Varieties of Zombieism: Approaching Comparative Political Economy though 28 Days Later and Wild Zero (Derek Hall) takes the comparison between Zombies and Capitalism to a level I have never seen before! I didn't read the section on Wild Zero as I have not seen the film and found it hard enough to follow the section on 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle 2002) despite my familiarity with the film. This has nothing to do with bad wording or writing you just need to spend a lot of time solidifying the economics and the history of capitalism before even attempting to apply it to the films.
Hall first shows that in today's media permeated world, with zombies on top, the undead creatures of the night can even reach the more dry and most serious of subjects, the banking crisis, which is clearly one of the most important things happening in the world now and for the last 10 years. He quotes news sources using terms such as "zombie crises" and "zombie banks" showing how far the ideological link between zombies and banking/ capitalism has grown to be widely accepted by both audiences and film makers, it no longer needs to be made an issue of, everyone gets it and is now applying it to real life. Hall's most interesting and compelling argument, the focus of the essay, is that in 28 Days Later the outbreak of "rage zombies" mimics the "outbreak" of capitalism as outlined in Ellen Meiksins Wood's The Origin of Capitalism (Wood 2002).
The article is elloquent and full of small points and explination about both 28 Days later and The Origins of Capitalism however after sifting through all of the difficult language it boils down to three main points (that I can get my head round):
1. Capitalism began and stayed in England. From the 1400's to the 1900's England was the only Capitalist country.
2. Capitalism happened by accident or more appropriately "capitalism emerged as an unintended consequence of he struggles of feudal actors trying to reproduce themselves as they were."
3. "Once it did emerge, its dynamism meant that it would inexorably spread"
In comparison:
1. The whole film is simply set in England, one of the characters suggests that England has even been quarantined, further suggesting it wont spread any further, exactly like capitalism.
2. "Two social groups- scientists and animal rights activists- have confronted each other within the constraints of an existing social system, a confrontation in which both groups are carrying out their respective roles" Similarly to the lords and peasants of the 1400's. "Rage" is released by accident and all become infected "more precisely, as an unintended consequence of struggles between people who have no intention of changing the fundamental nature of social relations"
3. Zombies continue to consume, there is no doubt about that!
Some compelling arguments, and thats not all of them, religious and rebellious parallels are also drawn but for me the best other line is the comparison between the army barracks at the end of 28 days Later and Soviet Union. "having followed stirring calls to action that spoke of salvation and the answer to zombieism/ capitalism, what they have discovered instead is an oppressive militaristic society engaged in an armed stand off with capitalism and hoping capitalism will collapse of its own accord." A truly brilliant analysis which I hope was encoded by Danny Boyle and the writers and not just something read into the film.
The section like the film itself ends with the opening up of the story to a world wide stage and Hall describes the translation in capitalist terms as "the persistence of diversity in the globaal political economy that allows our heroes to be rescued".
I found this really enlightening even if it was really difficult to understand I feel as though I learned a lot whilst reading it and what I learned is reasonably applicable and well evidenced in the case of 28 Days Later it has definitely given another new reading to the film. Not only that but next time I see the common capitalist subtext in zombie films I will look more closely at what it is actually saying rather than jsut taking for granted the fact that it is there like I have in the past.
Wednesday, 28 November 2012
Tuesday, 27 November 2012
Some Kind of Virus: The Zombie as Body and as Trope (Jen Webb and Sam Byrand)
One of the items I have found to inform my discussion and research is an article in the journal Body and Society. Some Kind of Virus: The Zombie as Body and as Trope (by Jen Webb and Sam Byrand) Body & Society June 2008 issue 14 page 83-98.
