Context of Practice 2: Seminar 4

In today's seminar we went briefly through the past 3 lectures as a whole taking out the key points that then relate to our course the most and came up with four key areas of interest which we spoke about in detail together that mainly reflected the Cities and Film lecture from a few weeks ago.

Metropolis 1929 - Fritz Lang
The first area that we looked at was Fritz Lang's version of Metropolis. This linked in well with the cities and film lecture that we had as it was not only part of it, but is a crucial part of film history as it depicts a world that is ahead of itself by about 100 years. During this film, it shows a world that is basically run by robots as the people that live in this world are very robotic and move in a unified way that follows particular paths in the city.

Metropolis 2001 Animation
This is a rather strange animation in which we looked at the trailer which loosely follows the original story of Metropolis but it captures more of the rise and fall of it. Even though it is in Japanese we can kind of see this rise and fall of the machinery as if they have once been reliant on it but it has gone too far and taken over. But there is not really a lot that we can get from this video as it doesn't make too much sense just looking at the images, but does create a nice visual representation of this unique version of Metropolis.

Grand Theft Auto V 
Once again, we can then link this to GTA V, in a way in which we look at the city and how it has been used effectively in a game as each area of this map has been divided into essentially sections. You will come across areas like the mountains in all there glory which are stunning to see and go to the top of, and this compared to the violence of the city is just so realistic, but to see it within such a small distance of the other is very nice and really works. There's a big contrast with not only these two but others in the map as well as you can come across desert like places and also one filled with what seems to be hillbilly Texan's?

Horror
Now we come to the big part of our seminar, in which we started to study horror films and games and how they can be related. Most horror films that have been produced every are at there best when they are set in the remote countryside and far away from civilisation, this just means that there is no one to help you. Many of Alfred Hitchcock films that have been made use this technique to create a mood which makes the audience feel alone and isolated with there is just one big house set in the middle of the countryside where there is nowhere to run for help and ultimately nowhere to hide. For example the Psycho house and the hotel from The Shinning.

We also learned about Oneiric Houses, which for example is like the house from Psycho. which is a term used by Gaston Bachelard which depicts the house, from the horror film, that is three or four stories high as having different sections to it that represent different things. Like the attic of the house is where we have our storage space, where things are kept that are out of the way but still accessible to get. Then we have the floors in the middle, in which there are either one of two, and this is the stages of everyday living which the occupiers of the house will carry out day to day activity. But then we have the basement, and area in which we keep our subconscious locked away and in which we keep our thoughts and things secret to everyone else.

Another good example of this, is the house from the game Gone Home, in which we can see that the first two floors are ordinary living and they contain the usual house things like bedrooms and the bathroom and we get a few details about the house from these rooms. Then we get the attic, a place which becomes a safe haven for one member of the family, in which she has things that are special to her and this is where we get this sense of having a storage space. But then we get to the basement, supposedly a space for secrets and this is where we find out the details of there relative who has done unspeakable things, and the whole game, which follows the Oneiric rule perfectly, starts to give out these secrets that only the house, and the floors inside, can reveal.

Going back to The Shinning, this is the perfect example of that countryside look. What they try to portray in these films to begin with is going away to this remote destination to gain the perfect getaway to the countryside, and in The Shinning's case to a luxury hotel in the middle of nowhere. What we then see is the character, instead of having a few months in luxury and leaving the stress behind him, do exactly the opposite and go insane. In this film we also have the 'come play with us' scene in which we see a nice camera angles and tracking but this also adds a really nice effects that emphasises the ceiling and makes it appear taller than it actually is, and thus making the boy look smaller and insignificant against the whole environment.