Zooms Lens Put to Imaginative Use in Shadows of Fear

The "Sugar and Spice" episode of TV's Shadows of Fear uses the zoom lens in an imaginative way for an interesting effect.

Anne's (Sheila Hancock) husband, Victor, is having an affair. She's known it for a while. She found a letter to Victor from his mistress. But tonight Anne has other problems. Her son hasn't come home. She has reason to believe that Victor picked up the boy from school. But why would he? And where are they now?

As the night wears on, Anne wonders if she should call Victor's mistress (her phone number was in the letter) to see if Victor and their son are with the mistress. But neither Victor or his mistress know that Anne knows about them. If he and the boy are not there, Anne will have revealed her knowledge to the mistress for nothing.

In the following scene, Anne breaks down and phones the mistress. The camera zooms closer to Anne's face every time the phone rings.

Ringing and zooming work together in mutual support. Anne wants to talk to the mistress, yet doesn't want to talk to her. Ever been there? Where you dread talking to someone, yet are anxious to do so? Each time the phone rings, Anne expects and wants the mistress to answer, yet is relieved when she doesn't.

The zooming heightens this tension. We only zoom during the phone rings, each zoom bringing us closer to Anne's tense face. It has been said that comedy is a long shot; tragedy a closeup. Seeing a character up close helps the audience to identify with that character and empathize with her emotions. And horror is a genre that requires strong audience empathy with the protagonist.

Apart from heightening tension and character identification, the zooming in "Sugar and Spice" serves another purpose. Shadows of Fear featured plays that were videotaped on TV sound stages. Back in the 1970s, TV cameras were larger and more unwieldy than today. None of that handheld, shaky-cam style of shooting permitted by later, smaller cameras.

As a result, TV shows that were shot on sound stages in the 1970s were "stagy" and "static." The zooming in "Sugar and Spice" is an example of an innovative director trying to liven up the visuals in what is essentially a stage play.

"Sugar and Spice" was directed by Patrick Dromgoole.

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For more information on sound and cinematography 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.

The Case Against Film Subtitles: Dubbing Is Better

Back in film school (NYU) I was taught that, regarding foreign films, true cinéastes prefer subtitles over dubbing. This is why lowbrow exploitation films (Godzilla and Zombi 2) are dubbed, whereas highbrow art films (Jules and Jim and Breathless) are subtitled. 

The rationale is that an actor's voice is part of his performance. Dub the actor, and you can no longer appreciate the film as performed by that actor. It becomes a new film. This is especially obvious with certain actors who have highly distinctive voices, such as Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger. If you've seen films with their voices dubbed, you not only hear, you can feel the difference.





Nevertheless, I prefer dubbing.

Sure, I prefer Schwarzenegger in his original voice. But that's because he's speaking English, a language I understand. I might not appreciate his voice as much if he were speaking German and I had to read subtitles.

The notion that an actor's performance is better preserved with subtitles, rather than dubbing, is overrated. It's true that dubbing dilutes an actor's performance, but in a way, so do subtitles. This is especially true with films that are dialog intensive -- a lot of dialog, quickly spoken, to the point that the actors are practically speaking over each other.

Subtitles dilute an actor's performance because, when I watch a dialog heavy film, I can't actually watch the actors. Streams of sentences incessantly fill the bottom of the screen. No sooner do I finish reading the text than a new word dump appears. I can't keep up. I repeatedly pause the DVD to read the dialog. Then I unpause, and pause again, so I can read the next batch of sentences. It's like flipping through pages. I'm no longer watching a film. I'm reading a book.

How then can I focus on the actors' performances? Their facial expressions, reactions, or even their voices? You can't appreciate a vocal performance when you hear it broken into bits from constantly pausing the DVD.

Another distraction is the surprisingly large number of misspelled words and incorrect punctuation in many subtitles. I've seen we're spelled were, and I'm spelled Im. I saw a film in which a mad scientist was conducting experiences rather than experiments. One character said "I was a theft." when he clearly meant "I was a thief." 

Among foreign horror films, inept subtitles are the rule rather than the exception. It's rare that I see a film whose English subtitles are in perfect English.

