Hammer Film Production Company

In order to create a successful film, it's important to look at other production company's and what they did for the horror industry. I wanted to research a lesser known company like Hammer instead of someone like Universal or WB, plus Hammer is primarily horror / thriller. I remember watching old Hammer films from the 60's when I was younger and it looked so tame when I seen them, but to put it into context, an audience at the time would have been very shocked.

Founded in November 1934 England. It actually started off making comedies and crime films like 'The Public Life of Henry the Ninth" 1936 and "The Bank Messenger Mystery" 1937. But a crash in the British film industry in 1938 forced Hammer into bankruptcy. Luckily it was bought out at the last minute and started to produce films made by other companies. A few years later after WW2 hammer began to make cheap films to fill gaps in cinema schedules and support big feature films. So after years of creating small crime thrillers and comedies Hammer opened their door to the horror genre, 'Hammer House of Horror films' started in 1955. They took advantage of the Sci-fi situation in the US. America is where all of the huge films were made, and still is today, and during the 50's it was rife with sic-fi films such as 'The Day the Earth Stood Still". The horror golden age was 20 years earlier in the 30s. But Hammer seen a gap in the market for horror films and jumped on it. Their first feature horror film was "The Curse of Frankenstein" featuring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, who at the time were big stars of the screen. They re-made other 30's classics like 'Dracula' and 'The Mummy'. But this time was different, better picture, sound, colour and also blood. These Hammer films were in colour, something that was rare at the time, also no one had really seen blood in a horror film at this point. Hammer changed that, instead it was full of blood, and it was bright red so it stood out. The cameraman let you know it was there for they lingered on it for longer than usual. This was breakthrough stuff at the time, people couldn't believe it, they had never seen anything like this before. Even the Americans loved it, Hammer films were huge in the States.

But during the late 60's with the rise of directors like Roman Polanski and films such as 'Night of the Living Dead' by George A. Romero, Hammer was struggling to compete. There films of the 50's were already looking outdated and the gore and graphics from the US was far more superior. They tried getting in new directors and writers but it didn't work. Despite going bankrupt in the 80's and being bought out and failing multiple times, in 2007 Dutch media tycoon John De Mol bought them out and they began producing films again. Perhaps the most well known was 'The Woman in Black' from 2012.

The reason I wanted to talk about Hammer was because they were a small company that dominated the US for a brief period with their breakthrough. Also they produced truly great horror classics, and despite the blood being a big feature of Hammer, they relied on a strong narrative, good acting and suspense to keep the audience engaged.

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This is a scene from the classic 'Dracula' where Dracula dies, watch after 2:40 when you see the special effects of the day and why Hammer was so famous.

Using Final Cut Pro

To create my media trailer, I have been using a piece of software on the schools apple Macs called 'Final Cut Pro'. There is other move making software out there like Sony Vegas and Windows Movie Maker but I believe the best is Final Cut Pro, and I also have free access to it. Last year in A1 we weren't making motion picture texts just still magazines so this year was a big step up for I'd never done anything like this before. I did used to have a youtube channel which I regularly posted on a few years ago but not to the level we are at in A2. At first I found it quite hard to pick up, like photoshop its all about trial and error for the first few attempts, until you get used to it. The thing that makes it so good is that you can manipulate everything, images, the footage and the one big thing I thought was great, the sound. One of the pieces of audio we have is an old music box, so I put two audio effects over it called 'Telephone' and 'Short Delay' which makes it sound even more creepier than it already was. One of the tools that really helped me out at times was the stabilise tool, often without the tripod we couldn't get a steady shot depending on the angle. And what was good footage was ruined by shaky camera work, until i found out how to stabilise. This is a feature that stops the shaking, but at times it can blur the footage and make it look worse so I tend not to rely on it too much.

But I learnt many skills last year that were transferable to this year like how to manipulate photo's to get a different vibe from it. For example look at the pictures above.

