Meanwhile...
For a break from the screen tonight I'll be skimming through a couple of books I've rented from the library for my essay. The theme I'm looking at is the use of the 'haunted house' in horror films focus on the unheimlich and what makes it so effective. The films I'll be looking at are The Haunting and The Shining, I might include another but I don't know if I'll need to.
The books are:
The Gothic by Gilda Williams
The poetics of space by Gaston Bachelard
Foul perfection : essays and criticism by Mike Kelley
The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 17 : (1917-1919). An infantile neurosis and other works
The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 17 : (1917-1919). An infantile neurosis and other works
Hopefully I'll get some useful quotes out of these bad boys but whether I use them or not, any useful material I find will be posted up here for reference.
I think 2 films is most certainly enough - and what's fascinating about comparing the two is the huge contrasts between the approaches (though Hill House and The Overlook both have exteriors with similarities). I'm going to email you a pdf from another book you might find useful - while it's specifically about Hitchcock's use of the house and spaces as systems of meaning, there is some more general stuff you might find useful.
ReplyDeleteIn regard to the composition, you've got that chair dead centre, and I wonder if it wouldn't be more effective if you pushed it more into the right hand third? Also - I know you've modelled a sofa etc - remember your concept art is a representation of the space you want to make - not an exact photofit; you'll have an opportunity in Maya to tweak the scene itself, so maybe you need to start working in 3d space to feel more comfortable in regard to what you want to accomplish...
I'd really appreciate that PDF! Anything that will help with the use of space and housing is brilliant even if it isn't exactly about the two films. I'm planning on watching them both through again to try and pick out some key scenes and grab some screenshots.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with you about the composition, I'd rather it was slightly more to the right. It would make the shadow more dramatic and the window could go in the centre maybe. Yeah, I do think using the 3D space would help a lot, I don't mind scrapping the sofa to be honest, I just wanted to get something made so I could get used to Maya. I'll tweak the composition, add some textures and then jump on Maya, see if I can finally get settled on something!