https://www.mediafactory.org.au/giorgiocurcio/2023/08/04/post-horror-assignment-1-blog-1/
https://www.mediafactory.org.au/giorgiocurcio/2023/08/04/post-horror-assi…-blog-post-2-pt1/
https://www.mediafactory.org.au/giorgiocurcio/2023/08/04/post-horror-assi…nt-1-blog-2-pt-2/
https://www.mediafactory.org.au/giorgiocurcio/2023/08/04/post-horror-assignment-1-post-3/
Horror is a gigantic genre in film and has been around since forever. The ability to scare the audience is its one main element and its gradually changed overtime into various subgenres which could include slasher films, ghost stories and even religious horrors. Horror has adapted so quickly over the years that in this present time a new genre has portrayed audiences to new levels with the help from a special someone. The reason i chose this specific individual as he was one of the main reasons why i chose this class, his implements into this genre as a new filmmaker inspired myself to launch myself into this type of area for my future. The man im talking about it none other than Jordan Peel. Peele has been a long admirer for me due to his history on Key and Peele, his past career has been mainly in acting alongside fellow actor Keegan-Michael Key in which the two performed sketch comedy through comedy central and it was just really entertaining. The reason why this specific filmmaker is so special to myself and just in general is that he switched genres completely from comedy into serious horror. In 2017, His first film he directed, produced and wrote won him an oscar and was critically acclaimed around the world for its post horror elements including racism, thriller, mystery and experimental elements that involve hypnotising and what could be happening around the world in which we may not know. This specific film was Get Out and it stared Daniel Kaluuya and in my opinion changed the horror genre into films we see today which explore social issues which may involve racism but twist it to turn them into horror films. Peele has also made two other films one called ‘Us’ which involves an African American family and their clones of themselves fighting for a spot in their life and it gets really close and sentimental with identity, who you are as a person and grief. His newest film he made was called ‘Nope’ and it follows a western sort of atmosphere where it connects the plains of Hollywood to a UFO and alien sort of event which has various plot twists that involve grief and post traumatic stress disorder for various characters and just the outstanding tension he brings provides the story and the audience to change throughout the film. The idea of post horror involves different tropes that similarly impact the real world and its frontrunner filmmaker and succeeder, Jordan Peele clearly understands and translates major opportunities of themes that are not likely seen in horror movies and each film he creates, new themes are present alongside new inspiration. Jordan Peele like other filmmakers takes inspiration from all around the history of cinema and wants to sort of celebrate it in a way and shape it into his own films to sort of reimagine it. An example of this is George Romero’s zombie classic ‘Night of the Living Dead’ way back in 1968, in which Peele has stated that the main lead and the whole story can be viewed as social commentary on racism, the main character, as he is shot by humans instead of the zombies with no intention of doing any hard, it made him realise this was impactful. This was just one example of his inspiration, but it clearly shows the true talent behind this young mind in the horror cinematic directing atmosphere. Other filmmakers like Robert Eggers and Ari Aster have many impacts in common, they are new and have bright ideas for not so bright events (in a good way). To this day, the story of Jordan Peele influences myself and many of my peers to the future of filmmaking and the ability to change a genre into various ways that no one would even think about.
In week three of the post horror studio we went through the history of horror and its ability to change overtime and its affect on how to justify whether a horror film is in the subgenre of post horror. A thing that was discovered inside me that made me really surprised was the amount of films we figured out and talked about were heavy interests of post horror and they can also justify for post horror even though they were made in the last century. Specific films that i did not realise or even know about it made me more interested in them and persuaded me to view them which included ‘Don’t Look Now’ which was made in 1973 and i also rewatched Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece ‘The Shining’ due to the group exercise. In this exercise we watched various clips from horror classics like The Shining, Suspiria, Night of the Living Dead, Don’t Look Now and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari which provided groundwork for discussion and a huge interest in me. I found it very interesting as these films at the time were seen as experimental to the genre of horror and at the time were received as different and not treated in the same category, whereas now, they play the groundwork for modern day horror films which experiment from a contemporary lens. The thing about these films that make it experimental is that they are all different in their own way, creativity is key, yes these films take a while to heat up and scare the audience but they do it in the perfect way to excite them with all the tension and drama that gradually builds up as the film progresses. The reason i chose this exercise/groupwork/discussion was that each film had a lot to say about how close and similar these films have adapted and how these experimental horror films that shy away from genre conventions provide post horror inspiration. Not only this, the class and myself emphasised our interest in these inspirations through films such as ‘The Thing’, ‘Candyman’ and even ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ elevate horror to new strengths that think outside of the box to surprise the audience in scary elements.