The article begins with a simple validation of itself, the article is important because of the character of the Zombie being so important and prevalent in modern film and literature. The introduction of Zombies sums everything up nicely; "(zombie's have) become a very familiar character, one that participates in narratives of the body, of life and death, of good and evil, one that gestures to alterity, racism, species-ism, the inescapable, the immutable. Thus it takes us to 'the other side'- alienation, death and what is worse than death: the state of being undead"
A comparison between humans and Zombies follows, one made interesting by the idea that maybe they are scary and unnerving because they are so similar and that darkness is within us. Whilst the comparison is well made unfortunately the horror of us being similar to them is poorly made within a section on Freud and psychoanalysis which is sloppy, confusing and badly written. The comparisons are as follows; "Like humans, zombies aren't social isolates" "they seek well beyond their local region" "there is always something "nearly me" about the monster" "The transmission of the virus between us indicates our 'closeness'" Before the section on psychoanalysis the term zombie is massively opened up to include Golems and Xenomorphs which I do not personally agree are zombies despite similar thematic tendencies.
The psychoanalytical part focuses on drive need and desire however as I previously stated the section is confusing and contradictory. The most interesting thing in the section call back to the idea of our closeness and the bridging of Zombies and humans that occurs with Jim in 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle 2002) and in Bob in Day of the Dead (George A Romero 1984). The lack of a wish of survivors in zombie films to culturally distance themselves from the zombies is another interesting thing that is talked about in both of these films as well as in Omega Man (Boris Sagal 1971).
The next section is a basic but well informed argument about the capitalist themes within the majority of zombie films. The most interesting and basic of points being: "Capitalist competition is visible in its roughest, rawest form in depictions of the average zombie, who spends all of his or her energies in struggling to gain more and more- the perfect consumer, the perfect exemplar of the search for personal advance through self interest." It compares both consumers and capitalism itself to zombieism in the statement "The problem is that capitalism doesn't care, and doesn't weigh human costs. It is simply zombie- hungry, and hence focused on feeding and expanding regardless of the consequences"
In conclusion the article ends by asking why discuss the zombie trope? It answers by saying than in a world full of internal and external pressures it would be easy to "collapse into zombie status; mindlessly consume and/ or exile from ourselves the capacity to feel, and thus be." however by "Bringing zombieness, the hidden aspects of the self and society into light" we can "consider more reflectively what it means to be 'me'" A really interesting idea and conclusion however it is a shame this idea isn't highlighted in the introduction and more constructively used as a theme and point of the article.
The article begins with a simple validation of itself, the article is important because of the character of the Zombie being so important and prevalent in modern film and literature. The introduction of Zombies sums everything up nicely; "(zombie's have) become a very familiar character, one that participates in narratives of the body, of life and death, of good and evil, one that gestures to alterity, racism, species-ism, the inescapable, the immutable. Thus it takes us to 'the other side'- alienation, death and what is worse than death: the state of being undead"
A comparison between humans and Zombies follows, one made interesting by the idea that maybe they are scary and unnerving because they are so similar and that darkness is within us. Whilst the comparison is well made unfortunately the horror of us being similar to them is poorly made within a section on Freud and psychoanalysis which is sloppy, confusing and badly written. The comparisons are as follows; "Like humans, zombies aren't social isolates" "they seek well beyond their local region" "there is always something "nearly me" about the monster" "The transmission of the virus between us indicates our 'closeness'" Before the section on psychoanalysis the term zombie is massively opened up to include Golems and Xenomorphs which I do not personally agree are zombies despite similar thematic tendencies.
The psychoanalytical part focuses on drive need and desire however as I previously stated the section is confusing and contradictory. The most interesting thing in the section call back to the idea of our closeness and the bridging of Zombies and humans that occurs with Jim in 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle 2002) and in Bob in Day of the Dead (George A Romero 1984). The lack of a wish of survivors in zombie films to culturally distance themselves from the zombies is another interesting thing that is talked about in both of these films as well as in Omega Man (Boris Sagal 1971).
