Article 1:

Sine, R. (n.d.). Why We Love Scary Movies. Mental Health Center. Retrieved August 2, 2014, from http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/features/why-we-love-scary-movies?page=3

Sine’s article “Why We Love Scary Movies” talks about the many reasons psychologically and physiologically people watch scary movies. I enjoyed reading this article because I am a Human Physiology major and this personally interests me. Sine talks about something called the “horror paradox” and how psychologically, it doesn’t make sense why people like to watch scary movies because “most people like to experience pleasant emotions” (Sine, 1). They can actually cause prolonged psychological trauma on people some time after watching them, especially with children. Sine asks the question if the feeling of fear and suspense you get when you watch horror films are the same as if you yourself were getting chased in real life. The specialist, Glenn Sparks, professor at Purdue University, says that physiologically, it’s not the same if you were actually being chased versus if you were watching it in a movie. Some physiological occurrences happen when watching a scary or suspenseful movie: increased heart rate and blood pressure, drop in skin temperature, sweating on the palms of the hands, and muscle tension. Surveys have showed that the scarier the movie, the more the viewers seemed to enjoy this. One theory for this by Sparks has to do with how it is still in our human instincts for boys especially would have their rites of passage and dealing with scary things was just a way into manhood. Another theory says that kids want to watch scary movies because adults frown upon it, but for adults who like to watch them, it may just be out of curiosity or “as a way of coping with actual fears or violence” (Sine, 2). Sine goes on to talk about the psychological effects that linger after watching scary movies. This is because memories from the movie are stored in the part of the brain called the amygdala which helps generate emotions, and watching scary movies may elicit the same reactions as with real trauma. The last thing Sine talks about is how it’s still unknown why people like to watch films like Saw with a lot of gore in them.

I think the main purpose of both the assigned reading and Sine’s article is why do people like watching horror movies? Part of what Sine says it’s most likely just curiosity, the assigned reading seems to mention as well when Carroll states, “it is not the tragic event in itself that imparts pleasure, but rather, the way it is worked into the plot” (Carroll, 277) and that “the horror story is driven explicitly by curiosity. It engages its audience by being involved in processes of disclosure, discovery, proof, explanation, hypothesis, and confirmation” (Carroll, 279). What they are trying to say is that, if it is worked into the plot cleverly enough, it sparks curiosity in the audience, and if there is enough curiosity, the viewers feel invested in the story and want to see the ending. In Sine’s article how they couldn’t find an answer for why people like to watch movies with gore in them, I think the assigned reading has a pretty good theory for it in that, “we are attracted to, and many of us seek out, horror fictions of this sort despite the fact that they provoke disgust, because that disgust is required for the pleasure involved in engaging our curiosity in the unknown and drawing it into the processes of revelation, ratiocination, etc” (Carroll, 284). The thing that is different about the two articles is that Sine’s article approaches the subject with a medical scope finding answers physiologically and psychologically while Carroll’s article approaches it theoretically and philosophically. Carroll always seems to the idea of curiosity.

Article 2:

Calvo, A. (2013, October 28). Filmmaker Magazine. Independent Filmmaker Project. Retrieved August 2, 2014, from http://filmmakermagazine.com/76622-so-you-want-to-make-a-horror-film-on-jump-scares-and-other-basics-of-fright/#.U9xrQvldVQA

The first thing Calvo gets into is that in order to make a good horror film, you need to learn about the psychology of it. He says, “to really scare our audience, we should focus more on understanding our collective fears and weaving them into our stories so we can exploit those fears with established cinematic techniques” (Calvo). People over time become desensitized, so one can increase shock value, however this could create more of a disturbing film rather than a good scary film. The atmosphere should be carefully set up in order to set up an interesting plot to make the audience curious. You can rely on isolation of the characters and good cinematography. This way, you set up an eerie tone in the film. In order to intensify the suspense of the plot, you can use dark lighting and shadows, seeing someone or something behind the character, having the main character go to a place that they shouldn’t be, or primal nightmares like not being able to scream or run away. Jump scares should be added where something pops out should be accompanied with non-diagetic sound. He goes through things like the basic jump scare, the Faux scare, and a variety of reveal scares that can all do the trick. In writing screenplays, you have to think about character-driven versus plot-driven stories. Plot driven stories seem to be more timeless.

This article is a lot different than the assigned reading article. The assigned reading talks a lot about why people watch horror films, whereas Calvo’s article talks about the essential things you should have when making a good horror film. When Calvo talks about how important it is to set up the atmosphere and write good plot-driven stories in the screen plays it is very similar to when Carroll talks about how “once a tragic, unsettling event is housed in an aesthetic context, with a momentum of its own, the predominant feeling response, in terms of pleasure and interest, attaches to the presentation as a function of the overall, narrative structure” (Carroll, 277). A lot of what Calvo says should be in a good horror film agrees with Carroll’s overall take home idea of the article in that if the audience is curious enough, they will enjoy the suspense and horror in a movie. Calvo stresses creating curiosity in the audience through many different methods in order to create a good horror movie.

An example of diagetic sound is the first scene of the show where she is in a college classroom learning. It is an example of diagetic sound because they only sounds you hear are coming from the scene. The teacher lecture, the clock ticking, and nothing else; no music. This is still the case in the next scene when she is walking in the hallway talking to a guy. This is being used because it is a scene showing just another ordinary day with nothing special happening. It is contributed to horror by putting a baseline on normal things. If the normal things have only diagetic sounds, then when you place more than just diagetic sounds in scary scenes it seems more dramatic. The mise-en-scene again in this scene was just showing a normal college classroom and hallway. It was relatively light showing that again, the scene was normal.  I chose this example because it seemed to be purely diagetic sound with no added sound. It helped to form a contrast between normal scenes and horror scenes in the show.

A good example of non-diagetic sound was when the smoke or supernatural thing was going into the box, there were whispers, and there was also music in the background. This is non-diagetic because these were sounds that weren’t being made by anything in the scene, but they were added to the scene. These were put into the scene in order to make it seem more spooky and dramatic. If the whispers weren’t in the scene, it wouldn’t seem very scary at all. The music just intensifies the horror and makes it more dramatic. The mise-en-scene of this scene had dark lighting, if you call smoke a prop, it worked really well at showing that something supernatural was happening and again, adding to the horror. There wasn’t a lot of diagetic sound in this scene that was contributing to anything because the whisper sounds and the music were much louder than the faint sounds in the scene. I chose this scene because it was a very obvious change from the college classroom scene with very different mise-en-scene and it mostly had non-diagetic sound.

Another scene that has a good example of mise-en-scene is when the girl is running from the floating evil people in the dorm hall. The lighting is very dark and dim, the framing and angle are as if the audience is watching it happen as if they were standing right there but can’t do anything and are helpless which adds to the horror I think. The actor is frantically running and banging on the door for help, you can see in her movements that she’s terrified. And the diegetic sound is there but at a relatively low volume compared to the diagetic sound which makes the scene more dramatic.