One of the workshop activities that stuck with me was the learning and creating the levels of a script by using WriterDuet. In high school i made a short film and it sort of failed due to my inability to not know how to write screenplays and understand all the features these apps have inside them. Thanks to this workshop, i learnt how to tell the difference between characters, actions, scenes, parenthesis’ and even provide transitions into a simple screenplay with hard cuts as well. In the class we thought of anything that came to our mind and were helped with Tim in order to give us specific prompts or ideas in order to make our idea from the top of our head into a new story that haunts us into a scene in which we would then create if it is chosen in our group. I think this exercise was very helpful to gain insight on post horror as we were given the opportunity to expose ourselves to themes that post horror films follow whether this to focus on social aspects that are happening around the real world, racism, psychological or just something completely different and unique. My story followed the themes of grief, isolation and followed the aspects of mental health problems and how the main character goes insane. With the help of my group and their first round of feedback i got ideas flowing all around me in order to make this as scary as possible. My scene included a man on the run from a military force running away with his daughter who was not real and past away in which the man goes underground for hiding, he slowly finds the evils of all the world in a haunted experience where he doesn’t know what is real or not. I think the best part of this activity was hearing what everyone else’s ideas were, everyone on my table was really passionate about their own little project and i thought it was pretty special how quick we can create something and get hooked into it likes its our own world. A moment that gave me a sort of epiphany was understanding the things that other people had, i felt like if they said their piece of work they made before i even made mine, i would’ve been out of this world as it was just really creative and felt professional.
When i submitted my request to get into the Post Horror studio, i knew from the first time i saw the description that i had to be in this class. Not only was this class going to be full of horror enthusiasts, i myself was behind the attitude of this, on the first class i was surprised to realise how many horror movies there are and which many seriously good ones i have not persuaded myself to watch or even known about them. Whilst reading the description on the media factory website, my eyes were firstly drawn in and symbolise my reaction to the class, this was in fact Daniel Kaluuya’s character in Jordan Peel’s contemporary horror film ‘Get Out’.
Whilst reading the complete description of the class i wondered what it meant by post horror, is it ending? Is it somewhat a celebration of horror? Is it what is wrong with horror? Or is it something different entirely. The reason i took this class was that i wanted to explore the genre of horror. Furthermore, i never took time to consider horror as a primary focus in viewing films but through this engaging and changing genre provided with directors such as Jordan Peel, Ari aster and Robert Egger’s, my opinions changed quite quickly. I would say that my goals for this class would include a wide opportunity to attribute and provide groundwork for my future in filmmaking and the future in this field. These goals include, finding a better understanding and history behind how horror has evolved overtime from classical horror to international horror including giallo films, experimental horror and now contemporary horror which is regarded as post horror, another goal i would like to fulfil is to with the help of creating a short film, get my hands and experience on cameras and film equipment to brighten my range of experience in this field. Overall, im glad i chose this studio over the others as its obviously the most interesting and i think the most important as i believe that horror is the most exciting genre in all of film and to find out how the genre works gives the student a good centrepiece into how to work through this gigantic genre on a contemporary storytelling point of view.
Semester 1 was an exciting and new experience i will never forget in my university years. My studio i took was ‘the festival experience’ where myself and twenty classmates staged a film festival in around 12 weeks. In this festival i was one of the head programmers for the ‘Debut International Film Festival’ (DIFF) where we celebrated new and current film makers and their debut films into cinema. We opened our festival on Wednesday the 31st of May at ‘The Capitol’ theatre in which we screened Tony Scott’s ‘The Hunger’ in which we grew a crowd we did not expect at all. I think the big thing we did well was the selection of the program which included what we aimed for which was a diverse and somewhat unknown showcase, we didn’t want just white Americans, we wanted global directors whether they were male or female. Another success i think we had was committing to a role, i think everyone in our festival did their job they were assigned especially us programmers in which we split the team into shorts and feature films. I think with the shortcomings and the things we troubled with in our festival comes down to two things which were communication and advertising. I feel that we did use discord as a platform to its best abilities but our ‘entire’ team never really communicated well which may have been to a language barrier but we still managed to stage a festival to our best ability. The other issue we had was advertising, we ran out of time, we needed to advertise our festivals program at least weeks before its showcase instead of less than a week, our social media team could have tried better to advertise to the world throughout various social media applications and putting up posters a day before was also not the best experience. The readings throughout this studio helped me gain all my knowledge of film festivals and have now intrigued me into my future whether its now attending festivals or even promoting new ones. Firstly, the reading ‘Setting up a Human Rights Film Festival, vol 2′ helped myself understand the creations of a film festival and was used as a cookbook for us which showcased recipes on different ways onto how to create a film festival in any way shape or form no matter the genre of the festival is focusing on. Another reading that was very interesting to me was Mark Cousins’ ‘Film Festival Form: A Manifesto’ which gave myself the opportunity to read the do’s and don’ts of film festival in a persuasive and intriguing way which permits the terrible parts of festivals that are either overdone or just don’t sit right for this festival expert. Another reading that helped maintain my knowledge of film festivals were Senses of Cinema articles explaining attending festivals especially our lecturer Cerise Howard’s viewing of festivals and her language she uses on her pros and cons of her experience at festivals under pressure. Either than this, my research entered outside of class into myself watching several YouTube videos and supporting and realising film festivals all around the world are popular and i didn’t even know about them which leads me into future support and attendance of them. Moving on, at the end of the semester i entered another studio exhibition which was ‘Ready Camera One’. In this exhibition i watched various game show adaptions whether it was comedic or just interesting, i really enjoyed my time and was intrigued by the creativity each students created but the standout was hosted by Jamie Miller in his ‘Improv Games’. The parts that stood out to me was the ability of the contestants and the host to completely do as the title says was pretty fascinating and impressive and i felt with the ability of RMIT and its special multi cam RMITV studios, the media piece felt realistic and professionally made due to this. Another thing that stood out to me was the use of green screen at the start which was not only amusing but created in a way that sits the show in its vibe and creates that comedic element.