The next section is a basic but well informed argument about the capitalist themes within the majority of zombie films. The most interesting and basic of points being: "Capitalist competition is visible in its roughest, rawest form in depictions of the average zombie, who spends all of his or her energies in struggling to gain more and more- the perfect consumer, the perfect exemplar of the search for personal advance through self interest." It compares both consumers and capitalism itself to zombieism in the statement "The problem is that capitalism doesn't care, and doesn't weigh human costs. It is simply zombie- hungry, and hence focused on feeding and expanding regardless of the consequences"
In conclusion the article ends by asking why discuss the zombie trope? It answers by saying than in a world full of internal and external pressures it would be easy to "collapse into zombie status; mindlessly consume and/ or exile from ourselves the capacity to feel, and thus be." however by "Bringing zombieness, the hidden aspects of the self and society into light" we can "consider more reflectively what it means to be 'me'" A really interesting idea and conclusion however it is a shame this idea isn't highlighted in the introduction and more constructively used as a theme and point of the article.
Thursday, 22 November 2012
Dead Man Still Walking: Explaining the Zombie Renaissance (Kyle Bishop)
Dead Man Still Walking: A Critical Investigation Into the Rise and Fall...and Rise of Zombie Cinema by Kyle Bishop is an amazing looking paper on Zombie films and culture today however I have only been able to access one section so far. Dead man walking; Explaining the Zombie Renaissance (Dead Man Still Walking: A Critical Investigation Into the Rise and Fall...and Rise of Zombie Cinema p17-25) this section talks about the links between natural disasters, terrorist attacks and Zombies in a post 9/11 world.
The chapter begins with some context about films in general replicating their times "atomic weapons at the end of World War II ushered in paranoia narratives" for example and Communist threat inspired alien invasion stories" in the 50's. This sets up the key idea that it is the terrorist attack on September 11 2001 in the USA that is the cause of zombie films re emergence. Bishop supposes "genre conventions of zombie cinema fit post 9/11 consciousness well" representing the "inescapable realities of unnatural death" and "a modern apocalypse in which societies infrastructure breaks down" this rings true and makes a lot of sense. Bishop backs his argument up by comparing tv news with zombie films, a stark but often true parallel.
The chapter takes a turn for the historical, briefly summarising Romero's zombie films and how they represent their times and their concurrent box office success and failure. He attributes the low production of zombie films in the 09's to "too much complacency and stability for zombie movies to fit the national mood." He does however also address the move of the zombie story to video games such as Resident Evil and Doom where they were "incubated" until the film world was ready to see the narrative again.
28 Days Later (2002 Danny Boyle) is the film Bishop and many others credit with the reignition of the zombie craze in the UK whilst at the same time in the US Hollywood was creating the film spin off of the resident evil franchise. Both earned massive amounts at the BO and cemented the return of the zombie genre. The amount of Zombie media that is produced now is insane, the list goes on and on through all types of media and Bishop attributes it all to terrorism and natural disasters. Bishop notes that the conventions of zombie films haven't changed but are "more relevant to a modern contemporary audience."
The fear of zombies is theorised about a lot and many different ideas are definitely at play Bishop lists a few of the reasons he thinks people fear zombies: "they are corpses of the known dead", "technically dead rather than the romantic undead", "they cannot be reasoned with" "zombie directly manifests the visual horrors of death" and "every viewer could both fear and relate to the zombie... everyone will die and rot." I like a lot of these theories, there are more for sure but these are definitely some of the reasons we as an audience are so scared and interested in Zombies.