What's the problem? Is there a shortage of "professional" script translators overseas? Have the big studios booked the few competent translators? Or do indie horror filmmakers have such low budgets that they can't afford competent translators? Maybe they think that translation is easy, a safe item on which to save money, so they can't be bothered to hire a professional? Instead they recruit some student intern (for no pay) who's looking to break into the business, despite his not having achieved sufficient English language proficiency to do a competent job.

Every incorrect subtitle, every pause of the DVD, distracts me, interrupting my suspension of disbelief, lessening a scene's tension or humor, hindering my enjoyment of the film.

Unfortunately, subtitles are now the norm in horror films. It wasn't always so. Italian exploitation films of the 1970s and 1980s were routinely dubbed. I think the practice of subtitling horror films began with the advent of J-horror in the late 1990s.

Why is subtitling the new norm? I don't think it's because distributors have suddenly gained an appreciation for film as an art form. Rather, subtitling is cheaper than is dubbing. Either way, you hire a translator for the script. But now you needn't hire a new cast of actors to perform that script in a foreign language. The more countries you hope to distribute the film in, the more money you save.

The rise in the number of indie horror filmmakers worldwide, along with a concomitant increase in horror film festivals to encourage their efforts, is another factor. It's a race to the bottom. If you see your competition getting away with saving money by not hiring actors to dub foreign dialog, why should you spend extra? Thus have subtitles -- poorly written at that -- replaced dubbing as the new norm.

Horror fans have enthusiastically embraced many dubbed films over the decades. So although contemporary horror filmmakers might say they're opting for subtitles for art's sake, really, it's to save a dime.

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For more about sound issues 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.

Contrasting the Visuals in Two MOS Horror Films: Daughter of Horror and The Beast of Yucca Flats

Daughter of Horror (aka Dementia, 1955) and The Beast of Yucca Flats (1961) were made within a decade of each other. Both films are low budget affairs. Both "feature" runs at under an hour. Both were shot in black & white. Both were shot MOS (i.e., without any sound recorded on set). What sound there is was dubbed in afterwards.

Despite their similarities, they are markedly different. Daughter of Horror is an admirable work of art. The Beast of Yucca Flats is schlock This is why it's instructive to study these films together. Especially their handling of MOS. What did the first film do right that the second got wrong?

You won't find many MOS films these days. Modern video cameras have built in sound recorders. Not so film cameras in the 1950s. And so, some low budget filmmakers tried to save money by doing without sound recorders and boom mics on set, instead shooting MOS and dubbing in the sound during post production.

Comparing these two films, you'll see that Daughter of Horror embraces its MOS limitations. The film has no dialog. Instead, it relies on powerful visuals. Director John Parker's compositions are beautiful and arresting, borrowing stylistically from German expressionism. His harsh lighting creates extreme, angular shadows, and rich, deep blacks.

The production design and staging are similarly expressionistic. For one scene, Parker found an impressively gargantuan staircase. In another, the woman enters a nightclub and is creepily and claustrophobically surrounded by what initially appear to be floating arms.  

Parker's visual style creates a surreal sensibility, which is appropriate as we are allegedly sharing a mad woman's nightmares and/or hallucinations. (She wakes up, but remains uncertain if it was only a dream, so it could be either.)

 

 

By contrast, The Beast of Yucca Flats tries to hide its MOS limitations. The film does its (poor) best to fool the audience into thinking that sound was recorded on set. There is dialog. But because it was dubbed during post-production, director Coleman Francis uses several tricks to conceal that the dialog doesn't sync with his actors' lips. When the actors talk, they're always seen from a distance, or obscured in darkness, or behind an object. Or talking off screen -- whereas filmmakers normally show the actor who's speaking, Francis instead frames the actor who's listening, the talker being out of camera frame.

Francis's technique cheapens his film. An actor's voice carries much of his personality. Because we never see his actors speak the voices we hear, some emotional connection with the audience is lost. Better for them never to have spoken in the first place.

Unlike Parker, Francis doesn't provide interesting visuals. His images are dull. Mostly people wandering the desert. Still worse, he shot his film day-for-night (i.e., during the daytime, with the film underexposed to create a nighttime look). Day-for-night is often used for wide expanses (e.g., desert vistas) because of the expense of lighting such large areas. Had Francis rented some generators and lights, he might have had the rich blacks and sharp shadows of Daughter of Horror. Instead, The Beast of Yucca Flats suffers from flat "lighting." Dull, grayish, washed-out.

