As mentioned in the previous post I would be following up with a post more about the creation of the movie and how we worked as individuals to first understand horror, and then as a class to create an idea which represented not only our learning of what it is, but also a reflection of a societal fear. This post will only focus on the smaller details which I thought brought the project together, as the previous one deals with all the filming and traveling stuff. 

I think the most important part of the project which was essential in order to answer of why horror is an effective way to represent society’s fears was right at the beginning of the project in the first two sweat box exercise when we had to as individuals create a definition of what we thought horror is. This was tough as we had only just been introduced to the topic and our only source was Halloween, but being able to try and define such a large topic only understanding that horror is a reflection of society allowed us to create a very basic idea. Moving into the second draft we were able to build upon this work by using real life experiences, like the hunted house, along with the definitions from the MoPop museum to create a more clear idea of what would scare an audience. I believe experiencing horror first hand was a key role in being able to understand why people fear and why people enjoy that fear. I also believe this was one of the key moments in making the film, not just because we decided what might make a scary movie, but more because we were able to build the understanding of what horror. 

For context the sweat box was a writing block where we had to answer the essential question given by our teachers, and we were not allowed to leave the room until we gave them a writing sample which they found satisfactory.

I think the most important learning outside of the sweat box was what I took away from the MoPop. I believe I left with a break down of how different types of horror movies are used to target different fears represented by the collective society at the time. I enjoyed watching and looking at samples from different movies over the years, as they were able to see what tropes used based on the time period.

As mentioned in the previous post I think the biggest area of improvement for myself was my involvement in the actually filming of the movie. I won’t go over the whole issue, but essentially I did not take the initiative to work outside of my assigned role. Instead I just stuck to what my role was, and it was not until the final few days where I got tired of doing nothing and started working with different departments. The rest of the reflection can be found in my previous post.

To quote the MoPop museum “ when the things we fear actually happen, we experience horror”. Horror is effective because it exposes our fears as a society. We can use horror movies as a sort of time stamp, we can tell what ideas and values were happening at the time the movie was made based on things like who the killer was, their motive, and who they were targeting. The only drawback for me is that I believe that each movie has a certain time period in which they are most effective, however outside of that time period, the message and fear factor is lost on its audience. For example when watching Halloween I felt as though some parts of the movie were out of a comedy, and I am sure that it has to do with movie quality and not just the message, but I still thought it was less effective. 

In conclusion I found that in my opinion the most important learning did to understand the importance of horror and its significance in our society was from both the sweat boxes we did along with the information found in the MoPop, and of course the hunted house. We can view horror movies a mirror to our own society that shows us what fear which could be something as big as death, or something more hidden like how society fear unpredictability ( actors in hunted houses). We realize these fears when they are shown to us in these horror movies, and when we these fears are shown to us in a way we could connect ourselves, and could see happening in our own lives, that’s when we experience horror. I realized something while reflecting on our horror experience, and I asked myself why is it that people keep all the lights on after watching a horror movie. If it was a fear then why wouldn’t they do it all the time, and I realized that horror reflects and comments on society because it bring to light things we may have not even realized we are that scared of. Therefore horror is effective because it exposes fears which we may not have noticed are there.