Showing posts with label mise-en-scène. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mise-en-scène. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Psychic Sue: Pragmatic Aesthetics in the Use of Location and Set Décor

One of the biggest expenses for many low-budget films is renting an appropriate location. Actors and crew will often work for deferred pay, or even no pay, and there are plenty of both to choose from. But appropriate locations -- especially on the cheap -- are harder to secure.

Money can be saved on location rentals (and their permit fees and insurance coverage) by reusing the same location for different locales (i.e., pretending that the same place is really someplace different). Even cheaper and easier if you can reuse the same location without changing any of its set décor.

(By location, I mean where a scene is filmed. By locale, I mean the place the location represents. For instance, a scene that is filmed in Toronto (the location) might represent an event occurring New York City (the locale.))




In the short, comedic horror film, Psychic Sue, Jennifer (Kate Finegan) visits Sue (Andrea Coyne) for a reading. Sue's psychic shop is stereotypical of such places -- red curtains, candles, occult knick-knacks. Sue spouts the usual spiritual gobbledygook. Rather than demanding anything so crass as money, Sue instead asks Jennifer to "cross my palm with silver." She also claims that her candles are "forged by the monks of Tibet."




Later, a ghost compels Sue to visit "a real psychic." So Sue visits psychic Zoe (Sarah Agha), whose shop is nearly identical to Sue's. Identical red curtains, candles, lights, occult knick-knacks. Only the tablecloth and its place setting are different.

Obviously, director Dave Lojek used the same room and set décor. He didn't even bother to vary the curtains and knick-knacks. Yet events make it clear that this location represents two different locales -- Sue's shop and Zoe's shop.

This dual use of the same location and set décor serves two purposes. Pragmatically, it saves money. Aesthetically, it provides humor. Monty Python often used the same sets (with only cursory changes in décor) for comedic effect, the characters pretending not to notice.



Well, sometimes one character -- usually the put-upon protagonist -- does a quick glance-about, noticing the striking similarities, before shrugging it off. Sue does likewise in Zoe's shop.

Psychic Sue's script reinforces the comedic effect of using identical rooms for different shops. For instance, Zoe spouts nearly identical nonsense to that of Sue. Zoe asks Sue to "cross my palm with silver" and extolls her candles as being "forged by the monks of Tibet."

By using the same location and décor for different locales, Lojek saved money. But what makes his reuse of locations especially admirable is that he put his financial corner-cutting to aesthetic use (e.g., heightening the humor).

Psychic Sue's duel use of the same location is an example of what I call pragmatic aesthetics -- when a filmmakers puts a budgetary compromise to aesthetic use.





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For more information about mise-en-scène and pragmatic aesthetics in horror films -- see Horror Film Aesthetics: Creating the Visual Language of Fear. This blog represents a continuing discussion of my views on horror, picking up from where the book left off.

Monday, March 17, 2014

Edge: Poor Grooming Hinders Suspension of Disbelief

Sometimes a filmmaker can't achieve something on screen because of a low budget -- but sometimes it's due to laziness and a lack of artistic commitment. It would have been just as cheap to shoot a scene correctly, but the filmmaker -- or the actor -- couldn't be bothered.

Hair styles are one example. Hair cuts and shaves are cheap. I've complained before about low-budget films that feature soldiers with beards,goatees, and ponytails. Edge, a low-budget film about a serial killer, makes the same mistake with its portrayal of uniformed police officers.



This cop from Edge (above) has a full beard.



And here's a cop (above) with a Mohawk. Not an undercover cop, mind you, but a uniformed officer.

Maybe this Mohawk is an "in joke" -- one of the film's producers is "Mohawk Lighting Productions." If that is the intent, filmmaker Jacob Whitley should at least be aware that his joke comes at the cost of detracting from the film.

How so?

