Feminism and The Final Girl theory

A feminist horror film has a strong lead female character. Subsequently going against the typical codes and conventions of a typical horror film, of a promiscuous, blonde female victim who as such is ‘asking to be killed’, and  are normally portrayed inferior in comparison to the male leads, and be shown to need both physical and mental support from them. Further to this, many American horror films show a huge amount of misogyny and violence. However through the film ‘Halloween’ the concept of the final girl by Carol J. Clover was used, this concept shows the final girl being level headed and morally pure.  ‘Halloween’ uses both of these concepts and is therefore considered to be a feminist horror film. The main character is portrayed as strong both physically and mentally due to here escaping near death experiences on many occasions, which therefore classifies her as the final girl.

Freud’s psychological theory is used in this film as voyeurism and sadism is used mainly for the male audiences in order to cause gratification from another person’s pain, as it’s in their nature to be more sexually aroused by watching females in pain. Whereas, the female audiences are more passive and prefer films which consist of a physiological concept as it creates meaning to the film. 

Voyeurism links with Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze theory. As the woman would often fall victim to the ‘Male gaze’, and she believed that as an audience we are encouraged to view the female characters in films in a sexualised manner, as viewers we are meant to identify and sympathise with the protagonist who in the past, tended to be male. Mulvey believed that female characters were coded with ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ where women only appear in provocative manner.

Using Todorov's theory of narrative

Scene 1: Equilibrium

Candice and Sarah in bedroom- painting nails. Couple of words said and laughter. To ease/comfort audience. Medium shot.

Scene 2: Moment of disequilibrium

Long shot to establish the scene. 'Stalker/Killer' possibly behind a tree watching the girls walk.

Then the girls are walking through the quiet part of town.

‘Did you hear about George?’     (jump cuts throughout)

‘Did you just hear that?’ Sarah (Dannii) turns around with camera- Point of View shot. As she turns around someone quickly walks past at the end of the street.

The girls speed up. (music speeds up, intensifies)

Killer’s room filled with photos of girls- Candice and Sarah circled in red marker

Camera shows all photos, zooms in particular photo of the 2 girls.

Sarah’s phone rings (music stops as phone rings)

Candice is grabbed (killer’s point of view- canted angle when he grabs her)

Then the shot of the killer’s hand around Candice’s mouth (muffles- music stops, canted angle shows unstableness/terror)

Scene 3:

Scene 4: Sarah is chased; hides behind bush and car (heavy panting/breathing)

Loud scream at the end (blackness) 

Period of disequilibrium: release date & coming soon. 

Treatment/Film Ideas

Idea 1: Camping film idea
Texas Chainsaw Massacre and House of Wax meet the classic slasher Friday 13th
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Road trip, serial killer,
House of Wax; Camping trip, isolation, no contact with outside world.
Friday 13th: slasher, teenagers, mental

Scenario:
‘A group of teenagers adventure on a camping trip in the isolated woods where they are brutally murdered by their stalker....one by one’
‘Group of teenagers’ and ‘stalker’-character paradigm
‘Isolated woods’- Setting paradigm
‘Brutally murdered’- props: weapons such as knives, poles
Infatuation (mental issues- photographs of girls)

Treatment:
Opening shot is the teens setting off on their road trip, discussing who is sharing tents with whom. One of the teens gets his/her personal camera out and starts filming how excited they are for their trip and fooling around. (Close up, low angle, canted angles as he/she is filming other people in the car) The unsteady camera shots portray a structuralist view. Long shot to set the scene showing them getting out the car and setting up their tents. They are starting to become aware that they are not alone and start hearing noises and seeing movements. (Tone card- Someone’s obsession, turns into another person’s nightmare) A jump cut to the stalker in a room looking at photos of the girls, (Photos of them having fun, laughing).


Idea 2: Obsession/stalker storyline
Scream meets I know What You Did Last Summer
Scream: tormenting the teens, knife

Scenario:
A stalker seeks revenge many years later...he couldn’t forgive and forget
Stalker- Character paradigm
Infatuation- mental issues (photographs of girls)

Treatment:
The trailer begins at the moment of equilibrium when the two best friends are talking and painting each other’s nails (sleepover setting). Then there is a long shot of the girls walking home through a quiet part of town. (Disequilibrium)They begin to feel a little paranoid (unsteady camera movement) thinking someone is behind them, (jump cuts of them speeding up) but when they turn around they catch a glimpse of someone walking past. (Close up of their facial expressions; shock, confusion). Tone card: They have no idea... George (Idea of ‘Martin’ from Human Centipede 2) is wanting revenge...after all these years. Then there is a shot of many photographs of the girls on a wall, zooming in on their faces at one point. (Close up shot)


