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Adrienne Chavez
Professor McClure
Writing 39B
5/17/2017
The Girl RIP
For this rhetorical analysis assignment, I worked with my group to

make a film that reflected the fears of our intended audience. Our film was

made to be shown to my instructor and peers in the writing 39B English class

and so as a group we agreed that we wanted to create something that would

appeal and relate to the majority of our audience. According to the article

Horror Films by Tim Dirks, Senior Editor and Film Reviewer for AMC Networks,

Horror Films are unsettling films designed to frighten and to invoke our

hidden worst fears while captivating and entertaining us at the same time

in a cathartic experience. At this school, midterms are constant and

nonstop and so we made the main issue for out protagonist stress, because

she has to balance doing well in school with a social life. The cultural context

of this film is about UCI students in a modern college setting so that the film

could be relatable to the audience. The text that we wrote for this film

focused slightly on dialogue and mostly on setting and actions thats would

take place to make this film fulfill the horror genre characteristics. Most of

the dialogue takes place at the beginning of the film and so words play a

small role in the film. The genre of the film is horror and so we focused our

film in less on words and more on action to bring the desired effect. The

setting in out horror film is a trope that can be recognized in a lot of horror

situations according to the website TV Tropes. Our film is an embodiment of

anxieties that modern college students face when choosing to pursue higher
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education. We wanted our film to fulfill the qualities of horror presented in

Nol Carrolls article, The Nature of Horror to show that we understood the

standards of the genre.

The purpose of this project is so make a film that would demonstrate

our understanding of the horror genre by fulfilling the typical qualities

expected of the horror genre. In order to do this, we used cultural context to

parallel the actual fears and stress that our audience faces. The cultural

context of our film is about a modern college student at UCI. We focused on

the culture that surrounds our audience and ourselves. According to Noel

Many college students face stress because of the pressure that is placed by

them and often times also parents. For out film we made the monster a

metaphor for the stress that terrorizes many college students. The

protagonist of our film feels pressure from her mother to balance everything

and do well in all of her classes. Many people feel the need to do the same

and fear that there is never enough time to study enough our do everything

as well as they would like. The monster in this film terrorizes the protagonist

and other characters much like stress is constant and is always affecting

someone. This demonstrates the cyclic patterns of stress among college

students.

o takes place in a college setting at uci in a bathroom noel

carroll, reflection of ral cultural fear.

o Tim Dirks Horror film can be extremely potent film forms, tapping

into our dream states and the horror of the irrational and unknown, and

the horror within man himself.

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Another way that we added horror qualities to our film is through the

tropes that we chose to use. One of the main tropes that we used is that the

protagonist enters an abandoned area. According to TV Tropes, an

abandoned area creates suspense and increases the surprise when it turns

out that the place isn't really abandoned. This is the perfect setup to give

the character vulnerability and give the monster unmatched strength. In our

film project, the protagonist enters a bathroom alone and is reluctant to

leave once she notices that things are strange despite there being signs that

she should leave. The abandonment helps to build suspense and once it is

revealed that the protagonist is not alone the film is able to invoke fear in the

audience. She is alone to witness the monster and so this creates an uneven

struggle between her and this interstitial being. Even when the protagonist in

the film tries to escape, the door does not open and there is no one else

around besides the monster to hear her cries for help or to do anything to

stop her from being attacked. The monster in our film appears to be human

girl with some unsettling attributes that make her a typical horror trope. Her

face is never revealed which adds a sense of mystery and fear that the

monster cannot be identified like in slasher films where the murderer is

rarely reveled. Her arms and legs are also covered in blood, which

demonstrate that some damage has been done. Limbs should not be

covered in blood normally and so this demonstrates that the monster has

either gone through damage and perhaps is willing to do the same to its

victims. The bloody eye is also a very important trope that we used in the
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film to cause a bit of discomfort and fear in the audience. According to TV

Tropes, audiences get squicked out by horrible things happening to

our body or our eyes, so too do they get absolutely sickened by the thought

of something horriblehappening to our faces. The bloody eyes show

something abnormal and the fact that they are in our protagonist and

monster demonstrates that the two might be similar and connected. An

audience is inclined to support the protagonist and so by making the two

opposites similar, we are able to inflict panic and dismay.

For this assignment, I helped to contribute to making the horror film by

being an actress and an editor. I was girl 2 and my role was very small and

brief. My character is a representation of what everyone else tends to see,

which is normalcy. The role of my character says few lines but she is only

able to see the surface and is unable to see that anything terrorizing will

happen. My character is not able to understand that stress that terrorizes

those around her because she does not care to look for it. As an actress, I

helped to write the lines for my character in this final scene in order to make

everything seem natural and as natural as possible. I also helped to give

input on the scenes I was in. I adjusted my lines and also suggested where

the scenes begin so that the entrance would be clean and flow well.
Another role I had in this film is as the editor. I was responsible for

putting the whole film together. Since there were many takes and many

shots of the same scene taken from different angles taken it was difficult to

make everything work as seamless as possible and sometimes it was difficult

to make scenes work together. In order to make the editing work well, I was
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also there during the entire filming process. Although I was not a major actor

or had a major role in the whole filming experience, I had to be present in

order to observe how everything was being filmed and take note of the best

scenes and how the takes should be placed in order. I worked a lot with

Diana, who was in charge of filming, to make sure that the shots were made

from the same angles so that transitions between takes could fit well

together. We wanted the scenes to be clear and portray the desired effect.

One of they trickier scenes to film was the one with the girl with the bloody

legs. It was a very brief scene but it was difficult not to get shots that were

too high and showed Sharon or Nellys pants because they are supposed to

be in the bathroom. It would be difficult to know how to make everything

work without being there in order to understand the experience. Since the

filming did not take place in order, I had to rearrange and choose the best

scenes so that they would work well together. I also added sound effects and

music to the film. The sound is more important than I had realized because it

can help to alter the audience reaction to the film and so getting the music

to work well with the scenes was more challenging than I anticipated. A lot of

times the music did not work well with the pace at which the characters were

moving in the film and so a lot of time I was dedicated to making it work well

with the film itself. I put the film together as we filmed so that we could film

iffy scenes again and add as was necessary.

Working on an assignment in a group always presents its benefits and

challenges. This project has taught me about my ability to work well with

others as well as how to understand and compromise. The more people that
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are in a group in a group, the more challenging it is to include everyones

thoughts and ideas. I think it is great to work in a group because everyone

can take a role within the film and different ideas and criticisms are present.

One example of this is when we wrote the first draft of the script. A member

of the group was confused by the purpose of the knocking sounds the

protagonist heard. After explanation, the group member was still confused

and so this allowed us to know that we should not have to explain so much

what we are trying to show so this pat of our film is weak. We added more

and changed a bit of the script so that it could be clear that the knocking was

a sign of an ominous presence. This worked out well because the confusion

allows us to work towards improvement. I think it was difficult to incorporate

everyones ideas well together and finding a time for everyone to meet

together because everyone has such different schedules. I think we focused

on Dianas ideas because she had the best ones and so we wrote the script

around that. I also feel that some people did more work than other because it

is difficult to distribute the work evenly when there are five people working

on one assignment. I do not think that anyone tried to slack off, it just

happened to be that some people contributed more to the project than

others. I think that overall the group worked well together to get the script

and filming done and was very respectful of each other.