Schlock Horror : student video drama

Mary Mooney

    Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperConference Paper

    Abstract

    ![CDATA[From the ancient entertainment of the theatre to the broadbands of the digital revolution, drama students continue to create aberrant visual images of their cultural positioning. Their dramatic tags now comprise small-screen messages. Screen tags by some drama students can be assembled into the new dramatic expression of Schlock Horror. Student Schlock Horror videos referenced in an Australian study are identified by their deliberate overemphasis on horror and overwrought performance style. They are represented by the death zone, the dark zone, and the sinister, where representations of horror in suicide and death pervade the screen. The choice of Schlock Horror as a genre is clearly one that the young secondary school video-makers choose, and, in the context of the study, a significant sample of the student videos belongs to this genre. The video-makers were Year Twelve students from New South Wales (Australia) who studied Drama as part of their Higher School Certificate (HSC). As part of their HSC Drama examination, students are able to choose Video Drama as an Individual Project. It is from this source that video products have been selected for study. HSC Drama students who select the Video Project are required to make a short five to seven minute complete Video Drama without restrictions with regard to content and genre. The video-maker undertakes the responsibilities of scriptwriter, director, camera operator and editor. Young media producers make explicit the constructedness of their video productions through the assemblage of their realities in narrative, directing and genre. Youth video politics of representation combined with technological difficulties determine that their products are not made as the naturalised, seamless, conventional narratives of the television dramas. Young people's stylised production of screen drama represents a social construction that does not conform to the status quo. Their Video Drama products are constructed outside of the dominant ideology of mass media broadcasts that conceal production codes from viewers. Within young people's ideological framework, the social subjectivity of the viewer is central to the video-maker's construction of meaning. This is especially so when the primary audience for their videos is their peers. In the context of our multi-media digital society, schlock is filmed for their peer audience and in the context of their schooling, schlock is also made for Higher School Certificate examiners.]]
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationIDEA 2001: Playing Betwixt and Between: The IDEA dialogues 2001
    PublisherGriffith University Press
    Number of pages8
    ISBN (Print)8299592828
    Publication statusPublished - 2002
    EventWorld Congress of Drama/Theatre and Education -
    Duration: 1 Jan 2002 → …

    Conference

    ConferenceWorld Congress of Drama/Theatre and Education
    Period1/01/02 → …

    Keywords

    • drama in education
    • video recordings
    • production and direction
    • study and teaching (secondary)
    • Schlock Horror

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