Idea 3: Supernatural (Ghost activity)
The Exorcism of Emily Rose meets The Amityville Horror
The Exorcism of Emily Rose: Possessed Child
The Amityville Horror: Paranormal activity

Scenario:
Possessed child – Character Paradigm
Family House – Setting Paradigm
Paranormal activity, objects moving

Treatment:
The opening shot is of a young child sitting at the end of her bed staring at the wall when objects around her start to move. Her parents start then start to believe that there is something wrong with her. (Medium Shot). Her parents start to worry about her and decide it is best to keep her locked inside on her own. When her parents return home they find that the house has been trashed (High shot, canted angle). The young girl wants to get her own back for what her parents have done and starts tormenting them, by messing with their minds and rearranging objects around the house. She is left with only one option now for revenge, and that is to slowly murder them in their sleep.

Questionnaire Resources (Film Posters) and Questionnaire Results

Horror questionnaire results

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Presentation1

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1. Out of the people we asked this questionnaire to, the majority of them were aged 16-17, with 18-19 being close behind this, and younger than 16 falling into the minority. This is because  horror films are classified 15 or 18 and older, hence why only a small minority of people asked were 16 and younger, watched horror films. From this we can gather that our main target audience would be 16-17 falling into 18-19. When making our trailer we should take this into consideration and classify our trailer appropriately.

2. When asking there gender, the responses came back fairly close, with only a few more people being females who said they watched horror films. This would be something we would have to take into consideration also, and tailor our trailor to something more suited to females.

3. The majority of people asked said they were students and had part time work.

4. Horror films seem to be a very popular genre within the people we asked.

5. Out of the people we asked, the majority of them said they find out about new horror films through trailers, either on the internet or television. Because of this when we have completed our trailer it may be a good idea to advertise and promote it on social networking sites that our target audience would use such as, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

6. More than half the people asked said that a good  trailer and famous cast made them want to watch a horror film. Although we can't bring in a famous cast to be in our trailer, we can consider referencing other well known horror films, that the target audience can relate to.

7. "What do you like most about horror films?" is an open, qualitative question. We chose to do this because we wanted to know peoples opinnions rather than giving them generic answers to choose from, so we can incopriate their answers into our trailer.

8. Fear of the unknown was a majority answer for, "what component in horror films scares you the most?"

9. When asking them what their favourite horror film was we also made it an open, qualitative question, where they could write an answer, rather than restricting them to a few answers that we had given. The responses came back varied, from the "Saw" series to "The Shining".

10. The majority of responses for "where would you be most likely to watch a horror film?" was in the comfort of there own home or at a friends house.

11. This question showed that the majority of people asked are avid movie fans and go to the cinema 4-6 times a month.

12.

13. More than half the people asked said that they liked realism wwithin a horror storyline. This may be because it is easily relatable to everyday life which heightens the scare factor.

14.  Majority shows that people prefer to watch horror films in 2D as appose to 3D.

15. Out of the people that were surveyed, they found the film poster for Nightmare on Elm Street was the one that scared them the most.

Questionnaire

I created this questionnaire which was based on the 'horror' genre, to help me find out peoples interests surrounding the genre as a whole and certain aspects of the genre. From gathering the results it will help me and my group decide and produce a successful and suitable horror trailer for our target audience, from the response we have been given.

Bussing Scene and analysis

As we only had a short space of time to film our bussing scene, we had to make sure we had enough footage that we could edit to make a good chase scene within the horror genre. We found that by creating a story board benefited us when filming, as we knew exactly what we wanted to do, meaning we could refer back to the story board  at any time if anyone needed guidance of what to do next. Because horror films are typically filmed during the night or in a dark place to connote fear and suspense, we had to do something similar. This proved to be difficult as we only had a set time to film, and this was during the day, so we decide to use the woods as our main location.  This proved difficult as it was hard to create the right atmosphere, which meant it was of importance to use the right shot types and camera angles.

We portrayed the killer as a silhouette dressed in blacked. Which created an air of mystery, while following the structuralist theory, as the audience is drawn in to the fear of the unknown and Propps eight character theory. Feminist theory was conveyed, as the main female character is shown fighting of the killer, therefore breaking the stereotypical female victim.

We used Todorov's theory as the main structure of our scene. It started at the period of equilibrium with the diegetic sound of the birds singing, this was then quickly followed by the moment of disequilibrium which was conveyed through the discontinuous and fast paced editing. During post production we realised that the light added to the the atmosphere of the scene. When she is running away the light becomes brighter, connoting the hope that she is running towards freedom.

Media presentation

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