Today we were introduced to the use of Horror and animation.
What is Horror?
Before Looking at Animated Horror, we first had to look at what Horror is. Horror is our relationship with fear and invoking negative stimuli. Sometimes, it challenges moral sensibilities and usually reflects feelings of disgust, anxiety, distress, sadness and evokes our natural morbid curiosity (like the feeling of not being able to look away at disturbing images). Scares can be gratifying, as they are nihilistic, and the feeling of facing your fears in a safe environment/entertaining way can be cathartic (like going to haunted houses, watching or reading horror films etc).
Horror has a heavier emphasis on imagery, with personified and symbolic elements (the man being the real monster, twisted perceptions from trauma, etc). Most animated horror will focus on the PSYCHOLOGICAL, the GROTESQUE and DREAMS.
Styles of Animated Horror
There are 3 main styles that animated horror focusses on, and like everything they can be traced back to art.
Realism/”Uncanny” : An emphasis on verisimilitude (the appearance of being true or real), with a naturally off putting feel it is presented as gritty and ugly and has a more subtle presentation.
Expressionism: Exaggerates real life for effect, stronger uses of shadows and colours and stylised character designs. This style can be used comedically.
Surrealism: Focusses on distorting reality. and rejecting accessibility. Typically cerebral ( horror that makes you think!) and can mix styles.
Horror is always fighting between for two methods of thought:
The Visceral– Evoking emotions and Feelings
The Cerebral– Evoking Mental and Thinking (deeper meanings and symbolism etc)
Scorn is a biomechanical body horror video game that combines the styles of two very big artists H.R Giger and Z Beksinski. This presents Horror in a more disturbing twist on the human form, surrealist in style but combining both the Cerebral and Visceral methods to create this twisted fantasy. The evolution of art into animation and more interactive and entertaining means.
Animated Horror Clips
Battleship Potemkin
Not an animation but an important element to talk about how experimental expressionism worked from the Soviet montage. Battleship Potemkin’s Odessa Steps scene is something I analysed back in my A-levels, for its very strong way of creating fear and horror of war by contrasting the close in emotional moments that happen the hustle and bustle of the scared crowd dominates and it works to make us the viewer feel stressed and disorientated, tying our emotions to the scared crowd. Then we have the soldiers being dehumanised with framing and by focusing on their harsh attitude and the pain they cause it almost creates this symbolic monster/machine. So in ways we can see how horror has evolved by taking and developing aspects of this, like using symbolism and contrasting highs and lows to create this anxiety, dread and visceral imagery.
Fears of the Dark- Man with Dog Scenes ( 2:14-4:41, 23:39-25:04, 30:08-31:38, 53:14-54:44)
There are a couple things that make these sections very strong for horror elements. The style of animation, we see the scratchy gritty line art and lack of colour makes this fit into this gritty, ugly unsettling tone, with smoother, cleaner shapes for the innocent victims and the more erratic harsh scratches for our more intense, shadowed villain. The focus on scale and intimacy, the emphasis on violent action. Inherent escalation of the violence and how it is dealt, starting off the violence happens off screen, then it is shown but the focus is on the reactions instead, then we see the violence and terror of the act in focus but not the gore and we finish with the gore and decimation of the final dog, this prevents us from become numb to the violence. We lose the dogs throughout each action, so we as the audience have this building anxiety and tension as each new element is introduced, knowing that something violent will occur. Setting goes from peaceful open landscape and gradually gets more Claustrophic and loses detail until the final scene where there is no background at all. The man who controls these dogs could be seen as the personification of death, or his design could hint that he is the judge and executioner of these characters, or even this could hint at the class divide in France with our aristocrat seen mauling and taking out the innocent working class.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kjv9TSsRso&t=3270s
Krampus
We have the innocent looking character, big round eyes and smooth skin that contrasts with the other dark, harsh and sharp elements that are our ‘evil’ and horror elements (like Krampus and the fire, they have sharp lines that construct them). The light intensifies and distorts our Christmas scene, which should be warm and cosy, we also have the warmth of the fire being distorted from this cosy hearth to escape the harsh winter is now used for imagery of hell and the frame Krampus in shadow. Nothing is shown, instead it is done in shadow to allow out mind to generate the horror and scare. All of these elements get us to get into the mind of the child.
Horror
In this one short we cross the various styles, starting with Realism then it becomes an Expressionist piece and ending on a Surrealist one. The most noticeable way this short creates horror, is by showing us how the child has a distorted view of the world, this is seen with how the storybook looks at the start, and then when we are shown it on the iPad how much more friendly and rounded the shapes are (this gets us to think about the following moments and question if what we are being shown is real or if it is just the child’s overactive mind). Again we see the use of exaggerated design, the round, soft, innocent child in comparison to the violent movements of the monsters. Also as mentioned before we can see that maybe the monsters are just a representation of the violent action/ abuse of the dad.
Little Nightmares Diner
This scene is all about the build up. The sound builds into a crescendo in time with the environment becoming more claustrophobic and the grotesque creatures reaching towards our character, this builds up until it becomes really overstimulating. What also works for Little Nightmares in general is the distortion of the world, how small and thus weak we feel as the character Six, and how large and intimidating the world around us is.
David Firth
Then we got to talk about the wonders that was David Firth’s work online. Mainly known for the Viral serious of Salad fingers, this was a very popular serious online that while on appearance seemed to evoke the ‘randomness’ comedy that was a trend, but in actuality Firth put a lot of work and attention to detail with this strangely off-putting style. The audio is very unsettling, with the quality of the time working to add to the uncomfortably close shots of the camera, elements that are poignant to this are the breathing and the rusty sounds and how these contrast with the well spoken and fancy dialogue when he interacts with the other character. The movements have an unnatural puppet-like movement and the distorted world that has a logic to it even if it is strange and jerky. There is a morbid curiosity that the viewer has as the setting, character design and movements hint at this grungy, dirty and dystopian quality, you can’t help but want to learn more about it. Another element that should be commented on is the context of the time on this particular episodes plot: The character approaches the small child and we are instantly thinking that he is going to have a sinister intention with it as during British media at the time there was a whole Paedophilia Fearmongering in the news and it was a topic that was joked about in multiple shows as well.
Then we come to a more… Surrealist, experimental, uhm, Breakdown of the mind. In the nicest way this is really fucking weird, but also really fucking cool. Notes to take from this however are how it portrays and experimental style to create this mind scape. There are so many different interpretations to take from this, like how the machine can over take the mind of the man, creating the idea of an anti Troll video. Overall, it is unsettling in both visuals, sounds that are sharp and off putting and jarring, graphic imagery created with otherwise just everyday objects. There is the essence of a breakdown and that can be linked to being driven mad and getting a lobotomy. In my opinion, I see this video as a breakdown of how the mind works with thoughts, how when you let yourself think (particular in the sense of a dream) the mind takes things you know and re-contextualises them and connects them loosely together and distorting it and something like this is the result of just simply letting your mind work on its own without trying to make sense of its ramblings.
Overall I had a lot of fun learning about how we can combine horror and animation, it is a particular interest I had before this module and I can see myself going forth and doing more independent research into applying this into my own work.