Let the right one in communication and culture notes

Let the right one in à

Basic film notes à

Age rating 15

21^st century film

For a niche audience

It is an arty, intellectualised portrayal of the vampire.

Opening à

The start is quiet which is different than the usual vampire openings as it demands your full attention right from the off. It is an opening which mirrors the rest of the film.

The setting is suburban, run down and working class.

The main character is an outsider and the first time we see him it is in a reflection in the window.

The main vampire is a ’12 year old girl’.

The music sets the atmosphere for this film; a classical backing sound with dark colours accompanying it.

The first kill à

The vampire isn’t the one who kills at first, due to her being so young so she needs a helper to kill people.

The helper’s kills are problematic and he messes it up a lot of the time.

Continuing on with the film à

In this film the bullies are the thing that needs to be destroyed not the vampire, the vampire isn’t the antagonist.

The narrative is coming of age.

The film is set up as a love story between Oskar and Eli. (The vampire)

Oskar comes from a dysfunctional/broken family, living with his mum only.

The Rubik’s helps to symbolise that the vampire is going to give Oskar a solution to his problem; even if this is in an odd way.  

The kills are NEVER sexualised or eroticised in any way.

Eli hates being a vampire.

 Tone of the film à

There are long lingering shots of plants and nature.

The film is quiet.

There is often calm music in the background after something bad/aggressive has happened.

General notes à

The humans in the film commit violence for kicks and fun.

The film teaches children to hit back.

The film has a very controversial message of whether you should stand up and fight or stay afraid and runaway.

In the book the vampire is a male who was castrated during transformation into a vampire.

In the book the helper is a paedophile who falls in love with her as she is a child forever.

The vampire is a complex character as she is very self-serving so once someone is of no use to her anymore she discards of them.

The film uses the vampire myth to explore acceptance in society.

the lost boys communication and culture review

The lost boys à

Basic movie notes:

Rated a 15

It was a massive mainstream Hollywood movie by Warner Bros.

American hybrid: horror, comedy, love story.

It’s a late 1980’s popular culture film.

Had one of the most famous straplines ‘Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It's fun to be a vampire’.

Opening of film à

The repertoire of elements of the opening, ‘flying over the setting a night’.

In the opening there is a choir of children singing the Ten Commandments which is the only religious aspect of the film, and is repeated throughout different parts of the film.

The setting is conventional for a horror movie of the time to be set in an American holiday resort, creating an ironic set of juxtaposition.

Portrayal of the vampires and Michael à

There are a gang of vampires which we have not yet seen in the vampire movies.

The vampires look like trouble making, white male teenagers.

The vampires/gang members are anti-authority, which we see as their first kill is the security guard who kicked them off of the boardwalk.

Michael is torn between being safe with his family and being part of the rebellious lost boys.

Michael is the personification of a life of sex, drugs and alcohol.

Star is a half vampire and essentially just a love interest.

The fear at the time was teenage delinquents coming from non-religious broken homes, and white teens listening to black rap.

The intertextuality of the film is between the 1950’s rebel without a cause chicken run scene and the motorbike race scene.

Michael dresses in a typical teenage rebellion ‘costume’, a black leather jacket; oil stained white t-shirt and blue jeans. This also helps show the intertextuality within films such as grease.

The ‘gang’ of vampires was modelled on the guns and roses band.

 

Vampire’s lair à

The ‘lair’ is a hotel that was on a fault line which got swallowed into the earth by an earthquake.

There are posters of the ’27 club’ put up on the walls.

The floor of the ‘lair’ is littered with empty alcohol bottles.

They smoke spliffs in the ‘lair’.

It is like a teenage boy’s bedroom but on a grander scale.

Frogg brothers (Vampire hunters) à

They are two teenage boys who run a comic shop.

Everything they know about vampire’s they have learned through reading comic books.

They are not religious at all, which is wiping out the religious aspect of vampires needing to be slayed by religious people.

It is a vampire film that references what happens in other vampire films/books by using the Frogg brothers to do this.

The Frogg brothers make jokes about the repertoire of elements in vampire films.

Kieffer Sutherland à

He personally added in the shot of the ‘head’ vampire crying to the camera after getting burned in the sun.

It shows that the vampire was human once, and can still be in touch with his human side.

This scene tries to add sympathy for the vampires, suggesting that they don’t actually want this lifestyle themselves.

Feminist criticisms of the film à

The film just uses Star as a good looking sex object who looks after the child, and the film doesn’t even try to hide this aspect.

The film also suggests that mothers are weak, and they NEED a man to help save their rebellious children.

