Mise-en-scene Project

Genre Research (Psychological Horror)

                   Psychological Horror

One of my many favorite sub-genres is psychological horror...I chose to research it for this project to dive deeper and extend my understanding of the genre, themes, conventions and audience.

Psychological Horror is a sub-genre that stems from horror. To be more specific, the genre tends to focus on elements that are used to develop a very disturbing/distressing atmosphere. So whether the audiences goal is to explore the depths of human emotion in a safe environment or to feel the exhilarating emotions that come with trying to figure out the dark truths about human nature. In addition, the target audience for psychological horror is pretty broad and it usually stems from younger adults to adults. The genres main goal being to disturb the audience, to fill them with anxiety and paranoia allows the audience to long for MEDIA that will let them feel the thrill.

Genre Conventions

- Content:

1. Unreliable Narrator

 In many films the main character can't be trusted...keeping the audience on the edge of their seats. This genre focus the fear onto the main character, not the outside but the inside of their mind (which is usually unstable). Due to the characters unreliableness the audience can gain anxiety and make them question what is real.

 EXAMPLE: Black Swan (2010), The main characters hallucinations and certain obsessions made her a very unreliable protagonist.

2. Gaslighting

    This genre usually tends to blur the line between reality and the fake (delusional) story. In this way, the horror becomes internal. The audiences is able to see that even if there is no visible slasher...the real monster in their own story is the mind. This tends to stir fear in the audience

EXAMPLE: Shutter Island (2010), the whole movie was about the main characters investigation, but it was not until the end where his memories begin to unravel and where the plot unfolds.

3. Slow build-up of Suspense

    Psychological horror films rely on building up tension, rather than using jump-scares. They slowly build of suspense through different production techniques.

EXAMPLE: Hereditary (2018), throughout the quite film, and the many unsettling events the movie makes the audience feel uncomfortable.

- Production Techniques:

1. Sound

      - suspenseful music

      - silence

      - eerie sounds

      - mickey mousing (syncing movements with music)

2. Lighting (used to create an unsettling, and frightening feeling)

      - lowkey lighting

      - flickering lights

      - uses colors to advantage (red light, blue light etc.)

3. Cinematography is used in many ways to not only to make the audience feel anxiety, but it id also used to trap them into a reality where they begin to feel uncomfortable and make them question.

     - unsteady camera (handheld)

     - closeups (tight framing)

     - long takes

     - off centered composition

EXAMPLE: The Shining (1980), long takes are used to build tension and to intensify anxiety.

4. Editing

      - jump cuts

      - repetition of shots

      - interrupting shots (flashbacks, hallucinations)

Institutional Conventions (how is genre marketed):

The target audience spans from 15 year old (young adults) to 35 year old (adults). This is due to the prominent fact that psychological horrors are enjoyable to those who are more "mature" and can understand that sometimes the real monster can come from within yourself. This age group is generally not only looking for the thrill, but they are open to experience feelings and lack of comfort. Although men are more likely to be horror fans, women tend to respond more to the genre. Research does say that the genre tends to appeal to both.

Most psychological horror movie posters are usually the main character in a frame of distress, pain, fear

Film Sample #1:

Jack the main character takes a job to look after a Hotel in Colorado during the winter (its closed). He takes his family with him (son and wife), and as soon as he arrives he is told by the manager about the incident that happened a decade prior. Danny, Jack's son, is warned and told to avoid room 237. As the weeks roll by, Danny starts having scary visions and Jack is going through writers block. Throughout their stay Jacks mental health starts decreasing and he even starts dreaming about killing his family. Danny's vision become more disturbing and Jack becomes a manic man set on hurting his family... This film is able to combine hallucinations, mental weakness, anger, isolation and use it to their advantage. It also uses really long and quite scenes which make the audience feel disturbed. The poster shows violence and the manic episode luring the audience into the clear madness of the main characters unstable mind.