It concerns suspension of disbelief. The lower a film's budget -- the cheaper its  sets, props, costumes, the sparser its cast -- the more difficult for viewers to suspend disbelief, and the more likely the film becomes Mystery Science Theater 3000 fodder. This is why low-budget filmmakers should do everything within their skills set and budget to achieve verisimilitude -- a sense of reality -- on screen.

Remarkably, Edge's end credits list four actual cops -- two "tactical advisors" (sic) and two "location assistants." (Their ranks are one officer, two sergeants, one captain.) True, these cops weren't part of the hair & makeup crew, but you'd think one of them would have mentioned something about the police characters' beard and Mohawk.

Edge's credits indicate the film was shot in La Palma, California. Is this how real cops groom themselves in La Palma? Even if that were so, Whitley should have known that such grooming is outside the norm, so his film would have greater verisimilitude with clean-shaven officers.

Edge's detectives have five o'clock shadows, but one can be more forgiving of that. Detectives are more often portrayed as casual in dress and grooming than are uniformed officers, so audiences are more likely to accept that.

But Edge has some other faults that break viewers' suspension of disbelief. In one scene, police officers storm into a house. They find a dead man, his throat slashed. Detective Rivers (Scott Butler) finds a knife in a sink filled with bloody water.




So Detective Rivers reaches into the water and picks up the knife.



He stares at the knife in disgust, then tosses it back into the sink.

Huh?!

Even if the serial killer had tried to wipe the knife of fingerprints, and wash off his DNA, wouldn't a professional detective have removed the knife with rubber gloves, then placed it into a plastic baggie, for further analysis? Instead, Rivers contaminates the knife with his own prints and DNA. And his partner beside him says nothing, as though this is normal procedure

I think modern audiences have been sufficiently sensitized over these past few decades of CSI shows that even lay people know better than to touch anything at a crime scene with bare hands. Once again, it would have been just as cheap to have filmed Rivers leaving the knife untouched, than to break the viewer's suspension of disbelief with his unprofessional behavior

Edge is not an entirely bad film. It's reasonably entertaining for its budget. DP David Molina's photography is sharp and his use of blue lights to evoke night nicely done. Although the film is set in California, Scott Butler has what sounds to me like an Australian or New Zealander accent (his IMDb page says he's from South London), but one can overlook that.

You can see Edge on YouTube:




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For more about mise-en-scène, see Horror Film Aesthetics: Creating the Visual Language of Fear. This blog represents a continuing discussion of my views on horror, picking up from where the book left off.

Friday, August 9, 2013

Poor Hairstyling of Soldiers in Santa Claus vs. the Zombies

Many genre films -- horror, sci-fi, and especially action films -- feature soldiers or police officers. This means casting actors for those roles. While low-budget filmmakers can't always be choosy about their casts, they should at least make the effort to have their soldiers look like soldiers -- especially if it doesn't cost anything. Like insisting that the actors shave and trim their hair.

Actors playing soldiers -- especially elite special forces troops -- should appear to be lean, trim-haired, and clean-shaven. Why? Duh! Because those are the standards demanded of real-life soldiers. Sure, some scripts can allow for unshaven troops -- say, if they've been fighting in the jungle for a while, or if the story is set in some distant past or future time period -- but otherwise, the rule applies.

Unfortunately, too many low-budget filmmakers ignore this rule, for no apparent reason other than sheer laziness.

Consider Santa Claus vs. The Zombies. This is yet another zombie apocalypse film. Much of it is set in a basement office with the President of the United States and his staff -- both civilian and military -- planning ways to combat the zombies. This being a micro-budget film, one forgives the tiny office and staff. What is unforgivable is the sloppy mise-en-scène -- particularly the hairstyling.

The filmmakers didn't even try to create a sense of realism. The staff comprises only one general and several "elite" special forces troops. Okay, the filmmaker could only afford a small cast. And his elite troops do have cool uniforms and special forces red berets. But ...



Some of these special ops troops have goatees or full beards. One has a long ponytail and is especially fat (see above).

The general is grossly overweight, but even if we can forgive that, we cannot overlook his goatee.

