Dissertation Notes

Dissertation  Notes:

Chris McNeil- The exorcist

Margaret White- Carrie.

* what are the differences/ similarities between these two characters when dealing with their respective teenage daughters and the transformation they both go through?

* how does the religious sub text play out in both films concerning the two female leads? (chris is an atheist, Margaret is a religious fanatic)

* Do they both experience the same feelings of guilt when dealing with being a single parent?

* how does social status, mental health, the outside world affect them and influence them in their decisions?

*What is their overall character arc?. What is the outcome? How have they changed?

* Is the political climate of the 70's important to these two characters?

Study Resources:

Look into books about single parenting perhaps?:

two maybe worth looking at:

The Defiant Child: A Parent's Guide to Oppositional Defiant Disorder by Douglas Riley

The Single Parents Handbook by Ms Rachel Morris

http://www.circleofmoms.com ( interesting posts about fear of children and fear of children growing up)

Books on horror films of the 70's

Malice in Wonderland: The Political Unconscious in American Horror Films of the 1970s by Bojan Baca

Carrie (Devil's Advocates) by Neil Mitchell.

The Exorcist ( BFI modern classics) by Mark Kermode

Religious Fanaticism:

The Moral Landscape by Samuel Harris.

Notable Words to investigate:

Paternalism.

Matriatchy.

I Need to settle on actual questions for my project!

Parents:  How does their roles as single mothers define their characters and what are their similarities and differences?

Religion: Both characters stand at opposite ends of the religious spectrum, How does this affect their own individual value systems?

Journey:  Both characters face the wrath  of their children, how do these two individuals deal with this throughout their respective stories

Time : Was the period these films were set in important?. Were they important in the progression of the female" lead" in mainstream cinema?

Possible Title for the project:

*Matriarchs of Horror-  A  study of two female characters in 70's horror

* Carrie/The Exorcist-  A study of two female lead characters in 70's horror

*  Chris McNeil/ Margret White - The mothers of 70's Horror

* Carrie/the Exorcist-  A study of the two female leads and their value systems.

Bibliography

Bibliography :

Mysteries: An investigation into the occult, the paranormal and the supernatural

Watkins Publishing LTD

Colin Wilson- 1978

Non Places : Introduction to the anthropology of super-modernity

Verso Books  new edition

Marc Auge 2009

City Of Dreadful Night

National Reformer

James B.V. Thompson 1874

visual/ audio footage :

 Some footage was sourced from www.YouTube.com.

#  Young man gives an unforgettable speech about Jesus

Lords of Praise

2012

# NYPD Cops wake up a sleeping homeless man before beating him

ABC 7 News

2012

#  Wake up U.S.A.

End Times News Update

 2013

# A child dies every six minutes in horn of Africa

SanDamanioFilms & v2vmom

2012

#Emotional horn of Africa appeal

Ummah welfare trust

2011

#Le calvaire d'un enfant somalien

Afreeque

2011

#Nuclear Explosions ( stock footage compiled)

Manual Fri

2013

                              

# Dachau concentration camp 1945

 Uploaded by The Saass1

2012

# Army- What would you do?

Uploaded byModernSolr4

2002

#Oak Furnitureland Advert

Oak Furnitureland

2013

#Tamara Foster sings

The X Factor

2013

#Nitrostirumpa - A Injection Of Heroin Made Me Happy Today

Uploaded by Konjunction26

2011

 #Tony Blair's Victory Speech

Uploaded by MrElectionist

2009

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Dir. James Cameron

1991

American Psycho

Dir. Mary Harron

2000

Charles Mason: The man who killed the sixties

Channel 4

Dir. Peter Bate 1994

Black Metal Satanica

Dir.Mats Lundberg

2008

Supersize Me

Dir. Morgan Spurlock

2004

The Passion of the Christ

Dir. Mel Gibson

2004

Photos that were also used:

  Niklas Kvarforth portrait  found on www.truemetalhead.com

"Halmstad"  Taken by Niklas Kvarforth 2002

"Prospectors Arrive" by Jonny Greenwood ( 2007) used 

in film.

R.E.D.2 Feedback/Final thoughts

RED 2

Feedback/ Final Thoughts

I had become concerned before the screening that I may have taken the content of the film too far, the goal was certainly to make the film an intense experience , I wanted this film to be as honest and frank as I could make it, but I did have to ask myself whether or not I had stepped into the realms of the offensive, which as I mentioned earlier , wasn't a concern of mine. The most I wanted to do is be provocative and present my point of view, I decided to simply run with a screening of it without any changes. I was nervous about it, more than usual probably because this was the first time that I hadn't been helped by anyone and there wasn't anyone up there with me, I was alone.

