To properly research for my short film and get a better understanding of horror in short films before I start with my planning, I must look at other horror short films to gather inspiration on plots and storylines, locations and technical styles, and anything else I may be able to use to influence my decisions throughout the planning stages of my work. I looked into 2 different short films, 1 with a similar sub genre to mine (“NIGHT TERROR”), which plays on the idea of nightmares and being the most venerable at alone night, and the other (“The Smiling Man”) is of a more gory sub-genre but I chose to look at this one because I loved the style of the SFX as well as how creepy and disturbing this short film feels. I want to briefly analyse them individually and discuss what I may use from each and or what inspires me, but first wanted to look at something I have been unsure about while thinking about planning, which is the length of time for my film. While many people have suggested creating something between 5 and 10 minutes, I wanted to look at some examples to see how long they have created their short films and wether or not I felt that the story was portrayed within this amount of time. Both of the films I looked at were between 5 to 7 minutes, and I feel that the stories were more than adequately portrayed in this time frame.

The first short film (below) is a 5 minute long short film based of the idea of night terrors, hence the name, the film takes us through a woman’s struggle to leave the house because of some kind of supernatural or demonic force and being keeping her afraid to leave and walk into the dark. Although the setting and plot of my short film is going to be a lot different to this one, I thought I should touch on the significance of the darkness and nighttime used in this short film to portray the fear many of us feel while alone in the dark. Night time and dark settings are an essential part of the iconography of horror and sets the scene extremely well as well as helping the scenes seems that more sinister just with light changes. The use of darkness really creates an atmosphere of dread and terror and is something I would like to utilise as best I can in my short film.

In terms of the rest of the film, I really like the SFX of the creature thing in this short films, however I do not think something like this would fit well in my short films as I have decided on my ‘monster’ or ‘villain’ to be that of a satanic cult, therefor, in terms of costuming, my characters will be a lot more simple and will most likely just be in black cloaks with masks on (to almost dehumanise them and not to let any facial features or expressions show through).

 

This second short film is definitely my favourite and, in my opinion, create a much more intense and disturbing atmosphere than the other, and in my short film, the atmosphere that makes this short film so disturbing is definitely something I want capture and portray through my work. The intensely creepy atmosphere is immediately built up through the lack of script, and therefore eerie silence, as well as the casting of a young innocent looking child as the main character. These two combined already create a fear of dread as we know that the child is either going to see something awful, do something awful, or die at the hands of something, well, awful. The tension continues to build through the placement of the balloons, the sight of a non human/creature looking hand placing a balloon and the creepy broken dolls in the bags attached to the balloons, this is all accompanied by loud screeching music common in horror to really create an uncomfortable atmosphere. Skipping to the end, we then see a very disturbing man-thing and are showed some really unsettling shots of it wiping blood on its face. 

 

 

Now although, again, my plot isn’t going to be very similar of this, it has still been useful for me to look at some short films in this genre to gather ideas of many different aspects of short films in this genre. I now feel I have a better idea of some of the important parts of making a short film, and how this can influence my own, such as length – The Smiling Man was just over 6 minutes long – the way they portray a story without having to give too much detail of why this is happening and who the characters are, as well being able to create something scary and unsettling through such a simple (compared to the complexity of a lot of full length horror films) story line. 

 

Although this blog is titled “hell in the music industry” I am not just solely focusing on songs or videos that are based on hell, but more songs, videos and lyrics with any type of  sinister message or vibe about them. For example, one of the songs I am going to be looking at is “Darkhangle” by HELL which is obviously based around satanism and Baphomet but I am also going to be looking at “Bury a Friend” by Billie Eillish which although has not direct links to satanism or hell, the lyrics and the video are extremely sinister and dark. I will talk about certain music videos I may take inspiration from as well as songs lyrics and album covers, some of this may be to help me research for my actual short film, for example the videos and their stylistic techniques, whereas I will be researching album cover art to gather inspiration for my posters etc.