Apart from dialog, The Beast of Yucca Flats dubs many other diegetic sounds: wind, gunshots, screams, and engine noise (from cars and planes). The only diegetic sound dubbed in Daughter of Horror is laughter. Thus does the latter further embrace its MOS limitations.

Both films have music and narration. Daughter of Horror's narration is more self-aware and self-referential. The narrator addresses the protagonist. "Run, daughter of horror, run." By contrast, Yucca Flats's narrator addresses the audience. The former dynamically interacts with its surreal world. The latter fills in the narrative gaps created by the MOS limitations, telling us (rather than showing) what we would otherwise have learned through the missing dialog.

Narrative gaps are a problem for The Beast of Yucca Flats, because the film attempts to tell a traditional horror/sci-fi story about a killer monster. By contrast, Daughter of Horror doesn't have a linear story, but is a subjective, surreal look at madness. 

Daughter of Horror was initially released as Dementia and had no narration. (The top YouTube clip is without narration, the latter with.) Some fans believe the narration harms the film. Even so, Daughter of Horror's narration better serves its film than the narration for The Beast of Yucca Flats. The latter's narration aims for a philosophical profundity that comes off as unintentionally funny. 

Daughter of Horror should be studied for tips on how to tell a tale visually. Good to know even if you're making a sound film. As for The Beast of Yucca Flats, well, it's schlock. Even so, it can be entertaining if one is in the right mood. I was bored the first time I watched. But I enjoyed my second viewing.

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For more about the use of sound 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.

A Minimalist Production Design for Out of His Tree

Finding suitable locations is one of the bigger problems confronting low-budget horror filmmakers. Many actors and crew members will work for little pay or no pay. Realistic looking locations (e.g., a restaurant, school, airport, hospital) are more difficult and costly to secure. Shooting permits, location fees, and liability insurance are expensive for those on a shoestring budget. In some cases, the law even requires a (paid) fire marshal and/or other professionals to be on set at all times.

But with a little imagination, filmmakers and production designers can create locations on the cheap. Such as in Out of His Tree (2016), an eight minute film set inside a hospital.

Hospital rooms, whether real or on a sound stage, can be expensive to rent. Instead, for Out of His Tree, production designer Sorsha Willow took a minimalist approach, merely suggesting a hospital with only a few set pieces.

 

 

Out of His Tree has two locations. The first is Dr. White's (Laverne Edmonds) office. She makes some phone calls before going to see her next patient. Her "office" is just a white area. The only set piece is a white phone.

Writer/director Robert Howat's cinematography assists Willow's minimalist design by bathing the office in soft white light, and blurring the wall behind Edmonds. What is that on the "wall" behind her? Charts and papers? We don't know. Nor does it matter.

Sound effects further assist in suggesting a hospital: soft conversations echoing in a hallway, phones ringing, etc.

Because a solitary actress standing in an empty white space can make for a static, dull scene, Howat enlivens the scene by shooting Laverne from different angles during her conversation.

 

 

The second location is in the patient Johnny's (Robert Howat) room. We learn that Dr. White is a psychiatrist. Johnny is mentally ill. Their conversation comprises the remainder of the film, ending with a supernatural revelation.

It's a simple white room. The main set pieces are two metal chairs, some papers, and wrist straps on Johnny.

Apart from saving money, the film's minimalist set design has the aesthetic effect of focusing our attention on Dr. White and Johnny, because there's little else in the rooms to distract our attention.

This focus is further heightened by Howat's heavy use of medium closeups and closeups. The frames become tighter as the story progresses, enhancing our intimacy with the characters.

It has been said that comedy is a long shot while drama is a closeup. Long shots emotionally distance audiences from the characters' sufferings. Closeups pull us into their hopes, dreams, desperations, and fears. Howat's use of closeups serves his dark supernatural tale well.

Also read about how low-budget filmmakers created inexpensive locations for Mark of the Witch and Psychic Sue.

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For more practical tips for low-budget horror filmmakers, 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.

