Yr12 f l1

British Film
• Diversity makes a defining a ‘British’ film very challenging.
Some UK Film Council definitions:
- Films principally shot in the UK
- Using a British crew/cast
- Film’s financed from within the UK
- Film’s that are set in the UK
- Film’s that address British Identity and Society
UK Film Council Cultural Test
• The film represents/reflects a diverse British culture,
British heritage or British creativity (so we don’t just make
lots of imitations of American films)

BFI
• British Film Institute fund:
- script development
- film production
- short films
- film export and distribution
- Cinemas
- film education
- culture and archives
- Festivals
- audience support schemes
Film Fund: 15 million per year (90% of applicants will be rejected) and
money from Lotteries Innovation Fund – to help move to the digital
age esp in rural areas Co Production deals which BfI can help set up Tax
Breaks Funding for British Films.

British Film
• A film can be called British if it meets at least 3 of the following
- Has a British producer
- Has a British production team
- A British director
- A predominately British cast
- A subject matter that informs the British experience
- A British identity as defined by sight and sound magazine in the
review section
Which then leads it into a category;
Category A: An entirely British film
Category B: Majority UK funded
Category C: More common co-funding scenario
Category D: Describes a US film with some creative input from the UK

Video Nasties
• Back in the 80's, video rental shops were around every
corner, offering aisles of boxes covered with amazing
horror poster art.
• These video tapes were made to catch the eyes of
people wanting a new thrill or chill from the film, but it
also caught the eye of other, more influential people.
• This lead to the creation of the term "video nasties"
and soon this term wash splashed across newspapers,
trying to ban these video nasties, films such as "I
SpitOnYour Grave," "Cannibal Terror," "The Fun House"
and many more.

HORROR NARRATIVES
• When we think of
horror narratives, we
are really considering
the devices that are
used to communicate a
story to you. In the
exam you may come
across questions like…

HORROR NARRATIVES
• The assumption is that the WAY a horror film is told is
going to be the very similar across all horror films,
that's what makes it recognisable to the audience. For
the most part these questions want you to:
1. Make known that you are aware of the narrative
features of the horror genre and how they are
used in the films to communicate their stories
2. Discuss how this is done in a similar/typical way
across all films
3. Consider how the films manage to break the
‘genre mould’ and not be typical

HORROR NARRATIVE STRUCTURES
A narrative convention of
any genre is its predictable
set of plot events
• What could we say is
similar about these films
in terms of plot events?
• Work in your study
groups and write each
film out in 3 acts,
explaining how each act is
similar.

Typical 3 Act Structure
• As sited in Film a Critical Introduction
• The first act in a horror film focuses on central characters beginning a
venture into a strange and ultimately threatening setting.
• Stumbling into a forbidding, and often forbidden, setting unleashes a
wave of violence that leaves many (if not most) of the protagonists
dead. As those who survive the initial onslaught begin to fight back,
fear and fatigue provoke dissention within the group, putting them at
greater risk. Those who have come in contact with the monster may
try to warn the larger community, or they go to the authorities to
muster up support, only to be met with disbelief and derision.
• The climax of the film generally involves a dramatic, sometimes
apocalyptic, showdown between the main characters and the monster,
with varying results. In contemporary horror films the resolution of the
plot leaves open the possibility of the monster’s return.

NOEL CARROLL
• Noel Carroll, in his essay The Philosophy of Horror, maps out the
traditional narrative structure of the horror film in three stages.
• The first he names the ‘Onset phase’ where a disorder is created,
generally in the form of a monster.
• The second Carroll calls the ‘Discovery phase’, where the characters
of the story discover that the disorder has occurred.
• The third phase he calls the ‘Disruption phase’, where the
characters destroy the source of the disorder and restore normality.
• This similar to what Todorov stated, he argued that the basis of
conventional narrative structure consists of an initial situation
(situation 1); a problem which disrupts this situation; a resolution of
the problem which allows the reinstatement of the initial situation,
perhaps with slight changes (situation2).

The Hypodermic Needle Theory
• The hypodermic needle theory suggests that
mass media such as films, posters,TV shows etc
can be “shot” or “injected” into an audience for
them to absorb which then can trigger a
response. For purposes such as adverts, this can
be a good thing as it could trigger an audience to
go out and buy a new perfume. However, with
horror movies, some people believe that people
will absorb the film and become passive, have no
thought for themselves and then decide to copy
what they have just seen.

Onset
Phase
Discovery
Phase
Disruption
Phase

Onset
Phase
Dracula is wreaking
havoc in the area in
which he live going
out a killing people
Is there an ‘Onset Phase’? The
female spelunkers entered into
the ‘monster's’ territory
Discovery
Phase
Van Helsing sends
Harker to dispose of
Dracula and Dracula
kills Harker. Van
Helsing realises the
reason for Lucy’s
illness.
When they realise that they
were in the Crawlers feeding
den. The POV through the
camcorder is used for this then
we see one of the Crawlers.
Disruption
Phase
Van Helsing and
Holmwood work
together to kill
Dracula. Van Helsing is
successful during a
climatic battle
The women fight for their lives
against the Crawlers, only
living Sarah – but is order
restored? And if so who’s
order? (Ideological messages?)

Why is narrative structure important
in genre films?
• Narrative structure provides a formula or
template in film production
• It works as a ‘contract’ – the implicit
agreement between a film and it’s audience
that governs the way fans enjoy it
• Without a typical narrative structure genre
films would not be recognisable to audiences
and conversely films would not be able to
break with predictability

NARRATIVE THEORY
• Tzvetan Todorov
• Equilibrium – disequilibrium – resolution.
• Vladimir Propp
• Propp suggests that there are a limited number of
character types that share a function
• Roland Barthes
• Barthes identifies 5 narrative codes which readers use to
decode texts. He emphasises the active role of readers in
creating meaning, and their ‘culturally formed
expectations’.
• Claude Levi-Strauss
• Narratives are structured by pairs of binary oppositions.