Music videos: Both of the music videos I want to focus on are from the same artist, Billie Eilish, I really enjoy the style of her videos and the feel they have around them and her video techniques that she uses in her videos. The two videos I want to look at are “Bury a Friend” and “When the Party’s Over”, although the contents of the videos are different in many ways there is a lot about the style, look and feel of these videos that is very similar and signature Billie. I will first be looking at “Bury a Friend” which is based more directly off of the devil and possession etc, it is shown through many factors such as her acting possessed and Billie’s eyes glossing over as well as the classic theme of darkness and nighttime. This video is filmed in an apartment building of sorts that is seemed to look abandoned or derelict, I feel this is most relevant because I am planning on filming my short film in a similar kind of location and so may find it easier to take inspiration from this in terms of the way they utilise their location in their video. Another part of this video and the techniques they used that I think really contributed to the over all atmosphere of the video is the use of the flashing lights, I think this adds a element of distortion that makes the audience feel uncomfortable, which is something I am intending on doing.

The other video I wanted to look at is called “When the Party’s Over” this video is a lot more simple a minimal than the other one and focuses a lot more on facial expression and audience interpretation than the first video does. I still like the feel this video gives but in terms of taking inspiration, I feel like the first video is definitely more important to my work.

Lyrics: I have decided to look at the lyrics behind two different songs, one being “Darkhangle” by HELL, a song I would never listen to but may be very relevant to my work; and the other song being “Bury a Friend” by Billie Eilish, which is quite a sinister song but has entered the charts and mainstream pop music very effortlessly. First let me look at “Darkhangle” as I feel that these lyrics are more directly linked to satanism and so are in many way more ‘relevant’ in terms of my research. The first thing in the lyrics of this song that sticks out to me is the references to Baphomet throughout the song, the name Baphomet has come up to me many times throughout my research and so I am planning on doing a full blog just on this as it seems to me to be a very significant part of the subjects surrounding Satanism. There were also a few more names mentioned within this song that I feel may be worth looking into when looking more in depth when I look into Baphomet too “Son of Caim, Orobas, Shub-Niggurath, Beelzebub, Haagenti, Astaroth” (I would write about it in this blog but I feel like there might be too much information and it would just be a lot clearer in one longer blog dedicated to these ‘people’.) Another line from this song I found particularly interesting is “A life unchained through knowledge gained has sanctified my dream”, through other research I have become aware that a lot of what Satanism is based around – at least from my interpretation of my research so far – is to do with the pursuit of knowledge and centering your beliefs around knowledge, here’s a quote taken from the Satanic Temples official website that I think best helps to back up my point here: “Beliefs should conform to one’s best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one’s beliefs.”

Moving onto my next song thats lyrics I think deserve some looking into, “Bury a Friend” by Billie Eilish, I did also look into this and one of her other songs “When the Parties Over” when I was looking into inspiration in terms of the music videos, as I mentioned, her whole style is very appealing to me and I imagine it will influence me heavily when it comes to planning how my short film is going to look and how I want it to feel for the audience watching. In terms of the lyrics of this song, the bridge part of this song is really intriguing to me “For the debt I owe, gotta sell my soul, ‘Cause I can’t say no, no, I can’t say no, Then my limbs all froze and my eyes won’t close, And I can’t say no, I can’t say no,” I think the idea of ‘selling her soul’ is a very sinister concept and, although I am sure this song is referring to the music industry, it could be interpreted in many different ways to help my research. I also like the lyrics “when we all fall asleep, where do we go?” I think this would be a really interesting question/concept to base my short film around if I decide to go that way, maybe to incorporate the idea of a satanic night terror or something along those lines. I still have to look into other short horror films to see how others have chosen a plot for their short films, and depending on what I find from this I may go down the route of night terrors/sleep paralysis/nightmares linked with satanism.

Album cover art: Below is a collection of album covers either inspired by the idea of hell, satanism or, in the case of the Trippie Redd album, just in a style I find extremely interesting and could possibly link to many sins. Many of these albums are from rock or metal bands such as Iron Maiden, however the Trippie Redd album is a rap album but as I stated before, although not really linked to hell or satan in anyway I really liked the way it looks and some of the symbols could b loosely interpreted as something more satanic than what I’m sure he intended on creating. I am looking into various different art forms to get a wider idea of how satan and hell is represented in many different forms so it made sense to me to look at the album covers while looking into music and lyrics. I may come back to these when I start planning for my poster as I think these covers would be very useful when gathering inspiration for my poster, the aesthetic of it as well as composition. Personally I quite like the illustration of satan and hell the most in the Iron Maiden album covers as well as more of their album art work that isn’t included here, for example the cover art for their “Run To The Hills” single, as I really like the bottom half of that artwork and the representation of hell there and the various different characters at the bottom.

