Here’s an excerpt from the last few days’ work on formal aspects of paranormal reality. Also, happy first day of 2012, the year I finish and defend this dissertation…
Both horror and melodrama are significantly reliant on music and sound effects to create an ominous atmosphere of foreboding and increasing tension: paranormal reality, not surprisingly then, underscores much of its action with eerie background music easily found in cinematic horror. Horror cinema is also known for its use of dim lighting or darkness, manipulating shadow and light to heighten the fear and suspense experienced by the viewer and also found in the aesthetic of Gothic television as elaborated by Helen Wheatley; indeed, paranormal reality programming takes place primarily at night, in darkness or with a minimum of light (candles, flashlights, etc.). Hand-held or otherwise subjective camerawork, including tracking shots, have become a familiar characteristic of Gothic television and paranormal reality, with investigative teams using multiple cameras as they attempt to gather evidence of a haunting.
For no reason, here's Jud Crandall. He wanted to wish you a happy new year.
A number of other formal characteristics associated with horror are on display in paranormal reality, where odd camera angles, including canted shots, create a sense of unease for the viewer along with the regular employment of filters, flash inserts, distorted images, superimpositions, quick zooms, and the manipulation of time through sped-up film and video along with slow-motion. While these can all be considered characteristics of Gothic television, a mode to which paranormal reality unquestionably belongs, they also function to suggest that the viewer is watching a horror film, emphatically granting agency to the paranormal and displacing the origin of trauma originating in the family.
January 2, 2012
drewdimera