Film Sample #2:

Split follows the story of a teenage girl who gets kidnapped by a man that takes them to his underground home. Imprisoned in an isolated facility with her friends, they freak you and try to form a plan. Almost every time this man comes in the girls realize that he acts differently. Later throughout the film, it becomes clear that this man has dissociative identity disorder (DID). Developed and seen in the movie, the man has 23 distinct identities...with each being able to be seen by the public when holding the "spotlight". Some of his alter identities help and inform the girls of their big plan...fostering the perfect conditions for "The Beast" a new identity to take form. Throughout the movie, the girls make many escape plans only to fail. The film was able to keep the audience in the dark because we were figuring out the unpredictable information over time. This is a psychological horror because the man's DID made it so the audience couldn't predict his behavior. Not only that but the suspense came from the 24th's identity and the sudden/constant changes in the mans behavior. The poster hints at Kevin's "fractured" mind.

Some Psychological Horror Films to watch...

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Hereditary (2018)

Longlegs (2024)

Get Out (2017)

Midsommar (2019)

Run (2020)

Split (2016)

Sound Project (#1 and #2)

    Before we began with our sound project, it was not only crucial for us as a class to learn that sound gives dimension to a scene, but it was also important to know that while completing visuals, they assist the audience's perception of the overall project. Throughout the lesson, we learnt about many things, including synchronous, asynchronous, diegetic, and non-diegetic sound and sound motifs. This helped strengthen my overall perception of the importance of sound when it comes to media. 

For both sound projects, our goal was to build an atmosphere for our audience so they could get involved in this made-up scenario of our choosing.

But to be specific, for the first sound project, our main objective was to learn how to tell a story through sound effects and other auditory techniques. The rules were pretty simple; we had to make our auditory project able to convey the plot of the scene by only using sound. For project #1, it was a bit more challenging because we had to rely solely on sound. And of course, lacking experience, it was pretty hard being able to compose and put together different elements to make the “best” experience for the audience. My teammate and I decided to create a party atmosphere, and our main plot point was that the main character was going to have a panic attack. For a good final product it was evident to nail the panic attack, which is why we used an ear ringing effect and why when in the panic attack we decided to change the pace of the sound by decreasing the speed We were able to emphasis that the main character feels like time is slowing down while all they want was for the moment to be over. Our outline gave us the freedom to organize our thoughts. 

Due to the party's immense and chaotic atmosphere, we needed to maintain a neat list of what would be heard and used. In addition, we used clipchamp which was a great resource because it really helped us layer the needed audios. I think what we did best for this project was our folly sounds. I made heartbeats out of a plastic hanger and a cloth…by beating them together continuously I was able to make a similar sound to a heartbeat. Also, most of the reactions were made by me. I felt like this project was incredibly interactive and overall a lot of fun. Something that could be definitely improved is the overall organization of the project. I feel as if the project felt a little bit

 For the second sound project, we had to use our One Word Film (which was made prior to this assignment). This film was originally made to be silent, so our job was to develop and edit our own soundscape for the video. Although I wasn't there during the brainstorm, my friend and I managed to combine our ideas into the final outline. During the brainstorming process, it was incredibly important to be able to take distinct sounds from the environment and layer them with other crucial sounds to the project. The outline was unbelievably helpful because it helped my partner and me build our atmosphere in an organized way. With the outline, we were able to establish the many sounds that we needed to build the soundscape. This way in an efficient and neat way, we could put all the “needed” sounds in our project. In addition, our outline allowed us to build different scenery and sounds for specific places in the scenes. This time for the audio, I used clipchamp to layer the different sounds for each scene. The flexibility of the editing resource is exactly what I needed to structure my soundscape. I think I was able to make really realistic sounds for the paper scrambling and overall folly for the video. I do wish I could have personally had more freedom to make broader changes when picking out the volume for some sounds when editing. I realized that some sounds that I added were barely heard over the other environmental sounds. So in terms of quality, I definitely think that the level of volume could be improved.

Link to Sound Project #1:https://browardcountyschools-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/0618159306_my_browardschools_com/

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Link to OWF project with sound: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QZeohcYTDF0MINId_VtwquE8CgfV1a6z/view?usp=sharing