Writing Reflection:

An experience I have had with writing would be when I first read a book. I placed my hand on a book and I felt fascinated to learn new words. In the third grade, I switched middle schools and I ended up in a catholic private school. In this third grade classroom there were many books. I was amazed on how many books there were that I decided to read all of the books in the classroom. I picked a random book every day, no matter what type of genre it was. It was always a different day for me once I picked up the book and went home with it. 

Going home, I always took the bus and once I got on this bus, I found an empty seat, opened my backpack, and entered my new world of imagination. My bus reaches the stop and I’m forced to get off and stop my imagination for a few minutes. Once I reach home, I return to reading the book and after an hour or two, I finish reading the book. My mother comes over and starts asking me questions about the book. I audibly answer her questions about the book, giving her a vivid explanation of what I read through my imagination. 

However, after voicing out my thoughts to my mother about the book, I was informed from my mom that I was supposed to write my thoughts down on paper. I was discouraged. As a child, I was very fond of reading stories, however, writing stories wasn’t my strong suit. I felt like writing stories was impossible. Obviously I had some help from my teacher and mother to formulate an effective summary. 

We got ideas on how to formulate a main idea, how to organize it, and how to support the main idea with information from a paragraph. My first step was to see what was occurring a lot in the story, then I decided what the main idea was, and find the text clues to match it and confirm it. To continue getting the information revolving around the main idea, I had to look for supporting claims  

Considering how hard I worked to create a summary, creating essays are still difficult to this day. Going from middle school to high school, the transition of writing drastically changed for me. Paragraphs became longer, multiple paragraphs turned into essays, essays turned into papers. This change is very normal for people since our brain potential increases every grade. Encountering every grade, I always had one motto. That one motto was, “Do your best to pass, or end up in last.” 

Genre Essay: 

When you go to a movie theater with friends or a girlfriend, you probably plan to watch a horror or comedy genre movie. For me, I’m more of the thriller/horror genre movie type. I love the feeling of staying on the edge of my seat and the reaction of friends that I bring along. Horror films, in my definition, would be a movie that tries to find out how to scare you for pleasure and amusement purposes. 

Horror is an important genre in our society because what activates after seeing something worth being called horrific.  You get a feeling of tension, then to add more to it, they add elements of mystery, suspense, gore, terror, and shock. Many things people fear in horror films would be death and others. Once you encounter fear, your brain starts a chain reaction and you end up with a fight-or-flight response. A fight-or-flight response is an acute stress response that stimulates your adrenaline.  

You tend to get fight-or-flight responses when you experience fear, which is also in horror movies. A movie that is very memorable in the horror film industry would be “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” from 1974 which dropped five children into a place which created a nightmarish hell for them filled with cannibals. The fear factor in that movie would be to not die from their own kind. There can be many other ways to react to the genre of horror. 

 People’s reactions towards the horror movie genre tend to vary. A few side effects of horror movies would be restlessness, anxiety, and desensitization. A quote from an article by Farhia Osman, called ‘Psychological Effects of Horror Movies’, says, “People may have trouble sleeping or toss fitfully all night due to the residual fear and anxiety from watching a scary movie.” These movies poke and prod at your senses, increasing your adrenaline, your heart rate, and breathing and either cause distress or just pleasure from the adrenaline. 

Many of the general fears of people in society would be psychopaths, serial killers, and etc. The fear comes from realizing the characters from the movies filled with blood lust are actually real life people that would do the same thing as people in the movies. Once portrayed in film, people still get the effect of fear but lessened since it’s not actually happening. Horror films are designed to frighten and make people panic. However, it does captivate the viewer and entertains you at the same time. This is the same feeling that keeps the viewer from looking away from the screen and makes you continue watching. 

Horror films have many elements that make it scary, such as: fear of death, the dark, insects, dismemberment, suspense, and really scary music. The reason that these elements are so scary is because people compile their fears and the most common one comes into play. The list goes on and on, and it will continue to expand as centuries pass by. Another reason these films get a physical reaction on people who watch is because of how the director filmed it. 

The viewer gets introduced to the director’s game. The director uses aural techniques and toys with your sense of hearing. No one generally likes creepy sounds, and hearing them activate our primordial senses in our brain. The director also uses visual techniques. This is essential because the suspense rises more when one character that isn’t introduced surprisingly jumps at the screen, or when a blind spot is in play. Editing techniques also play a part in the director’s farce. The director speeds up the clips, making the viewer confused and uneasy, stand-still clips cause suspense and tension, close-ups create a sense of intensity. 

Bibliography/Reference Page 

 Osman, Farhia. “Psychological Effects of Horror Movies.” Edina Zephyrus, edinazephyrus.com/psychological-effects-of-horror-movies/. 

 Weinberg, Scott. “The 75 Best Horror Movies of All Time.” Thrillist, Thrillist, 30 Oct. 2018, www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/best-horror-movies-ever. 

 Celtx. “How to Scare People: The Elements of Horror Movies.” Celtx Blog, 14 Nov. 2016, blog.celtx.com/the-elements-of-horror/. 

 

 

 

Genre Part 5: My Own Take on Horror

On a normal sunny day, the sound of ringing goes through the air. Followed by it turning off and the sound of someone falling right after. A woman looks up from the ground after turning off her alarm  in pain. This woman’s name is Jane, she’s a secretary of the CEO at Cytech Industries, one of the companies that help out with the most general of technological issues. She got up from the ground, went to the bathroom, did her daily routine of putting her clothes on and making her breakfast. After finishing, she got in her silver coupe parked outside the garage. She drove to work and signed in like any other person would. When she sat at her desk, a certain man walked into the office. This certain man wanted to talk to the CEO. However, Jane told him, “You cannot talk to the CEO without a reservation. His schedule is very full nowadays.” The man was very frustrated after hearing those news. He took his anger out on the nearest object and walked out the office. The office and Jane continued normally as it was, even though of the random occurrence. Jane walked back to the parking lot and realized a paper on the windshield wipers on her coupe. She picked up the paper and flipped it over. She gasped and started to panic. On the paper it was titled, “Have you seen me?” And it had a picture of Jane underneath it. She looked around and saw no one around her. The parking lot was empty, so there really wasn’t anything to look at. She then shrugged and stopped her abrupt panic. She now thought of it as a prank from the people down in IT tech. She got in the coupe and drove home. She got home safely and parked the coupe out front. As she locked the door, she saw the same paper outside the door. She got angry and removed the paper. She unlocked the front door and walked into her house. She felt a slight breeze after she closed the door. She tried turning on the lights and the lights didn’t respond at all. She started to breathe heavily and she walked into the kitchen. That’s when she really started to panic. All over the walls of the kitchen were the same flyers. She then screamed, but it wasn’t long before the scream silenced from a blow to the head from a blunt object.

 

Extras: