Genre vodcast exercise 25Jan2012

No matter how many openings you've looked at, you should keep refreshing your knowledge and awareness of genre conventions and viewing actual examples of how concepts such as final girl or even violence are actually handled on screen. You also need to be engaging in wider reading, and we will do an exercise on this later.

Today each of you will get a slasher DVD you haven't previously seen, and your challenge is to view the opening 25-30mins (depending on time) and take notes on how this media product uses, develops or challenges the forms and conventions of the slasher genre. As you go you will need to take notes, plus screenshots or screengrabs (stills from the film), taking care to note what each is of; in the second period today you will have an hour, in a pair, to produce a vodcast comparing these two. Details follow...

CREATE BLOG POST

Set out at the top, as follows (you can copy/paste and edit from this post for speed):

TITLE: Slasher X

YEAR: 2012

DIRECTOR: D Burrowes

BUDGET: $4.7m

BOX OFFICE: UK: £0m [no distrib] US $6.7m

DISTRIBUTOR: UK: n/a US: Warner Bros

IMDB RATING: 2.7
READ MORE ON IMDB

Add a poster or other image to right if you can find one.

And now you're ready to begin critical viewing...

REMAINDER OF PERIOD 1: VIEWING + NOTE-TAKING 

You now have the rest of this period to view around the first 25-30 mins.
Take notes as you go on how this film uses, develops or challenges the forms and conventions of the slasher genre, noting aspects such as:
CHARACTER TYPES: final girl/s. qn binary opposition (eg reflects Laurie Strode type; visual appearance of f.gl BUT not virginal; uses s.qn type as f.gl); figures of authority (traditionally hopeless, reflecting teen audience); main characters teen/20s; male killer; Propp's roles
LOCATION: rural or subarban usually; isolated; confined space (characters trapped)
SOUNDTRACK: non-diegetic music - denote what kind, and why/where used; exaggerated diegetic sound at key moments
NARRATIVE: narrative enigma; false scare; killer's motivation/personality disorder; binary oppositions
EDITING: any SFX?; fast pace (older films had slower pace than today's) for youth aud; PoV shots of stalking
REPRESENTATIONS: lack of non-Caucasian characters (or killed off early); lack of disabled characters (or killed off early); sexist gender representations? (arguments on whether this is the case