HORROR MOVIE AESTHETICS: How color, time, space and sound elicit fear in an audience. Thesis Presented by Xiangyi Fu to The Department of Art + Design In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts in Information Design and Visualization Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts May, 2016 2 ABSTRACT Fear is one of the most basic and important human emotions. At very beginning of movie history in 1895, when the audience first saw the Lumieres Bothers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station on the big screen, almost the entire audience tried to escape from the theater. The image of the approaching train caused fear. To intensify feelings of fear in the audience, film artists use sound, lighting, timing, motion and other stylistic devices. Among the wide range of film genres, especially horror movies aim to trigger a physiological and psychological response of fear in the audience. Within the genre, horror films differ widely from each other based on their time period, sub-genre, and regional differences including religious and cultural motifs. There many different ways of investigating how horror movies accomplish to terrify and horrify an audience, for example, via an analysis of plots, characters, and dialogue. This thesis examines what constitutes the different cinematic styles of horror movies – color/ lighting, time/motion, spatial relationships, and sound – in different horror movies. The result of my research is presented in an interactive visualization of cinematic aesthetics that enables a cinematic student to explore the patterns of how those elements are applied on the screen and can ultimately trigger and influence an audience’s mood. Keywords horror film, cinematic fear, cinematic techniques, time lag spatial relationship 3 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis could not have been finished without the participation and assistance of so many people. I sincerely appreciate their contributions and criticism, which push hard to work on this project. First of all, I would like to thank my thesis advisor Prof. Dietmar Offenhuber, who provided a lot of opportunities for my thesis and gave suggestions to push me to revise my ideas and visual language. I also want to thank my thesis reader Prof. Alessandra Renzi, who also helped me with my thesis concept and all text contents. I would express my deep appreciation to my committee chair, Prof. Nathan Felde, who inspired and encouraged me to think my thesis in many different ways and opportunities, which push me to be more creativity. Many thanks to Prof. Thomas Starr, who revised my text grammar and guide my design in my book, which might torture him a lot to read and refine. I would express my acknowledgment to Prof. Paul Kahn, who charge for my thesis final exhibition, he gave a lot of worthy suggestions to my visual design. Thanks to all other committee members from Information design and visualization department. Prof. Ann McDonald, Prof. Douglass Scott, Prof. Kristian Kloeckl. I really appreciate their patient and important critiques about my project. I would like to give my deeply thanks to Prof. David Tames, who is the assistant academic specialist in Art + Design department. He inspired me with my thesis topic and provided a lot references to me to finish my 5 research. I would also thank Prof. Michael J. Epstein, who is the associate professor in Auditory Modeling and Processing Laboratory at Northeastern University. As well as Prof. Sheldon Mirowitz, who is the professor in Film Scoring Department at Berklee College of Music. They gave me a lot of helps in understand how music works in horror movies. Finally I would thank all my colleague in IDV program and all my friends, who gave me a lot helps and useful suggestions about my thesis: Armin Akhavan, Aldo Viramontes, Cara Frankowicz Haiyuan Dang, Jessica Hopkins, Jin Wang, Kristen Tanjutco, Lia Petronio, Lucy Green, Mahima Pushkarna, Skye Moret, Yujia Yan, Yachen Chen, Yongjin Song, Yangdong Ye, Xuan Zhang, Xiaxin Chen. Thanks to ALL my Families! 6 CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS PART Ⅰ 3 Abstract 5 Acknowledgments 11 Introduction PART Ⅱ 15 Chapter 1 Fear 27 Chapter 2 Cinematic techniques 43 Chapter 3 Cinema’s visual tools 61 Chapter 4 Case studies Project descriptions PART Ⅲ 85 Evaluation Conclusion Bibliography 7 8 VISUALS LIST OF VISUALS 11 The Model of Communication Cleude E. Shannon The Mathematical theory of communication 17 The Uncanny Valley diagram from translate from Karl F. MacDorman (2005) Blade Runner (1982) 18 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) 19 Identity (2003) Night of Living Dead (1968) 30 Battleship Potemkin (1925) Nosferatu (1920) 31 Saw (2004) The Exorcist (1973) Suspiria (1977) 32 Ths Shining (1980) 35 Psycho (1960) Sequences from Psycho shower plot and timing analysis 37 The Silence of the Lambs (1991) Sequences from basement plot and timing analysis 39 Jaws (1975) 41 The others (2001) 47 Storyboard for Family Plot (1976) By Thomas J.Wright