in the back of the car. He then drives away with spooky non-diegetic violin to express suspense. Jurassic Park’s opening scene is very dark and gloomy, the scene has dark lighting and we can see the suspense building up. Steven Spielberg chooses to show camera angles of the point of view of the men and dinosaur. Also there are close-ups of the men’s faces showing fear. When the men successfully get the dinosaur’s main door up there is a sense of joy and the music is celebratory, but then when the plan goes wrong and the music turns dark.

The Be Reel Blog is due on Thursday and read Ready Player One.