Mark of the Witch's Tight Frames Hide a Low Budget

Mark of the Witch (1970) offers another example of how tight framing can hide a low budget.

The film's opening shot is of a hangman's noose. Apparently an execution is about to occur. The audience sees the noose and imagine a scaffold. Which is good, because we never actually see a scaffold.

With just this one shot of some inexpensive rope, the filmmaker avoids the expense of building a scaffold.

We see three pairs of feet walking in the mud. We can assume the bare feet are those of the condemned witch, approaching the unseen scaffold. The other two pairs are the guards escorting her. We assume the condemned is a witch because of the film's title.

We still haven't seen any scaffold or onlookers. But our imagination is filling in those missing elements.

Mac Stuart (Robert Elston) watches the procession. A tight shot just of him, from a slightly low angle. Because of this framing, we see nothing around or behind him -- just empty sky. We still don't see any onlookers, which normally would be present at a witch's hanging. The audience must assume and imagine the onlookers.

Are they right to do so? We don't hear shouts from the crowd. We can't be sure that Stuart isn't the only onlooker.

A note on costuming. Stuart wears 18th century clothes. The Salem witch burnings were in 1692 -- the 17th century. There were no witch's executions in America in the 18th century. So Stuart's costume isn't accurate. I'm guessing it was the cheapest item available that was close enough to a 17th century suit. Low budget filmmakers often cut corners.

Many viewers won't notice. Those who do will overlook this anachronism if the film is otherwise entertaining.

We see the three pairs of feet approaching the scaffold. Actually, they're only approaching some wooden steps. It might be a simple step ladder. Cheaper than a scaffold, and enough to imply a scaffold.

Once again, the audience's imagination fills in the blanks.

The witch's feet mount the step ladder -- sorry, scaffold. I didn't mean to break your suspension of disbelief.

The hangman and the witch (Marie Santel). Standing on ... what? They could be standing on a scaffold. Or on the ground. Or the sandy shores of a beach. Anywhere, really.

The noose could be hanging from a pole, extended by a production assistant.

Another note on costuming. The hangman is bare chested. Why? I know films sometimes depict medieval executioners as bare chested. But this hangman lives in colonial America. He wouldn't be bare chested.

I'm guessing the filmmaker didn't want to rent a costume for the hangman, and so, rather than have the actor wear his 20th century wardrobe, the director has him bare chested. It's silly but it saves money. And again, viewers savvy enough to notice will forgive -- if the film is otherwise entertaining.

The witch addresses the onlookers, beginning her speech with, "You will hear me now, you good men of Lancashire!"

So there is a crowd of onlookers. We never see any onlooker other than Mac Stuart. Yet we can assume there's a crowd through two devices: 1. the script, which has the witch addressing many people, and 2. the staging, which has her moving her gaze across an apparently large crowd.

A note on sound. There are no crowd noises. Not anywhere in the scene. Okay, so the filmmaker didn't want to spend money on extras. Couldn't he have had his camera crew shout and murmur? Or dub some crowd noise in post production?

There is ominous music. But the lack of crowd noises (which should be present) cheapens the scene and hinders our suspension of disbelief.

It's not like director Thomas W. Moore doesn't know how to creatively save money on sound. In a later scene, set in 1970, an ambulance collects a corpse in a park, amid cops, reporters, and onlookers. All of the sound -- sirens, reporters reporting the incident, etc. -- was dubbed during post production. It was cheaper to dub those sounds than to hire a sound crew to record on location. A good move that saved money and did not detract from the film.

So why couldn't Moore have dubbed some crowd noises for the hanging scene?

You can watch this opening scene -- and the whole film -- on YouTube:






Also examine the use of low-budget framing in Demon.

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For more information on framing, costuming, and sound, 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.

The First Step: Obscuring Low-Budget Makeup Effects

Sometimes less is more. A threat might be more frightening if unseen and left to our imagination. For instance, the entity in The Haunting, slowing pressing in the heavy wooden door as the terrified characters watch from its other side. We never did learn what lurked behind that door.

But sometimes "less is more" is just a filmmaker's excuse to show less (fewer sets, locations, actors, or special effects) because he could not afford to show more. The film needed to show more (nothing was aesthetically gained by its showing less), but more was not in the budget.