I think the film screened very well, once it was screened I had one of my peers shake my hand, and was praising my film which was something that I had not experienced before. I got a few shocked expressions and one of my fellow students simply asked " why?" I did my best to answer that question without preaching too much, I tried to say that this film represents me at my most negative.

I was given some feedback from one of the lecturers who said first of all asked why I named it " the Negation"  I replied by saying that in simple terms that means "denial" after which he added that the film comes across as more of a confession which I thought was an interesting point and one that certainly made me consider changing the title afterwards.

I also was advised that the audio may need some tweaking before submission, but unfortunately i had lost all the original audio elements and I felt worried about sourcing them all again, which could potentially cause problems with the timeline of the film, I decided to leave it, although I did attempt to locate the audio before making that decision.

Ultimately I think that this project has been my greatest success and I have a new sense of confidence going into my next project, I feel more articulate as a film-maker  and  I feel able to make a valuable contribution at a greater level than before. I have a better understanding of the processes that go into the technical side of post-production and I think I have achieved what I initially  set out to achieve. I think this film is very much me, it says something about my style and abilities and It's a film I can feel proud of, this must be true  as I have looked at it far more times than I have viewed any of my other films. Here's hoping that I can take what I have learnt into my next project and beyond and maybe make something even better.

R.E.D. 2 Post- Production

RED 2

Post- Production

Over a period of about three to four weeks I set about editing my film, first of all I took the footage that I had captured on the z1 camera and painstakingly went through every shot finding things that I thought may have some relation to my project. I initially knocked all the footage I deemed usable to around twenty minutes, at which point I began thinking about the idea of using music to score the final film. The one track I had in my head from the very start of this project was by Johnny Greenwood called  " Prospectors Arrive" and It was originally part of the soundtrack to the film  " There Will Be Blood"  ( Dir. P.T. Anderson 2007), I couldn't envision the film without that scoring it.

Next I started compiling audio snippets and video footage from  various sources. I found a speech by  a young Christian on YouTube which was titled " young man gives inspirational speech about Jesus"  I used excerpts from an interview with Charles Manson, an interview with Niklas Kvarforth from the aforementioned band "Shining" whose talks very candidly about his own philosophy on life, I also used audio snippets from" Terminator 2: Judgement Day " ( Dir. J. Cameron 1991) and " American Psycho" (Dir. Mary Harron 2000) also I snuck in some audio from Tony Blair's victory speech from 1997, on their own they had remained empty statements but once I found images to put them against they found new meaning. I struck upon the idea of using footage of the concentration camps in Dachau  to use in a specific place in the film I had managed to get lots of footage from the z1 which showed a very long high grey wall that ran along the docklands area that  reminded me of the military and the notion of war behind those walls and I decided that with "fitting " dialogue I would insert footage of the concentration camps with it. This was where I really started to explore  the editing system and really start to gain the confidence to orchestrate and take control of my film , I decided to start taking the colour out of the preceding few seconds and then to gradually make everything dark until it met the footage from Dachau which i hoped would marry with the colour palette of the footage and the dialogue. After learning how to sue the key frames and experimented with all the different effects tools to achieve this, I really felt that I was close to finally achieving what I had been missing since I started the course and that was seeing exactly the film on screen as the same one I had in my head.

I really started to play around with the rest of the film, using all sorts of fades and dissolves, I injected and faded still photographs into other footage, I even managed to make an animated title  card at the beginning, all of which took me a long time to achieve but I was determined to get this right.  I found the audio to be a problem, as I had ripped it from the internet, so the quality was not always as fantastic as I had hoped and although I was able to manually adjust the gain  wherever needed, I was not able to filter it out and make it clearer. I could've used " sound soap" to help clear it up, but  sometimes this would've proved too difficult, for example one of the clips I used already had pre-recorded music embedded into the track which would've meant turning up the music as well as the dialogue which would've clashed with the music that I had already chosen. In the case of the rest of the audio, I felt that I really wanted to use this opportunity to concentrate on the visuals first and foremost. I thought that as long as you could understand what was being said, I had achieved my goal.  I tried to really concentrate on the cut and examine every edit until the night before screening, I was literally taking out single frames that at that late a stage, I really believe that every editing decision had to count. Due to some of the imagery That I had used,  the atmosphere did start to get to me after awhile, I found myself having to step away from project for a couple of days sometimes as there  was only so many times I could play with real life footage of dying infants before I got started to feel a bit peculiar. This helped me to keep up my enthusiasm for the film and kept me engaged and invested to make the film as good as I could.