Todorov’s approach to narrative
• There are five stages a narrative has to pass through:
1. The state of equilibrium (state of normality – good, bad or
neutral).
2. An event disrupts the equilibrium (a character or an action).
3. The main protagonist recognises that the equilibrium has been
disrupted.
4. Protagonist attempts to rectify this in order to restore
equilibrium.
5. Equilibrium is restored but, because causal transformations have
occurred, there are differences (good, bad, or neutral) from
original equilibrium, which establish it as a new equilibrium.

Propp’s approach to narrative
• Vladimir Propp studied hundreds of Russian folk and
fairytales before deciding that all narratives have a
common structure.
• He observed that narratives are shaped and directed by
certain types of characters and specific kinds of actions
• He believed that there are 31 possible stages or functions
in any narrative.
• These may not all appear in a single story, but nevertheless
always appear in the same sequence.
• A function is a plot motif or event in the story.
• A tale may skip functions but it cannot shuffle their
unvarying order.

Claude Levi-Strauss’s approach to
narrative
• After studying hundreds of myths and legends from
around the world, Levi-Strauss observed that we
make sense of the world, people and events by
seeing and using binary opposites everywhere.
• He observed that all narratives are organised around
the conflict between such binary opposites.

19
Examples of binary opposites
• Good vs. evil
• Black vs. white
• Boy vs. girl
• Peace vs. war
• Civilised vs. savage
• Democracy vs. dictatorship
• Conqueror vs. conquered
• First world vs. third world
• Domestic vs. foreign/alien
• Articulate vs. inarticulate
• Young vs. old
• Man vs. nature
• Protagonist vs. antagonist
• Action vs. inaction
• Motivator vs. observer
• Empowered vs. victim
• Man vs. woman
• Good-looking vs. ugly
• Strong vs. weak
• Decisive vs. indecisive
• East vs. west
• Humanity vs. technology
• Ignorance vs. wisdom

HORROR MICRO FEATURES
AS NARRATIVE CONVENTIONS
• Taken from: Horror (Brigid Cherry)
• ‘Horror genre most important characteristics are
the modes of affect that horror films intend to
create in their audiences. It is these emotional
and physiological responses that remain constant
while other characteristics and generic
conventions evolve. We need to consider how the
technical codes of cinema are manipulated in
order to bring about these responses.

• The technical and formal features of cinema include:
- Editing
- montage and pacing
- camera work
- Framing
- other aspects of cinematography
- mise-en-scene such as lighting, sound and costuming,
together with plot, dialogue, narrative and audience point
of view, narrative structure and representations of
characters.
These cinematic codes have been developed and refined by
horror filmmakers in order to depict horrific material visually
and aurally.

• The aesthetic features that are frequently used by
horror filmmakers to create string emotions such
as shock, fear and revulsion commonly include
point-of-view camera shots and framing, dark or
chiaroscuro lighting, jump cuts and variations in
pacing, visual (an often violent) spectacles that
employ make-up, prosthetic, animatronic, digital
and other special effects, and discordant or
otherwise unsettling musical cues and other
sound effects’

HORROR NARRATIVE THEMES
• THEME: An implicit or recurrent idea
• Going with this definition it’s apparent that one
way of discussing themes would be to consider
the binary oppositions reoccurring across all films
studied
• One key theme across The Descent and Creep is
the theme of entrapment and isolation
• A way of exploring this theme and any other
binary oppositions is to consider the use of
settings and micro features

HORROR CHARACTERS
• Key to horror films in the use of ‘the monster’,
and more so in contemporary horror the use of
‘the final girl’.
• When discussing characters there are many ways
you can go about it:
• Representation and gender
• Associated ideology
• Use of micro features
• Function within the narrative

HORROR CHARACTERS
“they are un-natural relative
to a culture’s conceptual
scheme of nature. They do
not fit the scheme; they
violate it…monsters are in a
certain sense challenges to
the foundations of a culture’s
way of thinking.”
(Carroll, 1990:34)
The ‘monster’ of the horror film is
by far its most important feature.
Without the monster, and the
threat it imposes on the ‘normal’
world, there would be no ‘horror’
to speak of. Hutchings asks the
question “What makes a monster
a monster?” and answers that,
“simply being dangerous is not in
itself enough to bestow monster
status…these monsters should not
only be dangerous but ‘impure’ or
‘unnatural’ as well”
(Hutchings, 2004:34-5).
Hutchings attributes the traditional destruction of the monster at the
end of most horror films to this preoccupation with social repression,
“delivering”, he accuses, “their monsters to victimhood as those
monsters are defeated and/or destroyed by the forces of good”
(Hutchings, 2004:157).
‘THE MONSTER’

HORROR CHARACTERS
‘THE FINAL GIRL’ the Final Girl tends to
become more and
more masculine and
phallic, as she becomes
more active and
aggressive, turning
from hiding and
cowering from the
killer to fighting back
or in fact hunting him
down.
The term ‘Final Girl’ was coined by
academic Carol J. Clover to describe the
female hero of the slasher film. Prior to
the advent of the slasher, it was very
rare to find a female protagonist is a
horror film who did not need recusing
by a male. The Final Girl was different,
however. She was usually distinguished
from her teenage compatriots Through
her watchfulness and her aggression,
and she often had some masculine
qualities as well – either a male-
sounding name or abilities or types of
knowledge conventionally associated
with men. Most of all, she could not
rely on a male hero to save her but was
routinely placed in a situation where
she had to save herself.
(The A to Z of Horror Cinema, Peter
Hutchings)

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