for the cemetery scene and the pursuit of Mrs. Maloney by Lumley. Concise Townscape, United Kingdom (1995) Gordon Cullen’s drawing about cityscapes 48 Inception: The Shooting Script Christopher Nolan hand drawing Storyline visualizations of the movies Time line combines with spatial information Napoleon Marchto and from Russia, 1812–1813 Charles Joseph Minard’s 1869 9 49 Frederic Brodbeck’s Cinemetrics (2010) His bachelor graduation project at the Royal Academy of Arts (KABK), Den Haag 50 Kim Albrecht: Culturegraghy (2012) 51 fMRI Result of ‘Avatar’ movie scene 52 fMRI Result of ‘Pop Skull’ movie scene 55 Sergei Eisenstein Montage structure (1939) of a sequence from Alexander Nevsky Dubbing mix cuesheet from The Shining Illustrating 4different music tracks. 56 Jasse James Garrett, elements of the user experience Iconic annotation by Marc Davis (1993) 67 Psycho visual analysis 69 The Shining visual analysis 71-74 The Silence of the Lambs visual analysis 77 Ju-On visual analysis 80-83 I know what happened in your house 10 INTRODUCTION The pervasiveness of digital media as a communication tool has increasingly important influences on people’s lives. We are in an age in which media have been transformed from a physical mode or print to virtual screens. The medium can be the message, so it shapes cognition of information. When the telecommunication system was dominated by print media, such as letters, posters, and newspapers, people heavily relied on this visual communication method to transmit information. Parents read about their children’s homesickness in letters; people learned about the news in places far from their homes through the text of daily newspapers edited by journalists. Since the late 20st century, new applications of digital techniques have taught people to perceive the world in a many different ways. Media act as extensions of man,1 the development of electronic devices allow other body to serve as sensors, taking part in receiving information. Not only are individuals highly dependent on visual information but can make judgments based on information received via hearing, 1. McLuhan, touch, and smell. Parents can hear their children’s Marshall. trembling voice and other citizens’ opinions on local Understanding news through voice recordings and moving pictures. media: The extensions of man. Content follows form, and these insurgent technologies MIT press, 1994. give rise to new structures of feeling and thought.1 The Model of Communication Cleude E. Shannon The Mathematical theory of communication Medium Info source Transmitter Message Receiver Destination same code book (applied media aesthetics) 11 The medium is the message,1 Regardless of narrative words, the film as the medium can also be the message. Producing a film required the filmmaker applied the pervasive methodologies to encode the intended message via cinematographic techniques. Also the film’s audience would get accustomed to the aesthetics of the medium as they are watching the film – the movie adjusts the visual perception of the audience. Audience and film producers are connected through a feedback loop: the audience uses their aesthetic experience to judge other movies. It is thus not difficult to understand why film students need to learn basic media aesthetic elements in their academic studies. They must learn how to apply existing filmmaking methods to their own movies. On the one hand, they need to make sure that their audience understands the objective within their film, given that an audience already has preconceived notions of horror movie aesthetics. On the other hand, film students also have a responsibility to teach audiences aesthetic, let them know what is a good movie should be, because audiences always receive the information what you give them via this medium. According to Claude E. Shannon’s model of 2 communication, a communication system consists 2. Shannon, Claude of five parts: an information source which produces a Elwood, and Warren Weaver. message to be communicated to the receiving terminal, The mathematical a transmitter which conveys the message in some theory of way by producing a signal suitable for transmission communication. over the channel, the channel which is the medium University of Illinois Press, 1959. used to transmit the signal from the transmitter to the receiver, the receiver, and the destination. In the media industry, media producers act as information sources. 12 They use film and television as media to transmit their ideas to their audiences. In a communication system, the audience acts as the destination of information. However, there is one important element that Shannon did not clearly indicate in his model of communication. 3. Wilde, Oscar. To ensure that the audience understands, for example, The decay of what information producers want to disseminate lying. Syrens, through their films, the audience needs to follow 1995. filmmakers’ thoughts by using the same code book to decode the message transmitted through the acting, 4. McGrath, Francis Charles.