The Debut International Film Festival. What a journey. Before taking this studio, i had no ideas about the studio, i thought we were just going to draft a film festival, i thought we would just present to the class but i was wrong, very wrong and im glad i was. The Festival Experience studio has been my favourite studio of my course and our progress from where we just began is extraordinary to say the least. From the first weeks and ongoing weeks i did not even realise we were actually putting on a film festival, but this opportunity gave me the ideas of creativity and excitement to keep me forward and focused. Speaking about the festival’s conception, ideas were flowing all over us, did we want to focus on a singular genre like action? An action festival celebrating the global side of things like classic Jackie Chan movies and then we asked ourselves, what was his first movies and then BANG! The Debut International Film Festival before it was called that had a number of names, FIFF (first), DIFF (Different) and finally my favourite DIFF meaning Debut meaning firsts. Our aim was to celebrate directorial debuts from our favourite directors of all time in cinematic history and io think in the end we did a great job. By influences of uniqueness and inclusivity, our aim was to globally challenge our festival, we didn’t want to just have a white, American and male list, we wanted females and global attributes to provide the real image of cinema in our eyes. The parts of the festivals operations were very balanced and easy to find out, my job was very fun and also important at the same time, unlike marketing, production and social media teams, my job was very intimate, by this i mean it was very close and hidden from the festival, i was emailing so many companies it was incredible, i went into lengths i did not even know i could get to and this experience has given me many things; confidence, email wording skills, negotiating, patience(key) and the famous saying our lecturer constantly told us “maybe you do know someone” when we were wondering how to have contacts in these big film distribution companies which kept our hopes up. In all seriousness, confidence in my eyes alongside with being comfortable will get you success in this field and can lead to a bright future for you in this big industry, i can already say that before this studio i would not have the guts to be involved with anything but this festival made me realise what is the point and just do anything to help the team. Speaking of skills i had before the festival would include improvisation, this worked in the festival as we were thinking of slogans for the festival at our starting point brainstorming and i just shouted ‘Something DIFFerent’ and the class agreed then our lecturer asked “what do i call you guys” and i screamed ‘DIFFLOMATS!’ which i was surprised made sense and stuck with it. The division of labour across each team and area i think for our festival could definitely have been better, i felt that in some times i was doing too much then i was doing too less and didn’t flow through the same energy whilst trying to balance other classes but as soon as the dates got closer and closer this class became a high priority in organisation and dedication. Speaking of interpersonal dynamics and workflows and even things that i did to operate the festival, Film Freeway is my answer. I took the responsibility to be in charge of the creating, posting to the public and communicating with the global world of film freeway for our short films. With the help of the editorial team and my fellow programmers we created the rules, rewards, prices and mission statement for the festival in order for the short films to be accepted and our festival on the map. This process felt short but it was very long and learning how to operate a new system under a short time was a challenge and i am glad i proved myself and did the best work i could in that category. Speaking of successful relationships, with the help of my new and improved emailing skills, i had strong contacts with big companies like Village Roadshow with Dominic and Park Circus with Chris in which both of these were outer state, they contacted me immediately and even went out of their company to ensure i got the films i enquired about after hours too. Discussing my independent research and self-initiated activities alongside the great readings we were resourced, i felt that with this class i now understand what Cannes is and other big festivals and have been researching what is premiering and how its celebrated and how i can get tickets to more Melbournian film festivals in the future. Speaking of helping the festival research and activities, in the last week of classes, i went all around RMIT campus with buildings 13, 10, 80, 9 and many more, i planted our festival posters and then also in the city but mostly in my suburb of Fitzroy on popular streets that may attract attention, also with my own presence I continue to shoutout my film festival to all my community on social media. This experience was unreal, stressful but a rollercoaster of excitement.
