Horror Movie Case Study: Dawn of the Dead

The film is called Dawn of the Dead. It is directed by George A. Romero, who directed the other films in the ‘dead’ series such as Night of the Living Dead and Day of the Dead, as well as other horror films such as Monkey Shines and The Dark Half. Dawn of the Dead was released on 20^th May, 1979 in America and the 29^th of June 1980 in the UK. There are no real stars in the movie as such, but horror movie may recognise Ken Foree as nearly all of the films he has acted in are of the horror genre. The conventions used in the films are of zombies, guns, isolation from the rest of the world and scenes of night-time. The elements that created fear and suspense are the times where they are swarmed on by zombies, and you’re not sure what will happen to the survivors. Another element is when Stephen, a main character, has been bitten and you’re not sure when he will change to a zombie. The main point of the film that makes it hard to create fear and suspense is that it hasn’t aged well in the make-up and special effects departments, the zombies do not look realistic compared to today’s standards and the limbs and blood look terribly fake to a modern day audience.

Introducing...

Hello, my name is Philip Newsham and for my AS Media project I want to:

 - Film a short scene including continuity and dialogue, whilst demonstrating a range of different camera shots and editing skills. (This is the preliminary exercise, and shall be explained in further detail in a later post.)

 - Create the titles and opening of a new horror film to last two minutes. (This is the main task and what this blog will be focusing on mainly.)

 - Create a blog to accompany the two tasks, explaining in detail the thought process and reasoning behind each decision, whilst showing my knowledge of film techniques and there uses (camera shots, mise en scene, lighting, special effects, sound and editing), as well as horror films in general.