Individual ResearchBY CIARAN AHERN

The Walking Dead

The walking dead is a TV series based around a police officer, who went into a coma after being shot. When he wakes, he finds himself in an empty abandoned hospital in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. This series follow him trying to find his wife and child and then shows how he leads their group.

This is a very effective series as it was supposed to be a mini-series that ended at the end of series 1 however due to a huge fan base, it is now on its 5th series.

The Walking Dead

The main character is an ex-police officer which immediately shows he would be authoritative, while keeping to morals and decisive in tense situations.

From the first series to the fifth series the zombies have slowly have been made up to look more decayed to add the versimility.

I also notice that the characters developed a lot over the series meaning every character was vital to the story.

One thing I noticed was that none of the characters used the word zombie during the series, this shows the characters didn't expect the outbreak and still believed they could be cured.

Saw

Saw is a movie series based around a killer who captures his victims and makes them do challenges that could risk their life or their families lives and often have to compete with other people to save their own family over the other persons.

The Saw series is often watched by viewers to see if they can bare the gore seen onscreen. Saw has been a very successful film series as it has produced seven saw films and 2 video games.

Saw

Saw is know to be very gory and while having very little jump scares, it is still an effective horror as the audience want to try and sit through the whole experience.

It is also related to pig masks and a well know 'Jigsaw' mask which is seen in many of the films.

I felt this was a very good example of the use of injuries as although they are not injuries directly related to zombies, I felt we could use them as a target/template for our characters injuries.

I Am Legend

A scientist is a survivor of a disease that changes people into zombies. This was caused by a genetically modified strand of the measles virus that would attack cancerous cells. The film follows our protagonist as he tries to develop a cure to the disease.

This film was based on Richard Matheson's novel 'I Am Legend' and was released in cinemas on the 26th of December 2007 and had a huge budget of around $150,000,000.

I Am Legend

In I Am Legend, Instead of following the convention that the zombies were slow moving and clumsy, it challenges the conventions by representing the zombies as fast agile creatures.

I like the idea of it following the story of a lone survivor whose only companion is his dog. I felt this was effective as we can empathise for the protagonist as we see how both have stayed loyal to each other when times got hard.

Although this is effective, I feel it would be too challenging to control an animal and therefore won't use animals however like the idea of only 2 survivors as it creates a good bond and no one is left out.

We also like the idea of being thrown straight into the middle of the apocalypse as we are left with lots of narrative enigmas.

Wolf Creek

Three hikers decide to take a walk through Wolf Creek National Park, however when they get back to their car, it won't start. A local bushman offers them a place to stay however it isn't as they expect

This film was made in 2005 and had a sequel based around the same antagonist in 2013. This, unlike I Am Legend, had a very small budget of $1,000,000.

Wolf Creek

This film follows a similar structure to other major horror films like The Hitcher, Wrong Turn and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This is a useful film for research as it shows us how a low budget horror film follows the conventions of larger horror films.

It also shows us good conventions to follow as there is a guarantee that they will be successful because there are multiple horror films that follow a certain pattern

I felt this was a good film as, similar to our first idea, it is based around three protagonists which could give us an idea of balancing shots around the three protagonists and working out if everyone gets equal screen time or if one is more important than the other two.

It was also useful as it gave me an idea of how to present an abandoned/isolated location which is a convention of zombie horrors.

28 Days Later

28 Days later is set 4 weeks after disease has spread throughout the UK and follows the story of a group of survivors trying to find a safe area to live.

It was released on the 1st of November 2002 and had a relatively small budget of $8,000,000

It had a sequel based around the same protagonist released in 2007 called “28 Weeks Later”, showing it is a popular zombie film

28 Days Later

In 28 days later, I felt that the make up would be very useful as an idea for our zombies as the facial makeup isn’t to exaggerated however still looks very convincing.

This is also a film that is based around a group of protagonists in the middle of an apocalypse which is similar to our initial ideas for a zombie horror.

28 days later, similarly to The Walking Dead and I Am Legend, starts during the apocalypse and both 28 days later and The Walking Dead start with the protagonist waking from a coma in an abandoned hospital.