Paranormal Acitivty 2
Feb. 23rd, 2011 08:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
potato_headI've been having a series of dreams recently about accidentally killing pets. Haven't had the energy to try to interpret them though, but if I keep having them I probably will, because WTF. The first one was about a butterfly, the latest one was about Tripper having puppies and one of them dieing (apparently I think fixed male dogs can have puppies). I suspect, though, because this has happened similarly before, it just means I'm going into a hormonal 'but maybe I DO want to have babies' kick again. Which, btw, I really, really don't, and the idea of getting pregnant is really dysphoric for me and freaks me out SO BAD. But my hormones disagree sometimes, upsettingly enough.
Okay so HERE'S WHAT I WAS ACTUALLY GOING TO POST ABOUT
So I saw Paranormal Activity 2 (finally). I really liked it, and for once, not because of concept! I usually enjoy movies primarily based on 1. concept and 2. music, but tbh the actual storyline concept for Paranormal Activity and Paranormal Activity 2 were not...anything special. But the delivery concept was, I think, very clever, and that's the main reason I like them; I'm a horror movie addict, it's very difficult to get me to jump at anything, but the methods employed in PA and PA2 definitely got to me a few times. I actually jumped more times in PA2 than in PA, despite watching it in broad daylight while playing Risk with Paige and Dad (I saw PA in theaters).
Method 1: Making it look 'real'. Now, I went into both movies knowing it wasn't real, and that the method of taping was just a...gimmick, one might say? Genre, maybe? Most people see it as a gimmick, I guess, so let's go with that. But it still made it feel more real, because of how it mimicked shows like Ghost Hunters and so on, and their home life was...to some extent...realistic. Also, the slow build-up was good.
Method 2: Sounds. In the original PA they used that deep vibration that you hear right before shit starts going down; besides the rumble that you can hear, there's infrasonic frequencies in there - ones people can't hear because they're too low - and those tend to make people very uncomfortable. In fact, infrasonic vibrations have been confirmed to make people more likely to think a location is haunted; similar to EMFs, it just freaks people the hell out. I've never heard of this being used in a movie before and I think it was pretty effective, and an excellent idea. In PA2 they lowered the vibration further, from what I could tell, so less of it was audible, but it actually made our living room vibrate, lol. They also used other sounds - specifically, baby monitor crackling, a toy train, and a kettle whistle - that masked ultrasound frequencies, that is, sounds that are too high for people to hear. I could actually feel the pressure on my ears from the kettle whistle, because it lasted a long time; I spotted the other two only because they got Tripper's attention, he would look up sharply and go sniff at the TV in a concerned manner, LOL. I've never heard of ultrasound frequencies scaring people, but they definitely make you uncomfortable.
Obviously, there were some things I didn't like about the storyline - in the original, there were some unbelievable parts (are there any young married couples that can really afford to live in that nice a house, with all of that expensive technology? I guess they did drop that Micah makes a lot of money, but they never mention what he does, it's not very effective hand-waving) and there are some continuity issues between the first and second, which pretty much everybody knows so I'm not going to rehash those. So basically, I really enjoyed it due to the unique and effective employment of techniques.
So yeah that's what I did last weekend. I've been kind of tired and irritated lately. My Calc for Business professor, who is not really a great teacher at all, has started 'tricking' me into teaching the class for him (scarequotes because it's painfully obvious what he's doing), and honestly, I wouldn't mind if he just ASKED for my help (really I wouldn't, it would just be a rehash of every high school math class I had) but instead he's like, trying to be subtle about it. He also doesn't keep track of what he's assigned for homework, and if somebody missed a class and asks him for the homework, he comes and asks ME PERSONALLY if I have it. And yeah, I do, but so does like EVERYBODY ELSE IN THE CLASS, I'm not some sort of special homework guru, what the FUCK. Also, he does not even know my name. He's having me teach derivatives to the class and he doesn't even remember my NAME.
And yeah that's my life right now. And since I have a roommate now I can't even sew to chill out, and I can't find time to sew at home. Fffff. Oh and my Rammstein music that I carefully collected has all disappeared from my iTunes so I have to listen to it on youtube.
Okay so HERE'S WHAT I WAS ACTUALLY GOING TO POST ABOUT
So I saw Paranormal Activity 2 (finally). I really liked it, and for once, not because of concept! I usually enjoy movies primarily based on 1. concept and 2. music, but tbh the actual storyline concept for Paranormal Activity and Paranormal Activity 2 were not...anything special. But the delivery concept was, I think, very clever, and that's the main reason I like them; I'm a horror movie addict, it's very difficult to get me to jump at anything, but the methods employed in PA and PA2 definitely got to me a few times. I actually jumped more times in PA2 than in PA, despite watching it in broad daylight while playing Risk with Paige and Dad (I saw PA in theaters).
Method 1: Making it look 'real'. Now, I went into both movies knowing it wasn't real, and that the method of taping was just a...gimmick, one might say? Genre, maybe? Most people see it as a gimmick, I guess, so let's go with that. But it still made it feel more real, because of how it mimicked shows like Ghost Hunters and so on, and their home life was...to some extent...realistic. Also, the slow build-up was good.
Method 2: Sounds. In the original PA they used that deep vibration that you hear right before shit starts going down; besides the rumble that you can hear, there's infrasonic frequencies in there - ones people can't hear because they're too low - and those tend to make people very uncomfortable. In fact, infrasonic vibrations have been confirmed to make people more likely to think a location is haunted; similar to EMFs, it just freaks people the hell out. I've never heard of this being used in a movie before and I think it was pretty effective, and an excellent idea. In PA2 they lowered the vibration further, from what I could tell, so less of it was audible, but it actually made our living room vibrate, lol. They also used other sounds - specifically, baby monitor crackling, a toy train, and a kettle whistle - that masked ultrasound frequencies, that is, sounds that are too high for people to hear. I could actually feel the pressure on my ears from the kettle whistle, because it lasted a long time; I spotted the other two only because they got Tripper's attention, he would look up sharply and go sniff at the TV in a concerned manner, LOL. I've never heard of ultrasound frequencies scaring people, but they definitely make you uncomfortable.
Obviously, there were some things I didn't like about the storyline - in the original, there were some unbelievable parts (are there any young married couples that can really afford to live in that nice a house, with all of that expensive technology? I guess they did drop that Micah makes a lot of money, but they never mention what he does, it's not very effective hand-waving) and there are some continuity issues between the first and second, which pretty much everybody knows so I'm not going to rehash those. So basically, I really enjoyed it due to the unique and effective employment of techniques.
So yeah that's what I did last weekend. I've been kind of tired and irritated lately. My Calc for Business professor, who is not really a great teacher at all, has started 'tricking' me into teaching the class for him (scarequotes because it's painfully obvious what he's doing), and honestly, I wouldn't mind if he just ASKED for my help (really I wouldn't, it would just be a rehash of every high school math class I had) but instead he's like, trying to be subtle about it. He also doesn't keep track of what he's assigned for homework, and if somebody missed a class and asks him for the homework, he comes and asks ME PERSONALLY if I have it. And yeah, I do, but so does like EVERYBODY ELSE IN THE CLASS, I'm not some sort of special homework guru, what the FUCK. Also, he does not even know my name. He's having me teach derivatives to the class and he doesn't even remember my NAME.
And yeah that's my life right now. And since I have a roommate now I can't even sew to chill out, and I can't find time to sew at home. Fffff. Oh and my Rammstein music that I carefully collected has all disappeared from my iTunes so I have to listen to it on youtube.