The top one has no filter, and the bottom one has the 'cool tone' filter. This is what I mean, the first shot didn't look that creepy, whereas when I put the filter over it' looked much better. This also allows me to film at different times of day, sometimes. I could be in a sunny room at 11 o'clock in the morning but i could turn it into midnight on FCP. I kind of did the same with my poster, the main image for that I edited in Pixlr which I used to alter my photo's last year.

Poster Inspiration

For my auxiliary poster I researched other horror film posters, teasers and theatrical and took influence and inspiration from them and others in order to create mine. Despite not being finished as of now all I need to do is put on my new main image. The main poster I focused on when creating my poster was this one, 'One Missed Call' originally a Japanese film from 2003 with an American re-make in 2008. If you research horror posters, many of them look the same, or have the same general layout as the one pictured above. And when you compare this one to mine you can see the similarities, the credit block, main image, title and tag line.

The tagline 'WHAT WILL IT SOUND LIKE WHEN YOU DIE?' is suspenseful, it leaves you thinking what it means, and with my poster 'THE NIGHT IT CAME HOME' does the same thing, makes you question what it is and what it will do, enticing the audience. Also the main image I really liked, notice how around the hand and the face it seems to blend into the darkness as if it is coming out of the dark, hiding in the unknown. That's the image I tried to create with my poster, and it matches with the film. The 'antagonist' whatever it is, is never fully seen, it's always lurking in the shadows. It's a very unsettling poster. The round face, dark, dull wide smile and also by using two mouths as eyes creates a certain eeriness and makes you feel uncomfortable even just when looking at it. There are many other posts I took inspiration from such as 'Scream 4' and 'Mirrors'. But this one especially for it really does make me feel uncomfortable just looking at it. What makes it so good is how scary it is with no blood, gore or guts, just playing with your imagination and using simple techniques to scare the audience.

Audience Theory

Three Main Theory's:

• The Effects Model or Hypodermic 
• Uses & Gratification
• Reception

Uses & Gratification (Blumer & Katz:

We are not a totally passive audience, we control what we do and what we watch. This theory argues that when we do watch a violent film, we are not necessarily influenced by the violence. For example take a media text, a horror, by seeing the actions and consequences of what unfolds in the text, it will prevent us from doing so for we know what would happen.
The audience has the power to watch what we want, and don't watch parts we don't want to watch. Diversion, escapism, information, pleasure etc.

The Reception theory (Stuart Hall 1970):

- Texts are encoded by producers, the audience or viewer then decode the message. Hall came up with his own theory, the Reception theory, though it was not necessarily his 'own' so to speak, it had been around for years, though he did re-define it for the modern age. Hall said audience members adopt one of the three following

+ Dominant, or Preferred, Reading - How the producer wants the audience to interpret the media text.

+ Oppositional Reading - When the audience rejects the preferred reading and creates their own meaning for the text.

+ Negotiated Reading - A compromise between the dominant and oppositional readings, where the audience accepts parts of the producers views, but has their own views on parts also.

Effects Model:

The Effects Model is a theory many will know, but not know the actual name for it. This is basically when a viewer, especially a young viewer would take inspiration from a film or media text they have seen and perhaps re-enact it. The effects aren't always seen as negative, but most of the time they are. The power lies within the message of the text. The most famous case perhaps is the murder of James Bulger in 1993. The two boys who murdered him said they were inspired by video games they had been playing and also the slasher film 'Childs Play 3'. People have debated this theory for years, but its clear that media texts have a lot of inspiration and influence over viewers, especially younger viewers. Films like this are often banned, for example take the cult classic 'A Clockwork Orange', the 70's hit was based in an alternate Britain rife with crime. The film itself was technically beautiful but was full of violence and brutality.

How does audience theory relate to my trailer?
My doesn't necessarily feature much blood and gore, I tend to rely more on tension and suspense It's more psychologically challenging. Nevertheless it's still a violent horror film with scenes young viewers, and even older viewers will find disturbing that's why it is rated a 15. Clearly stated on the trailer itself, poster and magazine to not allow younger viewers to see it.

(Warning, this trailer is for those over the age of 18)

Filming Log #4