Another interesting theory Bishop poses as a contributor to the popularity of Zombie films is the survivalist fantasies audiences can play out whilst watching post apocalyptic films. True there are many real life Survivalists that take the feeling to the extreme but even more true is that there is a little part of all of us that thinks "thats how I would do it" or "I wouldn't go in there alone, unarmed." Bishop mentions capitalism as falling when zombies arise however there are more focused studies on this I will discuss later. Interestingly he also draws parallel's between zombieism and Euthanasia, in Land of the Dead specifically where infected people can be killed before or after they are turned, like the terminally ill. The last point Bishop makes before starting his main argument is that it is not the zombies that pose the major threats, for example in Dawn of the Dead 78 the bikers destroy the equilibrium. Likewise in 28 days later it is the soldiers that pose the real threat and fear of rape and bodily harm that are "real world potentialities, they are all the more terrifying"
Bishop's main theory displayed in the article is that he believes terrorism and natural disasters are the reason for the Zombie renaissance. His first piece of evidence is that when people see natural disasters or terrorism one of the most common statements is "its like something out of a movie". Another piece of evidence to support his theory is that 28 Days Later takes inspiration from "footage from the "killing fields" of Cambodia during the reign of Pol Pot and the lost family board on an "actual street scene following a devastating earthquake in China." Bishop ends this section with an excerpt from an interview in which a traumatised victim of 9/11 who was more prepared for the horror because of zombie films. He also states the worrying and stark truth that "today (zombie movies) are all the more shocking because of their familiarity.
Overall Bishop shows himself to be a true scholar in zombie theory and study and shows that there are a large number of reasons for the zombie renaissance Whilst bringing up some interesting themes and motifs within Zombie films he shows that Terrorism and Natural disasters are similar to the horrors of zombie films we see on screen and that fact isn't so far from fiction.... at least visually.
The chapter begins with some context about films in general replicating their times "atomic weapons at the end of World War II ushered in paranoia narratives" for example and Communist threat inspired alien invasion stories" in the 50's. This sets up the key idea that it is the terrorist attack on September 11 2001 in the USA that is the cause of zombie films re emergence. Bishop supposes "genre conventions of zombie cinema fit post 9/11 consciousness well" representing the "inescapable realities of unnatural death" and "a modern apocalypse in which societies infrastructure breaks down" this rings true and makes a lot of sense. Bishop backs his argument up by comparing tv news with zombie films, a stark but often true parallel.
The chapter takes a turn for the historical, briefly summarising Romero's zombie films and how they represent their times and their concurrent box office success and failure. He attributes the low production of zombie films in the 09's to "too much complacency and stability for zombie movies to fit the national mood." He does however also address the move of the zombie story to video games such as Resident Evil and Doom where they were "incubated" until the film world was ready to see the narrative again.
28 Days Later (2002 Danny Boyle) is the film Bishop and many others credit with the reignition of the zombie craze in the UK whilst at the same time in the US Hollywood was creating the film spin off of the resident evil franchise. Both earned massive amounts at the BO and cemented the return of the zombie genre. The amount of Zombie media that is produced now is insane, the list goes on and on through all types of media and Bishop attributes it all to terrorism and natural disasters. Bishop notes that the conventions of zombie films haven't changed but are "more relevant to a modern contemporary audience."
The fear of zombies is theorised about a lot and many different ideas are definitely at play Bishop lists a few of the reasons he thinks people fear zombies: "they are corpses of the known dead", "technically dead rather than the romantic undead", "they cannot be reasoned with" "zombie directly manifests the visual horrors of death" and "every viewer could both fear and relate to the zombie... everyone will die and rot." I like a lot of these theories, there are more for sure but these are definitely some of the reasons we as an audience are so scared and interested in Zombies.
Another interesting theory Bishop poses as a contributor to the popularity of Zombie films is the survivalist fantasies audiences can play out whilst watching post apocalyptic films. True there are many real life Survivalists that take the feeling to the extreme but even more true is that there is a little part of all of us that thinks "thats how I would do it" or "I wouldn't go in there alone, unarmed." Bishop mentions capitalism as falling when zombies arise however there are more focused studies on this I will discuss later. Interestingly he also draws parallel's between zombieism and Euthanasia, in Land of the Dead specifically where infected people can be killed before or after they are turned, like the terminally ill. The last point Bishop makes before starting his main argument is that it is not the zombies that pose the major threats, for example in Dawn of the Dead 78 the bikers destroy the equilibrium. Likewise in 28 days later it is the soldiers that pose the real threat and fear of rape and bodily harm that are "real world potentialities, they are all the more terrifying"
Bishop's main theory displayed in the article is that he believes terrorism and natural disasters are the reason for the Zombie renaissance. His first piece of evidence is that when people see natural disasters or terrorism one of the most common statements is "its like something out of a movie". Another piece of evidence to support his theory is that 28 Days Later takes inspiration from "footage from the "killing fields" of Cambodia during the reign of Pol Pot and the lost family board on an "actual street scene following a devastating earthquake in China." Bishop ends this section with an excerpt from an interview in which a traumatised victim of 9/11 who was more prepared for the horror because of zombie films. He also states the worrying and stark truth that "today (zombie movies) are all the more shocking because of their familiarity.
