Why is "The Fault in Our Stars" so Successful?

“The Fault in Our Stars” was very successful when it first came out, in a weeks’ time millions of people were still trying to get tickets at their local cinema trying to watch it. One of the reasons that this film was so successful was because the whole film was based around ill teens. This tear-jerking film touched the hearts of many because it was about young teens who won’t live for a long time because they have life threatening illnesses, this made the watchers feel upset for the characters and won’t them to live a happy life and do more things in their life. Because of this they wanted to see what they did in the rest of the film. What makes it even better is that the ill teenagers start to fall in love to make it even better for the audience to feel for them, but of course something goes wrong with the couple which literally breaks the audiences’ hearts. This film is really for young to middle aged women who are perfect for the writer, the writer can bring all their hopes up then at the last minute make it all fall so everyone is upset again.

Because it is aimed at women, most women tend to talk about good films they have just watched to their friends or family. Because of this it makes the ripple effect, where once one has seen it the ripple starts to expand making more and more people watch it every day. Till eventually so many people have seen it then you have to watch it to talk to your friends about it and not feel left out the conversation. If the women went to see it because their friend has told them to see it, then they might go as a group with their friends or go as a couple to watch it together which will double or more than double the price of the tickets making the film a bit more successful than it was.

With more than one customer buying their tickets, it makes that film look a lot better than it started out, if you going to the cinema and everyone was watching this one film you will normally feel like you need to watch this film to see why everyone is watching it for. And because you have brought a ticket it adds one more person watching it so other people look at you and do the exact same thing, and keeps on doing this until the actual movie has stopped becoming so popular. The reason most people think this is because they feel like they are get left out on the next best thing and want to see the new trend that are in movies today. First it was wizards in the “Harry Potter” saga, then it was vampires in the “Twilight” saga and now it is upsetting love stories of young adults who know it will never work for them. Probably after this craze there will be another set of films that will get many fans over it.

Horror Genre

Horror movies affect the audience in many different ways, some are terrified of them and others absolutely love them, depending on the person. But there are still many different ways to actually scare the audience without using the actual image; they can use their music to make the audience scared before the jump scare actually comes. Like in “Friday the 13^th” they have a very sharp tune before Jason actually shows up and you then know that it is going to happen because everyone know that tune very well. As well as music they use noise to scare the audience more at the time, even if they were already frightened. For example they use screeching sounds we unconsciously associate with animals in distress. A 2010 study by the University of California found that human sensitivity to non-linear alarm sounds, such as ones made by ground hogs to warn about predators, is being employed by film composers to unsettle and unnerve. In films like Hitchcock's 1960 classic Psycho, straining strings and over-blowing brass are mimicking the noise of panic in nature. For audiences who enjoy a lush romantic score, a 2011 experiment at Canada's McGill University studied the neural mechanics of why humans get goosebumps from great tunes. Far from being a purely aural experience, scans suggested that the regions of the brain that light up with music are those linked to euphoric stimuli such as food, sex and drugs. Blood flow in the brain is responding to areas associated with reward, emotion and arousal.

In more recent horror movies they are finding new ways to try and scare people, instead of graphic images or very load music, they started to use other features like vibrations! Some film makers are now using infra sound to induce fear in audiences. These extreme bass waves or vibrations have a frequency below the range of the human ear. Low frequency sounds are thought to have created fear in Paranormal Activity While we may not be able to hear infra sound, it has been demonstrated to induce, extreme sorrow, heart palpitations and shivering. Naturally-occurring infra sound has been associated with areas of 'supernatural activity', as well as being produced prior to natural disasters such as storms and earthquakes. Audience members reported feeling disorientated and physically ill after just half an hour of infra sound, leaving before the most shocking visual sequence on screen. In the horror Paranormal Activity, audiences also reported toweringly high fear levels even though there was nothing going on the screen. It is believed this was caused by the use of low frequency sound waves. Also in paranormal activity, the way the camera angles and it’s as if they are being filmed of a very poor quality camera, makes it feel like the family filmed it them self and the whole story is true, even though we know it’s not we can’t help but think it is. More and more films like found footage are being filmed now because of its success in scarring people. Also because they are propped up cameras in the corner you can’t actually see anything around it and it won’t move, so anything could move round the corner without you noticing until it scares you in front of the screen.An article from film maker states three primary factors of the horror film allure. The first is tension, which is created through mystery, suspense, gore, terror or shock. The second is relevance, which includes universal relevance, subgroup relevance, and personal relevance. The last is unrealism. The writer states that, despite the graphic nature of recent horror films, we all know at some level that what we are watching is not real. Haidt, McCauley and Rozin conducted research on disgust, showing students in 1994 a series of gruesome documentary videos and yet these same students would pay to see even worse acts conducted on a movie screen. Why? Perhaps it’s because when we walk into a theatre we know what we’re seeing on screen is fabricated reality. Along with these factors, the writer introduces theories on what attract people to horror. Freud posited that horror is from the emergence of images and thoughts. I found this similar to Huma’s theory from the reading. Huma’s idea states that once a tragic, unsettling event is housed in an aesthetic context, with a momentum of its own, the predominant feeling response, in terms of pleasure and interest, attaches to the presentation as a function of the overall, narrative structure. Like in Saw, most people hate gore and gruesome bits, but many love these films and will watch them over and over again. Maybe this is why people get scarred or love horror films all the time?

My favourite film this summer 2014

My favourite film this summer of 2014 was Godzilla. The reason why I enjoyed this film is because I do personally enjoy old films that are way before my time. Plus I like to enjoy watching the modernised movies they have remade, I also enjoyed the old Godzilla and thought it was exciting, and then they made another film this summer which has a similar story line but different actors, different filming effects and different special effects so it felt like a complete new film to me. I also like the actors in the new film, because I watch a lot of their TV series that they are also in and other films they are included in, like Brian Cranston, he was in “Malcolm in the Middle” as the dad and was a very enjoyable character. He was also in the big TV series Breaking Bad for a couple of years as a big time drug producer, a mysterious character that was very dark at some times. Completely different to being a comedy dad and he was a very good actor in everything he has done including in Godzilla. It also had a good story to the film instead of Godzilla going towards the nearest city and destroying it, instead there was a logical good reason why the thought to be extinct lizard was destroying the city, it was trying to defeat another big monster.

I think why it became so popular in my view was because there was so much action in that one film it got most men/boys very excited to watch it, also there was two massive monster that were going to fight at the end of the film which got us even more excited. Because there were two giant monsters, the power between them would be a lot stronger than ordinary human, so they cause much more destruction and are able to pick up very tall buildings to use as big weapons. This is what would make me excited in a film, so I think that is why it made other people around or above my age group excited as well. Although there were many plot holes in the film near the end, not many people noticed it unless you really thought about this film enough. People didn't pay much attention to that because once it got a bit boring they would put something big like a massive explosion, or Godzilla firing blue flames at the other monster, almost distracting the audience. They had some funny bits in this film as well, because at the beginning they set the film in Japan, the first Godzilla was set in Japan, they didn't have to actually put it in Japan but they did to connect to the old film. But instead of destroying Tokyo, they decided for Godzilla to go to America and fight in the city of San Francisco, which is completely different to Tokyo and a lot smaller as well, so not as much destruction was created in this film you would think, but more destruction was created because the fight went across the whole of America and the final fight was in San Francisco.