I can understand a filmmaker wanting to cast his fat friends instead of casting lean actors who actually look like special ops troops. But please make an effort. Give these actors military crew cuts and shave their faces.

It seems like a small matter, yet it's telling. It indicates that the filmmaker and friends didn't take this film seriously. The actors may have wanted the parts, but not to the extent of shaving or cutting their hair. (It would take a while to grow it back so long.) And the filmmaker accepted it instead of insisting on a military look for his military characters.

The entire film is low-budget and amateurish, and the above indicates why. It's not just lack of talent or money, but lack of artistic commitment.

No, it doesn't matter that this film is supposed to be a comedy. Even comedies require commitment to the story and characters.

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For more about mise-en-scène, see Horror Film Aesthetics: Creating the Visual Language of Fear. This blog represents a continuing discussion of my views on horror, picking up from where the book left off.


Wednesday, June 8, 2011

The Burrowers -- Western and Horror Morph Rather Than Mix

The “horror western” is a subgenre of the horror genre, not the Western. The horror western uses Western icons (e.g., Grim Prairie Tales), but its story conventions and atmosphere are horror. It is marketed toward -- and attracts -- horror fans, not Western fans.

Horror westerns normally mix these two genres from the start. We see the Western icons (the period locale, cowboys, Indians. etc.), but the story is soon, and clearly, horror.

The Burrowers is set in the Dakota Territories, 1879. But rather than blend the Western and horror genres, The Burrowers's strength is that it begins largely as an authentic Western. Only after the audience is emotionally adjusted to a Western does The Burrowers become a horror film.

The Burrowers opens on a romantic conversation, set on an idyllic Western ranch, a golden sunset in the background. Coffey with Maryanne, as they discuss how he will ask her father for her hand in marriage.

Minutes later, the first violent outbreak is typical of Westerns -- we hear gunfire outside the cabin. The family escapes to a cellar. They hear strange noises -- our first hint of an unnatural threat, as required by horror -- but we don't see any unnatural threats.

The family is killed. Maryanne is apparently kidnapped by Indians. (Audiences know it wasn't Indians -- but are lulled into believing that Maryanne may still be alive.)

For the next 44-45 minutes, The Burrowers is mostly a straight Western. Romantic photography, charging horses, beautiful prairie vistas -- supported by appropriate Western period music.


Psychologically, emotionally, dramatically, the characters are typically Western. The strong and silent Clay (very much a The Searchers, John Wayne type). The gentlemanly gunslinger Mr. Parcher. Coffey, the romantic Irish immigrant, riding to rescue Maryanne. Callaghan, the “noble Negro” (what Spike Lee calls the "magical Negro") -- compassionate, honorable, enduring racism without ever losing his dignity.


There is also an arrogant U.S. Cavalry officer, callous and cruel to both blacks and Indians. When he threatens to whip Coffey for “feeding my Indian,” the strong and silent Clay stares him down, ready for a gunfight, though outnumbered by the officers' troops.

Naturally, the officer backs down from the heroic Clay.

Throughout these first 44-45 minutes, there are intimations of horror -- the strange scars on a dead girl's neck; strange holes in the ground; something in the bushes that kills four troops. But overwhelmingly, The Burrowers's mise-en-scène, music, story, characters, and themes (loyalty toward loved ones and comrades; dignity in the face of adversity) are those of a Western.

The film emotionally conditions the audience for Western. Even if they know intellectually that they're watching a horror film, they feel like they're watching a Western. This conditions their expectations for a Western outcome. They anticipate (even if only subconsciously) that Coffey will rescue Maryanne. Most of the heroes will survive -- and if any should die, they will die noble, honorable, courageous deaths.

Yet as the film progresses, The Burrowers morphs from a Western into a horror film.

Midway into the film, Clay is killed. It's not an honorable death, but shocking and brutal. He dies not like John Wayne, giving a noble speech while heroically fading away, but is unceremoniously butchered like one of Leatherface's victims.

