18/07/2015

While I was doing my research and character development, I did some genre analysis by comparing the genre and visual conventions of horror and comedy. I used the movie Alien (1979) as an example as I am using a clip from it. The genre of this movie is horror but also uses elements of sci-fi for the story. The horror genre uses lighting and shots to create a mood of mystery and terror for the audience. Often, it uses dark and murky lighting to create an ominous mood. It is also used to hide the horrific character that is terrorizing the other characters. Again, it uses mystery so that people would imagine what kind of horror awaits. It also uses the fact that people are scared of dangers they can't see to creep out people.



The horror character could be anything from a scary monster into a mild-mannered man. For this movie, they used a very creepy and scary looking creature to terrify the audience.

The creature is often hidden through the dark lighting for a creepy effect. For non scary looking horror characters, certain shots are used to make the audience feel uneasy towards the character. Performance is also a big part of this such as Anthony Perkins' performance as Norman Bates from the movie Psycho (1960).


For the chestburster scene, they didn't use dark lighting because they wanted to highlight the horrifying ,gory and disturbing sequence of an alien digging its way out of a person's chest. The terrifying creature is shown with all the blood and guts. The sheer terror from this scene makes this horror movie scary.


The tone I'm going for my sequence is quirky. I looked into different comedic animated shows such as Bob's Burgers, Adventure Time, Regular Show and Gravity Falls. Compared to the horror genre, the comedy genre isn't really dependent on shots and lighting. Comedy usually relies on surprise and gags. The element of surprise is important for comedy. Anticipation usually comes first then something unpredictable and out of the blue comes  next which makes it funny. An example is the Phil face udder of Ms. Cow from Adventure Time. It is usually done by juxtaposing two or more things that are unrelated to each other. The character Gene from Bob's Burgers often says the most random and quirkiest things which makes it funny. It could be done through lines and through visual gags as well.


Comedy also uses gags and parodies of pop-culture references as an inside joke for people who do know the reference. The danger of using this technique is that some people might not get it. Depending on the audience, these kind of gags often involve widely known pop-culture reference. Animated shows such as Regular Show and Gravity Falls use these kind of gags. An example from Gravity Falls is the reference to the movie Evil Dead II (1987) on the episode The Tale of Two Stans wherein a yellow car is grabbed by the trees. The episode Wall Buddy is a parody of HAL 9000 from the movie Space Odyssey (1968).


For the sequence I'm doing, I could use surprise by juxtaposing a cutesy character and quite a disturbing situation. But mostly this sequence would rely on a gag of a pop-culture reference which is the famous chestburster scene from Alien.