Week 11 comes to an end and we are about to enter the last week of classes and our fate of the festival is upon us! This is not bad news at all, i myself am very excited and proud of every department for doing their best to balance classes, assignments and everyday life to promote this magnificent experience. In this week we mainly focused on film festivals all around the world to (since the beginning of our brainstorming to now)get motivation and experience from their websites, booklets and promotional material (social media). This initiative was very interesting to conquer as in reality, we did this at the start of our journey by follow the Séance International Film Festival which was the program held last year at RMIT. Their mission statement, rules and film freeway were a very big influence in our design, aim and point of view, we both believed in the same way of thinking but we had different focuses in the films of the festival. As for the design of their website, our reaction was in awe for some reason, we questioned how they did it, surely they paid someone to do it? But no they didn’t. A key positive of film freeway to me is that you can browse so many film festivals all around the world from the present to the past and see their mission, rules, submissions and even more information which eventually helped us to create our mission statement and rules. One thing that we all learnt from is that we are a new festival, no one knows us, so unlike film festivals that charge a lot more money than usual, we had to discount our priority and focus more on quantity and gamble with quality which the short films we got are extraordinary! Another festival that i got a booklet off of was the Birrarangga film festival 2023. This booklet celebrates indigenous films from across the globe and happened during March. This booklet is special amongst other booklets as it emphasises slightly our mission statement of commemorating the indigenous people for one. This booklet rather than just showing what is presented in the film festival, it shows a complete calendar of the festival exposing talks, feature films, short films along with dates and times and locations colour coded on a easy read timeline.
In week 10, urgency is all over us, we are getting closer and closer to the deadline and our release of our festival to the whole world. Our film freeway submissions are buzzing, our feature films are getting locked in and it looks like we are somewhat known around the film community. In this week, we got exposed like other weeks to our inspiration of past year festival experience experiences, more specifically, The Séance International Film Festival(SIFF). This festival was a year before us and they did a magnificent job and we want to replicate their expertise and positives as much as possible. SIFF promotes the use of horror as a formula to guarantee their audiences with a haunted and spooky time, their promotion of the festival especially with their trailer completely changed my mind on how we are doing this. As i watched the trailer they made, my imagination was lowered, how did they come up with this? Its so simple but it looks so professional. I realised that we needed to make use of that we are at RMIT University and that we needed to take advantage of our incentives at the University. The one thing that struck me with the SIFF team was that their social media and their website was extremely highly regarded from myself and my peers. The trailer and their theme was so easily construct and their website looked so professional, we didn’t know how a bunch of students could do such a thing. Another thing i wanted to touch on was that the members of the festival took advantage of their people that they knew, for example, their fundraiser. A student worked at a bar in Fitzroy and promoted a collaboration in order for a free venue hire and guaranteed money to fund the festival in a trivia night. Speaking shortly on the 2021 class, the Melbourne Overlooked Film Festival (MOFF) explored the opportunity of short films which we liked the idea of and we split our program into features and shorts alongside one another. The group also did well (and inspired myself as well) as they went on a film podcast called ‘Another Bloody Movie Podcast’ which could be areally opening and positive idea for more audience and acknowledged in the film world.
Week 8 was just like other weeks but closer to the deadline. In this week for myself, in the programming team, we split up into two groups, one for feature films and one for short films. Myself, Peter and Ben will present feature films and our ideas for our future presentation to three MIFF workers. The readings this week were actually pretty interesting and insightful to myself as both readings promoted our vision into what we wanted to accomplish. In the first reading, Cousins’ manifesto he creates about film festival was very insightful to myself as last semester i studied film manifesto’s so it was pretty easy and enjoyable to understand what he was saying and what his point of view was and why he was doing it(plus all the exclamation marks). A thing about this reading was some things i liked but also some things i didn’t resemble with. For example “no red carpets at film festivals” i think our festival should have one, i feel like we want to promote our festival and show everyone having fun, especially us creators who made it. Something that gave me hope and excitement was that he stated that the people who create and lead the festivals should “think of themselves as storytellers and stylists”. I want our festival to follow this, i want creativity and something no one is expecting, something like a gallery, everyone in awe other than the films of course. I feel like this reading in the class was brought up multiple times as a way of inspiration especially amongst us programmers, we talked about it and we thought it was really interesting how his manifesto was really different to our visions and we wondered if we are doing it the right way, should we abandon our approach? Listen to him? This piece was problematic in a good way and helped us eventually adapt our knowledge of film festivals, its not just a cinema viewing its definitely way more, more articulate to it.