Overall Bishop shows himself to be a true scholar in zombie theory and study and shows that there are a large number of reasons for the zombie renaissance Whilst bringing up some interesting themes and motifs within Zombie films he shows that Terrorism and Natural disasters are similar to the horrors of zombie films we see on screen and that fact isn't so far from fiction.... at least visually.
Shooting day!
Wow, what a jam packed few hours. Our set was pretty much ready, our shot list was done and we were almost ready to shoot so I expected it to go smoothly. It didn't, we were lucky to get everything filmed in time. My role was sort of camera, although we had cinematographers to do most of the camera stuff I was th person they referred to on anything they didn't understand, principally because I am the one who did the shot list. One of the simplest and biggest problems was the classic "too many cooks", everyone was trying to do their thing and work their bit out and everyone just got in everyone's way. Im not surprised as in a small set we had 5 crew, 5 cinematographers, 2 tutors and 1 actor and there was another set with the same just next to us. Me and Stella (our producer) suggested some people come off set and sit out of the way but nobody listened. I think it would have been much smoother if we had spoken to the cinematographers before hand, we also should have finished dress making and makeup testing the week before. Our set looks really nice and well lit in the photo's, I haven't yet seen the footage but am pretty hopeful about how it looks. I enjoyed the green screening and shooting in general but did more organising and floor managing than I think was my role. I think I should have taken on more responsibility at the start so that the crew were more prepared to be organised by me and didn't feel I was taking over.
Anyway hectic drama aside we got everything we needed and it was a generally successful shoot. Here are some of the images of the set:
Saturday, 10 November 2012
Set Dressing
We had to do some of the set dressing for our Creative project today, our aim is basically to create a girls bedroom with a mirror in. So we set about turning two blank walls that create a corner of a set into an actual space. After basic wallpapering we began by adding a fireplace making one wall a feature wall for our all important mirror. We also cut a whole behind our mirror for the hand through the mirror shot.
We only had limited resources so the wallpaper wasn't very girly, so Joeley Beckett, our art director, started to cut out bits from other wallpaper to decorate the wall with decoupage flowers. My first job was to black out the back of the fireplace, without any black pain I resorted to using black sheets and staples. This may actually work better as it doesn't reflect any light. I helped with sticking down some decoupage whilst the wallpapering was finished and then began to hang drapes. This again is to make the room feel more like a lived in girls room, it also hides some of the dodgier bits of wallpapering. We made sure we were only dressing the relevant parts of the set, keeping in mind buts of the wall will be covered by the bed and some bits wont be in the film at all. I then worked on the curtains, as we had no curtain rail or curtains I impovised some semi closed curtains with a staple gun and some pink material, the challenging part of this was making the sheet look like curtains, I used blue tack to help me shape them a little before letting Aaron finish off the job by covering them with gold netting per out art directors instructions.
and this is it near completion
again nearly finished but with the lights off
I then began to shot list our film, we have a full audio visual description but were told we can only use 3-5 shots so have altered our vision a little. Here is our shot list for next week:
Fingers crossed it goes well!
