Horror: Zombie- Iconography.

Iconography In zombie films

  Visual

Often dark tones and highlights within the visual style of horror as well as consistent relations between red and black to connote fear and death within the film itself – a common convention of the zombie genre, The visual setting has a post apocalyptic look to it in order to show the effect the outbreak has had as well as the world that was recently normal before the outbreak.

Lighting

Lighting is a very important component of the iconography of a Zombie film due to the way in which it expresses fear and horror. Low lighting is mainly used within the horror genre to represent the ‘unknown’ and create shadows to spark the audience curiosity and create fearful emotions. As well as this red overtones are usually used to convey death and gore.





Props

Props are used within the horror genre to help identify the particular genre and the style of horror, in the case of the zombies, the usual props include blood, heavy gory make up, weapons: e.g guns, knives, baseball bats, Food and, of course, brains. All of these connote the fearfulness and horror of the genre.

The good thing about zombies is that every single one can differ and there are no set boundaries in terms of costume so therefore this allows the movie maker to be creative in how each creature is designed and created. They usually look like a deformed or mangled version of your average citizen, wearing the same clothes in which they were killed in.

When it comes to Makeup, we will be looking to introduce gory, zombie like makeup to enhance the feeling of the film. This is important as this reflects the damage they've taken as individuals and it makes it quite intimidating to see someone so damaged to remain intact as a moving organism, this creates a sense of the unstoppable due to how strong they are. The colour red as in blood also connotes aspects of danger as well as showing injury. The main aspect of creating injury style makeup would be the use of liquid latex, this is because it creates realistic gory-looking makeup and it is relatively cheap and there are many tutorials on how to apply it online, this would be easier than going out of your way to find a professional makeup artist and can even end up cheaper.

Here is a tutorial on how to apply zombie makeup:

 Sound

 Sound is a key component of zombie films, using Foley sound will help build suspense and give a feeling of realism to the film.  Exaggerated diegetic sound will allow tension to be created in the film. Fast and loud non diegetic sound can add to making the audience jump or feel scared, or to add emotion to a scene. The following clip from the movie "Jaws" shows the importance of Non Diegetic sound has on a scene of a film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae1Z_fWDZ7s

Mise en scene

 Zombie films are usually set in isolated areas, this is because it gives no help for the characters and no hope of finding somewhere safe. The use of props include weapons and items that are used to symbolize humanity, such as religious items found around the world (Such as Crucifixes, Bibles) The weapons are used to show that it is a dangerous environment, whereas the religious items are used to show that the world isn't too far gone, using religious symbols gives the audience a sense of hope. Pathetic fallacy is also used, the weather enhances the mood of the film, that's why in more important scenes, rainy, thunderous weather is used in order to show something bad is going to happen. Pathetic fallacy is used in Danny Boyle's 28 days later.

 

In the final scenes of 28 days later, the weather is rainy.