Heavy Metal Comics (n.d.). Iron Maiden: Legacy of the Beast. [image] Available at: https://www.google.com/search?biw=1888&bih=870&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=mJUHXdqTN_KMlwS1t6yYBw&q=iron+maiden+legacy+of+the+beast+heavy+metal+comic&oq=iron+maiden+legacy+of+the+beast+heavy+metal+comic&gs_l=img.3…18591.23285..23903…0.0..0.442.1849.13j3j4-1……0….1..gws-wiz-img…….0i30j0i24.NzTBTMY7yeI#imgrc=fJoD3JvlguJnQM: [Accessed 5 Mar. 2019].

Redd, T. (n.d.). “Life’s a Trip” Album cover. [image] Available at: https://www.google.com/search?biw=1888&bih=870&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=sZUHXejKL63ylwTptITYCg&q=Trippie+Redd+album+cover&oq=Trippie+Redd+album+cover&gs_l=img.3..0l7j0i8i30j0i24.179499.184994..185586…0.0..0.104.2033.23j1……0….1..gws-wiz-img…….0i67.5dAlVTS3-LM#imgrc=6ewB59Xlck1OoM: [Accessed 5 Mar. 2019].

Google (n.d.). “Satanic album cover art” Google image search results.. [image] Available at: https://www.google.com/search?biw=1888&bih=870&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=_JYHXfDJK7G7gweEl4DQCg&q=satanic+album+cover+art&oq=satanic+album+cover+art&gs_l=img.3…7029.8658..8931…0.0..0.92.585.7……0….1..gws-wiz-img…….0i7i30j0i7i5i30j0i8i7i30.CND0pYKq9Sk [Accessed 5 Mar. 2019].

Blog: What Is Satanism:

YouTube. (2019). The Satanic Temple’s Protest for First Amendment Rights. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AOX-_HdFKQ [Accessed 26 Feb. 2019].

Blog: First Read of Satanic Scriptures:

Gilmore, P., Barton, B. and Butler, T. (2007). The Satanic scriptures. Baltimore, Md.: Scapegoat Pub.

Blog: Nine Satanic Statements:

Church of Satan. (2019). The Nine Satanic Statements | Church of Satan. [online] Available at: https://www.churchofsatan.com/nine-satanic-statements/ [Accessed 11 Mar. 2019].

Blog: Genre Awareness:

https://emilybennettyr2media.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/essay/

https://emilybennettyr2media.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/reference-list/

Blog: As Above, So Below:

As Above, So Below. (2014). [film] Directed by J. Dowdle. Legendary Pictures.

Crystalinks.com. (2019). The Baphomet – Crystalinks. [online] Available at: http://www.crystalinks.com/baphomet.html [Accessed 28 Feb. 2019].

Hermeticfellowship.org. (2019). HF: What Is Hermeticism?. [online] Available at: https://www.hermeticfellowship.org/HFHermeticism.html [Accessed 28 Feb. 2019].

Blog: ‘hell’ in the music industry:

YouTube. (2019). HELL – Darkhangel – Live from Bloodstock (OFFICIAL LIVE). [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol1KyuCHC8U [Accessed 1 Mar. 2019].

The Satanic Temple. (2019). The Satanic Temple. [online] Available at: https://thesatanictemple.com/ [Accessed 4 Mar. 2019].

YouTube. (2019). Billie Eilish – bury a friend. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUHC9tYz8ik [Accessed 5 Mar. 2019].

YouTube. (2019). Billie Eilish – when the party’s over. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbMwTqkKSps [Accessed 5 Mar. 2019].

Blog: Film Festivals:

British Film Institute. (2019). Film festivals for young filmmakers. [online] Available at: https://www.bfi.org.uk/education-research/bfi-film-academy-scheme/film-festivals-young-filmmakers [Accessed 5 Mar. 2019].

Church of Satan. (2019). The Nine Satanic Statements | Church of Satan. [online] Available at: https://www.churchofsatan.com/nine-satanic-statements/ [Accessed 11 Mar. 2019].

Blog: Location Research:

YouTube. (2019). The Haunted House of Horror (1969) – Soundtrack by Reg Tilsley. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-f_IggcvQ8 [Accessed 15 Mar. 2019].

Sites, U. (2014). Report – – Brindle Service Reservoir, near Chorley, Lancs. May 2014 | Underground Sites. [online] 28DaysLater.co.uk. Available at: https://www.28dayslater.co.uk/threads/brindle-service-reservoir-near-chorley-lancs-may-2014.89644/ [Accessed 15 Mar. 2019].

Blog: Satanic Aesthetics:

Gilmore, P., Barton, B. and Butler, T. (2007). The Satanic scriptures. Baltimore, Md.: Scapegoat Pub, pp.108, 109, 110, 111.

Blog: Ouija Boards & Tarot Cards:

YouTube. (2019). Jessabelle (2014) – The Tarot Tape Scene (1/10) | Movieclips. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Tax5ajZYsY [Accessed 25 Mar. 2019].

Recently I have been watching many horror films (as usual) but have also been trying to watch some that may revolve their plot around cults, satanism or the idea and concept of hell. “As Above, So Below” is a found footage horror film about a group of cave explorers searching hidden tunnels in the catacombs along with a historian in hopes of finding secret treasures deep below Paris. The film takes a very interesting turn when it appears that the group enter through a tunnel marked “abandon all hope ye who enter here”, the same quote that is said to be written above the gates of hell in Dante’s Inferno, a full blog on this will be one of my next ones as I would like to research Dante’s Inferno more and its meanings and interpretations as well as its influence on many things, including common views on hell in society as well as in film and other art forms. Back to the film: one by one may of the group start meeting horrific deaths and many start being haunted by their past. I really enjoyed the film as, in my opinion, the storyline was one of the most interesting stories I have ever experience in a horror film, it was truly intriguing throughout and I think a lot of this was due to the plot line being based around some historical facts and the idea of hell. In this blog I will be looking into some of the meaning of the film, some of the historical references made as well as briefly looking into any visual skills and effects they used and why I like these certain stylistic choices.

Meaning: To start with, the title of the film “As Above, So Below” has a great deal of meaning in itself, even in the film the quote is described as “the key to all magic”. The quote is an expression associated with; Sacred geometry, the idea that a God is the geometer for the whole world; Hermeticism, a religious, philosophical, spiritual, and often considered magical tradition of spiritual growth; Baphomet, a figure of the occult and satanism, a representation of the duality of male and female, heaven and hell, and night and day; and the Tarot, a deck of cards used in Europe to play games as well as used within the occult. I am most keen to look at the connection between this and Baphomet but will later write a full blog dedicated to researching Baphomet in more detail, I will also look into the use of Tarot cards and some of the symbols on them, their meanings and their connection to Satanism and/or the occult.

Historical References: As I stated before, the main reference of the film seems to be based around Dante’s Inferno, something that I will go into more detail researching in a later blog, I am hoping that this will help me when it comes to building a plot for my short film or at least give me some inspiration.

Visual Effects: This film is mainly found footage, something I have tried before but never been successful in and so this is a part of the film I will not be taking much inspiration from. I am more intrigued by the other visuals, for example the symbols of hell throughout and how they portrayed this and SFX, deaths in this film. In terms of the special effects, I like how it is not overly gory and more focuses on the shock factor rather than going down the ‘torture-porn’ pathway that many horror take nowadays. Although I do want to focus a little more on gore in my short film there were definitely a few moments in here that I would like to take inspiration from, for example the first death of one of the french characters when she gets her head smashed against the ground. I liked this scene because there was just enough detail to to tell that the character was dead but the SFX was not overdone to the point of being too much gore, you could almost describe it as … ‘tasteful’.

Another visual choice they made that I very much liked was the setting and ‘demon’ characters and their costume design. In terms of settings, of course I cannot go all the way to paris to film in the catacombs – I wish – I very much like the setting of somewhere abandoned, unseen or uncommon, I have been considering using an abandoned or derelict location for my filming since the beginning of my planning and research but by watching this film I have definitely made up my mind that this setting gives an erie element that a lot of public places don’t. Now, looking at the demons’ visuals, I like the simplicity of just using black cloaks and simple masks, I was originally planning on buying a goats skull kind of mask but while looking into this decided it was way too expensive to use, this is still an option if I can find a well priced one but if not I am heavily inspired by the simplicity of the costume design and choices.

In my last blog, I talked about an essay I had written for our last project (specialist study) and how I felt I had explained my awareness of the genre I am planning on working within as well as discussing who the fans of horror tend to be and what about the genre entices them. As you can imagine, my essay did not involve many straight forward answers or statistics as I wanted it to be more of a topic discussion rather than an analysed explanation, so through this blog will be simplifying some of my findings about my target audience as well looking at the answers to a short questionnaire I will be sending round. I myself am of course a huge fan so in this blog will be factoring myself into this as well as some statistics from a questionnaire I will be sending out.

Although I feel I am pretty familiar with my target audience and the demographic I am trying to reach but thought it may be useful to send round a questionnaire to get some actual statistics on my target audience.

In my essay I looked into the phycology of who likes horror and it did tend to suggest it was mostly men due to their far more aggressive tendencies. Whereas I wanted to prove that nowadays, a lot more women seem to enjoy horror than they are expected to due to the same idea of men being a great deal more aggressive. In fact, from looking at the individual responses, only 1 out of all the people who said they didn’t like horror were female, meaning that the remaining 4 were all men.

Through looking at and comparing the result from “Do you enjoy risk taking or being scared?” and the “if you enjoy horror, why?” questions, I can clearly see that many people who enjoy horror tend to enjoy the feeling of adrenaline in general. Meaning that this demographic (teenagers/young adults of both genders) do tend to enjoy being scared.

I want to create a psychological and supernatural horror and many people said they enjoyed psychological horrors the most, this is good because I am hoping to create something that makes the audience think a little bit more than a basic slasher (for example) plot line may have.

The questionnaire has been up for about two days now and so I have gotten a lot more responses compared to what I had originally, however did not feel the need to re-analyse them as the pattern of the questions has stayed extremely similar. So instead of re-doing all the work I have done I thought it would be better to just put them at the bottom of this blog. The only thing that these extra answers brought to light that the original answers didn’t is the fact that so many people said their favourite sub-genres were either, psychological, which I have already mentioned, supernatural and gore. The fact that so much of my target audience likes gore and supernatural horror films really helps me in terms of what I want to create.

I chose to work around the horror genre for this project as I feel I have the best knowledge of this genre than any other and I have consistently worked within this genre throughout the past two years of being on this course, because of this, I feel the most comfortable and confident creating a project in the horror genre. Our last project before this Final Major Project was a specialist study, we could either write an essay or create a practical piece around anything we enjoy or wanted to explore within the subject of media. Although it was not compulsory to link this work into our FMP, I knew I would be working within this genre and so decided to write an essay that I could essentially use as a reference point in my primary research for this project. My essay question that I decided to explore was: “Why is the horror genre so popular? And has its rise in ‘popularity’ let to desensitised viewers?” Throughout this essay I explored a lot of important subjects within this field of research, for example; who the viewers are; why people enjoy horror and the phycology behind it; how horror has changed; and how/if society has influenced the horror genre and our attitude towards it. Through this blog and the next, I will be using my previous work in this essay to show my further understanding of my audience and of the horror genre, I will be doing this in two separate blogs, one specifically about my understanding of the genre and the next one specifically about my understanding of the target audience and demographic I am going to be trying to reach.

Why is Horror so popular?

I started this essay with my opinions and my personal understanding and point of view on why horror is so popular, “To begin this essay, and to even begin starting this discussion, we must look at why the horror genre is as popular as it is.” Although I did gather information and opinions from other sources to back up my points here, much of this is based from my personally understanding and interpretation of the genre. For this section of my essay I looked at Mark Kermode’s Secrets of Cinema, this is a TV series analysis of genres, this episode looking into horror specifically, looking into many of its key factors and what builds up the nowadays very iconic horror genre we know and love. Using information gathered from this source and my perception of this information, in the first paragraph, I briefly discuss the idea of why the plots of horror is possibly seen as more “interesting” rather than plots of other films, “One of the main reasons is due to the plots of horror films, many people tend to find them more ‘interesting’ than the plots of other genres, this may be mostly down to the tense build up and the inevitable release of fear which is obviously the most important part of the horror genre.” As a consumer and lover of all things horror, I do still strongly agree with this point and feel I did well in explaining and backing up this point throughout the essay. In Mark Kermode’s Secrets of Cinema he says, “horror is a genre defined, not by its subject matter but by its style“, my analysis of this, or at least my explanation of this is as follows, “The subject more or less makes up the sub-genre and the treatment of the subject is how it is portrayed through such other things as characters and settings etc. The reason the subject matter makes up the genre is because if the subject is of ghosts for example, the film would be in the paranormal sub-genre, and if the subjects were to be that of a serial killer, the film would then be under the slasher sub-genre.” Hopefully my work here can start to help explain my understanding of the genre and how I interpreted Mark Kermode’s understanding too.

Important Aspects of Horror.

In this section I explain my understanding of many of the most important features and technique that build up the suspense and genre of horror. Understanding the technical parts of a genre is key to being able to create something within the genre effectively and to b able to convey the most key features well enough so that the genre is easily distinctive, I feel like I have a well enough understanding of the genre techniques to be able to do this project effectively, I think this is very well shown through my essay. Two of the main key features in horror I decided to look at were the settings and the music, as well as gathering examples of these techniques used in some of the classic horrors to back up my points. I started by explaining why the locations and settings are as important to the genre as they are, “the use of the settings as an important factor in horror has been a key element since the very beginning of horror, back to the 1800’s when Frankenstein was written and Dracula was first conceptualised. Locations in horror  build up the mies-en-scene, the atmosphere, and feeling of the scenes, due to this many directors and horror creators tend to stick to the classic gothic themes. Gothic themes are extremely iconic and recognisable in horror as many people immediately make the connection to something more sinister and evil; these locations tend to be portrayed in a way that makes them obviously dangerous to the audience, places that people clearly shouldn’t go but, keeping in with the irony of this genre, they do anyway.” This especially shows my understanding of horror in both film and in literature, for example in the novel Frankenstein. The location is something I am planning on researching and looking into in quite a lot of detail to be able to create the environment and atmosphere I desire in my short film, the location, along with other visual techniques, like SFX will hopefully tie everything together and convey the horror aspect as effectively as possible.

The other important part of the horror genre I looked at was the music and sound effects, music plays a huge part in building suspense and aids in telling the story of the film. I decided to use Jaws as an example here as I am sure many are familiar with the iconic soundtrack of this classic film, “the music for this film was arguably the most important part of creating tension, anticipation and suspense in the film. By using music to signify an upcoming attack or a shot of the shark this creates a sense of dramatic irony as the audience have been, in a way, told that the shark is near while the characters are completely oblivious to the sharks presence.” Music is going to be a huge part of my short film as, at this stage, I do not intend on having much dialog or speech as I feel I tend to work better with visuals rather than script writing, and so the use of music in my work will help to carry the storyline in a similar way that the dialog may if I were to use some.

Who Watches Horror & Why?

“Now that we have an idea of why horror is so popular and why many feel so enticed by this genre, we must look at who watches horror.” In this next part of my essay I decided to look into my knowledge, understanding and personal view on who tends to watch and enjoy horror. Although I did quite extensive research into the phycology of who ‘should’ like horror and why this may be, I found that often the modern day audience tends to be far different to what the phycology tells us. For example, I looked into an article from a professional phycologist who suggested those who enjoy horror had “lower empathy levels,” and in response to this argued the point that in my experience, sometimes it can be the very opposite; “One theory in people that enjoy horror is that they must have lower empathy levels, through some of my research this was described as “self-reported” which may be slightly unreliable. Although many people are reported to have these “lower empathy levels” one could argue that some that enjoy horror may be the complete opposite and have higher levels and therefor feel some kind of reliability to the characters and circumstances in horror.” Another point that was made was that men tend to enjoy horror more than women, there are many factors to this theory but the main being that men tend to be more aggressive and so are thought to enjoy horror a great deal more than women may. Again, this is debatable because although it is true that, on average, men have more aggressive tendencies, we cannot ignore the rise in female horror fans.

Further into my essay I decided to look at the idea of horror and the characters and plots to many horror films being somewhat ‘relatable’ to the audience, both consciously and subconsciously, this I felt was a huge aspect of looking into the horror demographic. I discussed the significance of gender roles in the genre and how the gender and character roles tend to stick to a specific structure in most films in this genre and is almost a must to consider when wanting to create something in the horror category. Through my research and while looking into the phycology, I raised this point, “Gender roles in horror allow people to relate to their ‘traditional’ gender roles, for example, the men want to be the one a women – or the damsel-in-destress – clings to for protection and the women want to be looked after and protected by the bravery of a man.” The roles of the men and women both in the films and the roles while watching the films can link quite undeniably to the relatable aspect and therefore appeal of horror.

The rest of my essay discusses the idea of if viewers of the genre have become desensitised by either the horror in film or just the horror in our day to day lives as it is. Although this is definitely a very interesting topic of discussion and is something I feel is (or hope is, at least) communicated well through my essay, it is not directly relevant to my understanding of the genre and I do feel I have shown in this blog how well knowledgable about this genre I am and how fitting it is for me to have chosen horror as my pathway with this project.

In a previous blog I mentioned briefly that during my first read of The Satanic Scriptures by Peter H. Gilmore, I read about the “Nine Satanic Statements” and decided to write a short blog on what they meant to me in terms of if I could use them or felt they would be useful to influence my planning as well as what my interpretation of their meaning and how I feel I could use that in my work. I used The Satanic Scriptures to find these but the original Nine Satanic Statements were created by Anton LaVey when he initially wrote The Satanic Bible in 1969.

1. Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence – This is the first on the list and is the begging of a common pattern within satanism, that indulgence and self gratification is encouraged and that you are urged to sin in order to satisfy ones own desires. I feel like this is a common theme throughout my research so far, and even just the first 9 statements and so feel like this will most likely influence my planning in many ways.
2. Satan represents vital existence instead of spiritual pipe dreams – This is actually quite an interesting one, as it pretty much means to live life by ones own desires and beliefs rather than following a religion based on man-made faith.
3. Satan represents undefiled wisdom instead of hypocritical self-deceit – This statement is mainly to do with understanding yourself and accepting things about ourselves rather than convincing ourself of things that are undeniably false.
4. Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates – This statement is pretty much the opposite of the “respect your elders” bullsh*t we are told as children, this instead tells us to only respect or show kindness to those who really deserve it and if they do not deserve our respect why would we give them it. I think this could be a very interesting concept to look at a little more once it comes to planning as I think it could be viewed from a few different perspectives to really aid the storyline of my project.
5. Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek – This statement could definitely be looked at from different perspectives and manipulated in a way that would give an excuse of violence, something I want to focus on heavily in my project.
6. Satan represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires – Again, like number 5 this could definitely be looked at from a point of view that could end up condoning violence, so think it may be an important statement to keep in mind if I end up using it in my project.
7. Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of his “divine spiritual and intellectual development” has become the most vicious animal of all – Man definitely is the most vicious animal of all, a concept I can really play on when planning and filming my project.
8. Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification – This statement link very closely and is very similar to the first of the 9, this is about self gratification and satisfaction through ‘sin’ rather than being unhappy in fear of sinning.
9. Satan has been the best friend the Church has ever had, as He has kept it in business all these years – This is just tying in the concept of Christianity with Satanism, and will be an important aspect to look at while planning and research becomes more detailed, wether I incorporate Christianity in a large portion of my work or only subtly I feel it is important to use it in some way shape or form.

 

For a large part of this project and to help compose a well thought out and well portrayed plot, I wanted to explore the idea of satanic cults and satanism in general, so I have bought myself a copy of “The Satanic Scriptures” by Peter H. Gilmore. I was initially looking into buying The Satanic Bible by Anton Szandor LaVey, the creator of the official Church of Satan, however, this book I did end up purchasing seems to talk through a lot of the subjects in LaVey’s books and his work with the church, as well as also helping explain a lot of it to someone who has no prior knowledge of the Church of Satan.

So far I have just read a few pages from the first section “Satanism: The Feared Religion”, this section seems to open the book by explaining satanism and breaking down a lot of the key points and misconceptions of the religion. I have read through the “Nine Satanic Statements”, “The Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth”, and “Nine Satanic Sins” all created by LaVey around the time of creating the Church. These all seem extremely helpful so far in giving me a rough idea, as well as a new perspective, on the religion; how I end up illustrating these visually, as of right now, I am not sure but through more research and reading I am sure inspiration will come soon. Even if these pages don’t directly influence my visuals or plot line or anything of that nature, I will at least have some more knowledge of the religion to be able to creating work in the most accurate and, importantly, most respectful way possible.

Although not being  part of this religion and, until now, not knowing much about it or having anything to do with it, it is still a lifestyle and belief of many which I intend to respect and treat as if it were me on the receiving end. Again, not that I entirely agree with some parts of satanism (but then again also don’t agree with many part of christianity, my own religion) I think anyone belief should be considered equal and treated with the same amount of regard as any other. I will, through my research, make sure my work does not cross to many boundaries and when it comes to presenting my work will make it clear that this is from a fictional and intended horrific point of veiw and is not my actually opinion on the religion.

Once I have a better understanding of the book, more blogs will come and more research will be played out.