Clay's death is emotionally jarring. I regard this as the event that pushes the audience's mindset out of the Western genre, and into horror.

Things worsen. The monsters (vampiric “burrowers” living underground) reveal themselves. The unnatural threat becomes clear and visible.

The burrowers' bite poisons Parcher. As he fades over the course of the next day and night, he grows paranoid and cowardly. He shoots at his former comrades, lest they desert him.

In the end, he dies a coward's death. (His emotionally selfish state of mind is not unlike the cowardly jock in Jeepers Creepers 2 who wanted to abandon the weak ones, only to be killed himself.)

Callaghan likewise dies a senseless, ignoble death, the result of cowardice and incompetence. A victim of friendly fire, and an incompetent army surgeon (who perhaps callously amputated Callahan's leg, not much caring about a mere Negro's health). Callaghan, the “noble Negro,” dies like a piece of meat -- discarded like an anonymous victim in a slasher film.

Some friendly Indians die senseless deaths too, mistaken by the army as hostiles and executed. Much like Ben was mistaken for a zombie in Night of the Living Dead, and thus killed by a sheriff's posse. In horror films, innocents often die at the hands of incompetent authority figures.

Coffey fails to rescue Maryanne, or anyone else. He fails to bring proof of what he's learned about the burrowers. The army, by killing the friendly Indians, kills any hope of learning how to stop the burrowers. As in many horror films, the protagonists stymie, but do not destroy, the threat. Myers will return to kill again.



By starting as a straight Western (rather than a “horror western”), and only morphing into horror after the audience has been emotionally conditioned for a Western, The Burrowers solves a common horror film problem:
Horror requires an unnatural threat -- a sudden realization that (to quote from Frank Lupo's Werewolf pilot script) "The world is not as our minds believe."

The problem is that audiences get jaded after seeing so many horror films with the same unnatural threat -- be it a vampires, zombies, or uberpsychos. Familiarity breeds a sense of normalcy. Seeing them so often, we come to feel that they're commonplace, hence, natural.

As a result, horror filmmakers are challenged to find new ways to "creep out" audiences with a novel unnatural threat, some new threat that will overturn viewers' sense of reality.

Because most horror filmmakers can't rise to the challenge, they instead rely on gore and shocks (e.g., Devil's Grove).

The Burrowers solves this problem by starting as an authentic Western. Only after the audience is emotionally invested in a Western, with preconceived expectations of the characters' heroic deeds and successful fates, does the film emotionally jar them by segueing into a horror film -- when the characters are suddenly revealed to be cowardly and/or vulnerable.

Their deeds and deaths are typical for a horror film, but shocking to an audience that had forgotten they were watching a horror film.

Imagine High Noon if, during the last third, Gary Cooper suddenly turns cowardly, Grace Kelly is senselessly butchered like a piece of meat, and half the town massacres the other half in mindless mayhem.

The Burrowers demonstrates the emotional punch that comes of establishing one genre in the audience's mind, then defying their emotional expectations by morphing midway into another genre. A non-horror sensibility is established, into which any unnatural threat feels that much more unnatural.

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For more about horror's overlap with other genres see Horror Film Aesthetics: Creating the Visual Language of Fear. This blog represents a continuing discussion of my views on horror, picking up from where the book left off.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Mad Scientists: "Gender" Determines Their Mise-en-Scène

If one knows a mad scientist's sex, one can pretty much predict his or her fashion sense, hair style, and demeanor. This horror icon's mise-en-scène is as rigidly sex-specific as "blue is for boys" and "pink is for girls."

Yes, there are exceptions. But for the most part, gentleman mad scientists favor rumpled clothing, unkempt hair and megalomaniacal outbursts. They can never contain their enthusiasms when their big experiments come to fruition.

Consider Drs. Frankenstein, Pretorius (Bride of Frankenstein, 1935), and Rotwang (Metropolis, German 1927).

