User:Giraffegirl99/sandbox

Background

Jennifer Kent is an Australian actress turned director, her first film Babadook was extremely successful, particularly at the Sundance Film Festival . Babdook brings us everyday issues like the journey of motherhood, and raising a child as a widow. Kent took an interesting approach to the horror genre by making it not only scary, but relatable to audiences by bringing up everyday concerns like raising a child. The success from the film could largely be from her approach to the genre of horror, making it more a psychological drama and horror mix, focusing on the imagination of children and slowly turning it into a reality. She did this by using horror elements in the layout and camerawork . The film also has a German expressionism feel, many of the scenes are disorienting and dark, using artistic flare in the lighting, characters emotions, and sets to add to the overall mood of the film

Film Techniques

The set of the film really demonstrates the mental state of the mother in the film, as the film progresses the Victorian style home demonstrates to the audience the mind of the mother.

Kent made a team of people she felt could bring her idea to the screen, Radek Ladczuk was the films cinematographer for Babadook and helped bring her ideas to life. Kent was influenced by old movies, and even wanted to film the movie in black and white but later changed to colour. Kent used many different techniques to embody a terrifying set, using colours like “muted grey-and-blue and hints of red as the story became more suspenseful”. Throughout the film, Kent pushed to color grade certain scenes to stay withing the colour scheme, which means that you alter and enhance the color of the scene either chemically or digitally .

Ladcuk states that there were five aspects to this film, all shown with different camera movements. The film is split into five different emotions; anxiety, fear, terror possession and final, courage. Shooting with a 32mm lens they were able to the mothers feelings and then changed to a 14mm lens; they also used a steady cam and static camera all used to help develop the films layers. Fast and slow motion effects were also added throughout the film, as well as stop motion, and they even mounted a camera vertically on the wall to help with certain shots . A lot of the shots were done in camera because Kent felt that it made the film scarier and more realistic than adding stuff in with CGI later.

Psychological drama

In Babadook, everything came from the mother's perspective. The storyline is key in the success of the film, relating to many mothers the film touches on the relatable scenarios. As a female director, Kent was able to portray these relatable scenarios in an incredible way. She touches on not only parenting, but dealing with gossipy friends, had a scene where she is masturbating and ends the film with the female lead taming the beast and keeping it in the basement, feeding it every day. All of these scenarios really present themselves to a female audience in particular.