Communication and culture notes on Bram Stoker Dracula

Bram Stokers Dracula à

The prologue:

It gives us a back story of why Dracula became Dracula; a normal prince who goes to war. His enemies fire an arrow with a note saying he had dies into the window of his wife, so she kills herself to be with him. He finds out and swears to come back from the dead to evenge his wives death.

They are the first people to humanise Dracula by using the prologue.

It helps to set up the rest of the film as a love story.

Continuing on à

Intertextuality: the film provides links from one text to another.

It is always highlighting the ‘letting’ people into your home fear.

This Dracula cries and falls in love

‘Mina’ is proper, shy and nervy whereas ‘Lucy’ is fiery and tempestuous, causing the main characters of the film to be binary opposites.

Possibly the most famous scene in the novel/film à

When the main character meets the female vampires

Females are seducing a man (oh no)

There is lots of licking and he also kisses them whilst being sexually attacked

At the end of the scene Dracula feeds the female vampires a live baby.

Continuing on with the film à

There is a strong link between the biting of the neck and the sexual aspect of this action.

The vampire attacks become sexually motivated.

There is a link between the attraction of the ‘other’ and the dark side.

The additions to the narrative make it a more relatable film.

It echoes patriarchal Victorian society.

Mina saves Dracula through the power of love.

Love is stronger than death.

30 days of night communication and culture notes

Narrative:

In what ways is the setting important to our understanding of the film?

The setting helps us to understand that the vampires only attack when it is the 30 days of night.

It also helps us to see that the town is in the middle of nowhere, meaning that no one can help them.

The setting helps us to see that it is an easy target due to being the ‘northern most’ town in the U.S. (repertoire of elements, due to it being an isolated location)

How do the vampires differ from conventional screen portrayals?

The vampires are in a group.

The vampires first attack the dogs using a knife to kill them.

They don’t speak English they speak ‘vampire’.

All of the vampires teeth are sharp not just the traditional fangs.

Animalistic, alien-looking, pale skin, black eyes.

How do the kill scenes fit with ‘conventional’ kill scenes?

The kill scenes are quite graphic but we don’t actually see the vampires kill any of the victims we just see the bodies/blood afterwards.

Central kill scene when the vampires are attacking the town?

This is an unconventional kill scene because usually the vampires don’t attack more than one person at once however, in this scene the ‘head’ vampire scrapes his nail on a record which cause the rest of the vampires to attack the whole town rather than just the one or two victims they have been killing.

It shows that the producer is trying to move away from the traditional vampire and create a more modern vampire for the audience.

Structure:

Who’s the protagonist?

Eben the town sheriff/ vampire slayer is the protagonist. He is a flawed protagonist because he is physically unwell, due to having asthma.

Who are the antagonists?

The group of vampires are the antagonists.

 Notes from Collins 2^nd lesson on 30 days of night à

The film is based on a comic that came out just after 9|11; many critics have argued that it is a direct reference to the vulnerability of American towns against outsiders. It suggests that if the outsider believes what the rest of the community believe then you should accept him into the community but if not then you should kill them.

The character that gets off of the ship at the start of the film is a direct reference to ‘Renfield’ in the original Dracula.

Join the love interest’s narrative at the end of their relationship. It is a postmodern relationship as we join them at the end and watch their relationship come back. We watch something that is broke coming back together.

Feminist critics have suggested that the film essentially teaches the at first glance strong female character that protects Eben to being a passive mother like figure by the end, as she ends up cradling a child waiting for Eben to return to save them.

Structure:

When we first meet Eben he is watching the sun set and then the last scene with Eben is when the sun rises.

Technology:

Kill the sleigh dogs to prevent their means of escape from the city.

Take all of the mobile phones they can find and burn them on the edge of the city.

Cut off all of the electricity and phone lines.

They destroy the helicopter.

Showing how vulnerable we are as communities when our transport, electricity and big weapons are taken away, because we are too reliant on them.

The first kill:

The community of vampires kill one individual first. They are killing off the outsiders and weakest first.

He is the most important as he controls the generators in town.

The terrorists in 9|11 were targeting places that were important control centres in the U.S, which is symbolised in the film by the vampires killing the man who controls the generators first, as a show of power.

 The third kill:

A vampire comes through the window without being invited in which are different to most other vampire films because in the other vampire films we have watched the women usually open the window for the vampire due to being hypnotised.

It also relates directly back to Americas fear of the time that they weren’t even safe in their own home. They didn’t know what the terrorists wanted, and Americans just didn’t understand their lifestyle.

A summary of the documentary; Vampires why they bite

Dichotomy à

A problem that can’t be solved, with two arguments to the idea. In this case the idea that we are attracted to the thing we fear most.

It is a traditional fear. It is a key human fear of the dead rising again.

Vampire aren’t monsters they are humans that have turned into monsters.

The novel Dracula: wrote by Bram Stoker in 1897. This book is what all other films/tv shows are based on. The original book is based on traditional Victorian fears of the time; the fear of female liberation, it is the first book to sexualise women in a very detailed way. Showing that sexually liberated women are evil. It also highlights the fear of foreigners moving to Victorian England.

 

Arnold Powell à

He fell off of a cart and broke his neck resulting in his death. After his death there was a spite of deaths within the village. So they dug him up to find that he hadn’t started decomposing, he had a boner, there was blood around his mouth and he had grown long fingernails. Resulting in the first reported case of a vampire.

Therefore the vampire has come from a medical misunderstanding of how the body decomposes, and all films are based on this misunderstanding.

The drinking of the blood is significant as some religious practices ‘drink’ Jesus’ blood. Showing the audience that blood is sacred.

Dracula à

Dracula is a hybrid of Victorian hypnotists, Serbian folk tales and ‘vampire bats’ brought back by explorers.

The hammer vampire movies à

They were the first people to introduce the vampire fangs. This allowed vampires to attack the female victims in a way that made the female victims react in an orgasmic way; without actually seeing sexual intercourse.

Vampire films mirror what is feared at the time. There are two types of horror films. The ‘secure’ horror film where a group of people are attacked by an outsider and the ‘sophisticated’ horror film where the monster is inside of us and the people we trust.

An interview with the vampire à

They made the vampire human, by creating a family of vampires.

This film has a homoerotic subtext within the film.

There are two different types of vampire: Tom Cruise, who is playing a hegemonic male who loves being a vampire and Brad Pitt who is playing a male who is turned into a vampire by Tom Cruise’s character and hates it.

They have alternative visions of the same idea, by putting them into more recognisable worlds.

 

Buffy the vampire slayer à

The young attractive female becomes the heroin not the victim.  It was brought out around the feminist movement and remove religious aspects from the vampire myth.

Twilight à

The vampire is a love interest. The film turns the vampire into a tortured individual and a romantic hero.

True blood à

It goes back to the idea of fearing outsiders and immigration almost like we have gone back in time in relation to our ideologies.

Communication and culture review on Nosferatu

Basic film notes à

Nosferatu was the first ever film portrayal of vampires

A 1922 silent movie

If people went to watch it in the cinema there would have been a live orchestra playing the sound track

The audience had never seen a vampire or horror film before

 

Start of the movie à

Lovers are together, they are happy

A loving situation which is going to be disrupted by the vampire

The female is perceived a naïve, sweet and innocent

 

Arriving at the castle à

The screen turns to a negative effect when watching his journey to the castle

The vampire lives in an old dilapidated castle

The castle doors open all on their own

We see the vampire for the first time he is: ugly, animalistic, corpse like, pale, hunched and has rat’s teeth.

The ‘monster’ character is shown like this because it is what the audience of the time was scared of. At the time this film was created the audience were scared of Jews and immigrants.

 

Vampire representations à

The vampire sleeps by day; which highlights his difference.

This was the first vampire attack on film. So it is the first time that the audience can see that vampires bite the neck of its victims.

The woman is asleep with the window open, the fact that she is in bed helps to show the separation of the vampire and her worlds.

The audience see the shadow of the ‘monster’ before physically seeing the ‘monster’, the audience also sees the shadow of the vampire attack but never physically sees the vampire attack.

 

The portrayal of women à

Woman saves Hutter from a vampire attack

Woman saves the whole village from further vampire attacks

The woman gives herself up in order to do the above

The woman gets attacked when she is in bed alone

The vampire hypnotises her and she lets him in, which causes her to become open to the vampire

 

Key ideas to write about à

The vampire’s appearance

Talk about the repertoire of elements; horror movies often use shadows during the attacking scenes, the neck biting is now widely seen as a vampire attack.

The portrayal of the vampire as the ‘other’

To what extent are females sexualised in vampire films and how this film is different.

There is no sense of sympathy the vampire is just a monster which is different compared to modern day representations of vampires

communication and culture review of the company of wolves 1982

Basic film notes à

A little red riding hood spin off

Based on a short story by Angela Carter

 

Continuing with film notes à

The girls are both wearing white which helps to symbolise their innocence

Their pet dog looks like a wolf as it is a German Sheppard

They live in an old spooky house, which symbolises a castle and sets the scene for a horror movie

One of the daughters lives in the attic and her parents don’t understand her

We watch the film through the ‘dream/nightmare’ of the youngest daughter

The film focuses on her open window which has view out onto a forest. This symbolises the barrier between reality and imagination. It also shows that the danger is outside of the window and that she is safe as long as she is on the inside.

Granny is the voice of reason, teaches the girl the truth of how to behave.