We only had limited resources so the wallpaper wasn't very girly, so Joeley Beckett, our art director, started to cut out bits from other wallpaper to decorate the wall with decoupage flowers. My first job was to black out the back of the fireplace, without any black pain I resorted to using black sheets and staples. This may actually work better as it doesn't reflect any light. I helped with sticking down some decoupage whilst the wallpapering was finished and then began to hang drapes. This again is to make the room feel more like a lived in girls room, it also hides some of the dodgier bits of wallpapering. We made sure we were only dressing the relevant parts of the set, keeping in mind buts of the wall will be covered by the bed and some bits wont be in the film at all. I then worked on the curtains, as we had no curtain rail or curtains I impovised some semi closed curtains with a staple gun and some pink material, the challenging part of this was making the sheet look like curtains, I used blue tack to help me shape them a little before letting Aaron finish off the job by covering them with gold netting per out art directors instructions.
Here is a pic of the set before half done
I then began to shot list our film, we have a full audio visual description but were told we can only use 3-5 shots so have altered our vision a little. Here is our shot list for next week:
Friday, 9 November 2012
Working Safely in Uni
In todays lesson we went over some basic health and safety stuff and worked a little with power tools. This allows us access to power tools in the future which will be helpful for set and prop building. Most of the stuff was pretty basic, sweep up sawdust, how to use a transformer properly ect ect. I am pretty familiar with this sort of thing as I have done some building work but it is good to be allowed to do woodwork in the eyes of the university.
We also talked to the safety officer, mainly about lifting safely and not damaging our backs. Again I have done a lot of this before but it was good to get a refresher. Finally we looked at the walls we will be using for our sets. It will be a challenge to get them looking professional with little resources and funding but the set walls themselves seem relatively cheap and effective.
We also talked to the safety officer, mainly about lifting safely and not damaging our backs. Again I have done a lot of this before but it was good to get a refresher. Finally we looked at the walls we will be using for our sets. It will be a challenge to get them looking professional with little resources and funding but the set walls themselves seem relatively cheap and effective.
Thursday, 1 November 2012
Visual/ Audio description for CPR
The setting is a girl of 18’s room at night, the only light source are some fairy lights (and this is established by a l/s of the room with the girl asleep?????). M/S of girl’s face and shoulders as she wakes up peacefully. The reason she awakens is she can hear a noise coming from her mirror. The girl gets up and approaches the mirror, as seen pov from mirror’s perspective. The camera tracks up her body edited with flashes of muddy identical feet, hands and eventually her face. There is something wrong with the way the muddy version’s extremities are positioned. Over the shoulder shot of the girl, we see her muddy doppelganger in t
he mirror. Everything is exactly as it is in the girl’s world but in the mirror world everything around the doppelganger is on fire but she doesn’t seem alarmed. She mirrors the girl exactly but with odd, jerky movements. From an aerial shot we see the girl reach toward the mirror and from a side view we see the doppelganger mirror her but with jerky movement, as if something isn’t quite right in the mirrorverse. When the girls hand connects with the mirror, the surface ripples and the girl withdraws her hand quickly in shock. A c/u of the mirror reveals mirrorverse girl’s face, lighting in the mirror flickers over her face reflected from the fire around her. Her mouth opens in a silent scream. Jump cut to the reverse shot of the girl whose face becomes splattered with blood and reverse shot to the mirrorverse girls whose mouth remains open whilst blood pours down her chin. A shot from over the girls shoulder as she turns her head away from the mirror to wipe the blood from her face reveals the mirrorverse her to be moving independently of her origin. She moves jerkily toward the mirror. Only the audience can see her moving as the protagonist is facing away from the mirror. Cut to a stop trick of the mirror which shows the mirror then suddenly a hand reaching through it. The stop - trick is to create a sense of unreal speed and jerkiness from the mirrorverse self as she tries to get through the mirror to grab her counterpart. C/U of the girl gasping for breath and the dirty fingernails of the mirrorverse self marking her neck. Cut back to first m/s of girl’s face and shoulders that's shown as she awakens but this time with a gasp instead of peacefully, revealing her still marked neck.
END.
END.
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