And sometimes these two motivations for showing less -- aesthetic and financial -- conjoin in a mutually supportive manner.

In The First Step, a cellar dweller creeps up from a basement, up three flights of stairs, to kill a little girl. This is a short, low-budget ($500) film. As such, the cellar dweller's makeup effect (by Delia De Cock) is admirably original and effective, but upon close examination, it looks like makeup.

This means that, should audiences get an opportunity to closely examine the makeup, it will be that much harder for them to suspend their disbelief and enjoy the horror.

The First Step solves this problem by obscuring the cellar dweller with dim lighting (such that the creature is often seen in silhouettes) ...

... and a soft focus (thus blurring the edges of the makeup application, so that the creature's twisted features appear natural).  

Framing also helps obscure the monster, often showing us only its body parts (e.g., a foot, a clawed hand, etc.).

I don't know if this was the filmmakers' (Daniel Brown and Kate McMeans) intent behind their lighting, photography, and framing, but that's the aesthetic effect. If you were to pause the film and scrutinize the creature, then its feature will more clearly be seen as artificial makeup, rather than actual monster skin. But when seen only briefly in quick cuts, and under dim lighting, and through a slight blur, then the creature's artificiality is less obvious.

By obscuring the cellar dweller, more is left to the viewer's imagination. This imagination is further stimulated by the monster's creepy voice and disjointed body movements, (actress Jon Anna Van Thuyne), both of which suggest all manner of horrors.

To recap:

The First Step's low-budget yields some fairly nice monster makeup effects, but these effects are obviously artificial should viewers closely examine them. To prevent such close examination of the makeup, the filmmaker employs...

* Dim lighting (creating silhouettes),

* Soft focus (blurring the image),

* Tight framing (showing only parts of the monster),

* Quick cuts (further preventing close examination of the creature).

This leaves the creature's nature up to our dark imaginings, which are further stimulated by ...

* Sound (a creepy voice for the monster),

* Acting (disjointed body movements by the actor).

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For more information about lighting, photography, framing, editing, sound, and acting 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.

Did El tren de la bruja Inpsire Hostel?

Last year I saw Koldo Serra's short (18 minutes) Spanish horror film, El tren de la bruja (aka The Spook House). It was released in 2003, had some success on the festival circuit, and years later will appear in another festival -- the 2010 Tabloid Witch Awards.

The film's resemblance to Hostel (2005) is remarkable.

In El tren de la bruja, a man (played by Manolo Solo) participates in a "scientific experiment about fear" -- but soon suspects that the "spook house" he's locked inside is no safe "scientific experiment," but deadly entertainment for rich sadists.

A "scientist" taunts over a microphone: "Did you really think people would pay $1,500 Euros to sit in a chair for 15 minutes? Didn't you wonder why this 'experiment' takes place in an abandoned warehouse, far off in the country? No. Imagine if you are a rich person, bored with life. What new thing might entertain you? Perhaps to see some poor, frightened fool tortured and killed."

I paraphrase, but that's the gist.

I have this film on an English-subtitled DVD, but I can only find a non-subtitled clip on You Tube:

 

 

Solo insists that the scientist's taunts are only meant to frighten him, as part of the experiment. He says he refuses to be frightened. The scientist taunts some more, then ups the ante...

So, is the experiment legit? Or are we in for some actual torture and death to entertain the rich? The outcome is neither. El tren de la bruja packs more surprises in its 18 minutes than Hostel manages at feature length.

Apart from its originality, El tren de la bruja is superior to Hostel in that it doesn't rely on graphic torture. Rather, it relies primarily on sounds and suggestions to inspire fear.

Actor Manolo Solo does a great job. His character goes through cocky arrogance, feigned courage, doubt, fear, hysteria, and cynicism over the course of 18 minutes.

As in The Blair Witch Project, El tren de la bruja's sound is an active participant in the story. The noises emanating from the dark, moving about, and changing pitch and timbre, insinuate all manner of threats. Heard but not seen, these alternating noises inspire fear by conjuring images in the audience's imagination.

Copies of El tren de la bruja may be obtained through Kimuak.com.

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Also see my 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.