Pre-production- ZOMBIES

COSTUME + MAKEUP

I put together a slide show of the topics covered, meaning the points specifically about the zombie makeup our group talked about with our teacher and the improvements and additional points that were discussed thereafter, I will go over them in depth underneath.
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(Slide 2) The test and influences have been covered in recent posts so a summary is:

We have heavily intertextualised elements of Shaun of the Dead, where some elements are close to a simulacra (Baudrillard) following a postmodernism theory, anchoring the preferred reading because if it is left as a polysemic reading, following many examples in the film industry, the preferred reading will be lost as the primary and secondary audience will have no anchorage to access it.
One of these elements is the makeup and therefor we are drawing heavy inspiration from zombie characters in Shaun of The Dead, especially Nick Frost's

(Slide 3) The Improvements from the first makeup test are:

- Firstly to include more blue and purple makeup, in the bruised areas of the zombies face's. This will make the look clearer on screen anchoring the fact that it is a zombie, not someone dressed as one.
- The hair wasn't worked on but we are probably going to add talcum powder to make it look more scruffy and dirty
- More white face paint needs to be used to make the character look pale, which is symbolic and connotes zombies as they are cold and dead, however in the example above that wasn't as clear so to anchor that we are going to use more white face paint.
- We didn't use the contacts we ordered as they had not arrived at this point, but they have now arrived so in are next makeup test we will get a completed look for the makeup.
- We also were unable to use liquid latex due to only spikey films and scope productions being together for the first test and neither of them had liquid latex with them.

(Slide 4) Additional points about the Zombie look 

- One of the zombies will have the pleasure of eating a dead corpses guts and we are going to attempt to achieve this using shallow field of focus and focusing heavily on the audio in post production editing.

- We need to use blood capsules for the zombies but we don't know how the effect will appear so we are looking to test that soon 

- We have decided to not film Sunday as we feel we need to test more points 

THEORY Postmodernism, Deconstructionism, Intertextuality, and Simulacra

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Postmodernism.

Postmodernism argues that all 'isms' (E.G capitalism, communism) are meaningless because these meta-narratives can no longer explain how the world run. However it is extremely self contradicting because Postmodernism is an ism!
The concept of postmodernism refuses definition to some extent, but Dominic Strinati outlined 5 key characteristics that help break it down:

1. Breakdown of the distinction between culture and society
2. An emphasis on style over substance
3. Breakdown of the distinction between high art and popular culture
4. Confusions over time and space
5. Decline of metanarratives ['grand theories such as Marxism, Christianity and ... modernism have lost their use for current societies']

Deconstructionism.

This refers to the use of existing convention for ironic purpose, in a knowing way, and the audience is assumed to be in on irony.

A perfect example of this is in the movie Scream, the Matthew Lillard character decides to get more drinks and as he is leaving he dramatically calls out "I'll be right back", a reference to the classic horror convention that denotes a character will be killed.  The other teens at the party respond with the knowledge of this old trope, all of this happens whilst in a scene where they're watching Halloween.  Craven is deliberately making fun, or attacking the genre he played a role in creating 1972's The Last House on the Left.
This occurs in all media, the Depeche Mode video is a classic example, breaking down the band's poor tawdry image and the male gaze.

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Intertextuality

A simple but important concept that originated from Kristeva. It refers to the idea that, for an audience to access the preferred reading (Stuart Hall) they must have knowledge of a secondary text, which is usually a older text that is referenced in a newer text. This is most easily seen through TV shows such as the Simpsons as they are built around the very concept, but there is a very strong presence of this idea in the slasher genre. This is why John Carpenter cast the daughter of the 1960 scream queen, as his final girl. It helps gain publicity.

Simulacra

Scary movie best represents the ideas above. It takes intertextuality to a new level with little details like how Screams working title was scary movie, and the film is a comedic remake. It very clearly, and quite literally, shows the conventions (eg the Carmen Electra scream queen sees a sign giving the options for either death or safety... and runs up the stairs where the death sign points to, as the dumb scream queens tend to).
These movies have been analysed in detail, especially as far as gender representations. Baudrillard might argue that this leads nowhere as there is no ultimate meaning behind an endless limits of signifiers; Scary Movie is an expression of many existing ideas or signifiers, which cannot be tracked back to any concrete 'true reality' or meaning. 

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References
DB (2011) Theoretical evaluation of production post on blogger [online] Available from http://prodeval.blogspot.com/2011/04/postmodernism.html [17/11/19]
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