Even the often uptight Herbert West laughs like an hysterical lunatic on occasion.

By contrast, lady doctors are always uptight. Always neat. They rarely display any emotion about their Great Work, or anything else for that matter. Their lips are as tight as their hair buns.

Consider Dark Shadows's Dr. Julia Hoffman; Dr. Parkinson (Fiona Lewis) in Strange Behavior (Australian 1981); and Dr. Carter (Kate Trotter) in the "And Now the News" episode of TV's Friday the 13th: The Series.

Yes, there are exceptions. The normally cool Julia Hoffman loses it on occasion, and when she does so, actress Grayson Hall equals Willian Shatner in her scenery chewing.

Why this male/female divide in mad scientist style and behavior?

Is our society frightened by undisciplined, wild men, unable to control themselves, or contain their lusts, passions, greed, and ambitions? Whereas crazy, irrational behavior is "normal" coming from "the weaker sex," whose destructive potential isn't all that great anyway.

By contrast, a cold, emotionless woman is "unnatural." Heartless and cruel. There's no telling what bizarre crimes against nature she may commit. But a cold, emotionless man is trustworthy. Self-control makes him safe and reliable. Silent and strong.

I've never been much for "gender studies" (I think "sex" is more accurate than "gender" when applied to people), and I don't know if these are the reasons for how male vs. female mad scientists are portrayed.

Furthermore, while male mad scientists tend to be unkempt and ranting, and female mad scientists are cold-blooded and uptight, this male/female divide does not appear so much among other villain icons.

For instance, Bond villains (mostly men) tend to be cold, emotionless, and hyper-rational, whereas suspense thrillers have their share of hyper-hysterical female villains (Fatal Attraction).

It's mostly among mad scientists where evil men and women have switched their traditional emotional roles.

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For more about the use of mise-en-scène in horror films, see Horror Film Aesthetics: Creating the Visual Language of Fear. This blog represents a continuing discussion of my views on horror, picking up from where the book left off.

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Wintery Horror vs. Summer Horror

I am asked, "How does summer horror differ from winter horror in lighting and color?"

I don't think there's a consistently or reliably different aesthetic effect between a wintry vs. summer mise-en-scène. And to the extent there is, I wouldn't focus on lighting or color.

I love wintry horror films, but that's largely a personal taste. I love winter, period. I find gray skies and barren streets emotionally uplifting. Bright, sunny skies depress me. Maybe I have a reverse form of seasonal affective disorder. Perhaps many goths do too. (Although, I am not a goth; I live in khaki.)

Either a winter or a summer setting can support a horror film's story, characters, or themes. The bleak, wintry scenes in Ghost Story support the characters: four old men, in the winter of their lives, their situation frozen, unchanging, by an old, guilty secret. Their elder lives contrast with the flashbacks to their youth, set in summer, when a guiltless future was still before them.

Yes, many people associate winter with bleakness and despair. Filmmakers can exploit this. The stark Canadian winter scenes in The Brood reflect Frank's bleak situation, his marriage "gone cold."


The wintry scenes in The Changling reflect John's depressing situation, having recently lost his wife and daughter in an auto accident.

But bright, sunny summer scenes can also reinforce a film's horror. If not by reflecting the character's bleak situation, then through contrast.

The Final Terror and The Prey (and many summer camp slasher films) are full of sunny outdoors footage -- creating a bright mood which contrasts with the brutal slayings. The Prey's sunny outdoor footage itself embodies contrasts; its footage depicts wildlife prey. Nature is brutal, despite the summer sun -- as it that psycho who grew up in the natural wilds, soon to prey on the campers!

Winter and summer mise-en-scène can both help or hinder a horror film, depending on how it relates to the film's story, characters, or themes. It all depends on context.

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For more about my thinking on mise-en-scène in horror, see Horror Film Aesthetics: Creating the Visual Language of Fear. This blog represents a continuing discussion of my views on horror, picking up from where the book left off.