Clayton George Wickham - final thesis

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Freddy’s direct perspective. Gibb still looks at the camera and screams, shot from the
position of Freddy’s eye.
This shot, however, along with an eye/camera shot at the beginning from
Freddy looking at a young female victim in flashback are the only eye/camera shots
from Freddy’s position. The additional consideration of the eye/camera shot at the
beginning as occurring before Freddy’s first death and the one involving Gibb being
off-model is significant. The “Dream-master” Freddy’s direct eye/camera being
excluded from the film’s aesthetic whereas Jason’s and the central characters’
eye/cameras appear frequently, isolates Freddy, identifying him as the film’s
ultimate antagonist, victimising not only the teenagers in the films, but Jason as well.
While director Ronny’s Yu’s ultimate aesthetic attempts to foreground visceral
impact as in his earlier films Bride of Chucky (1998) and The 51 st State (2001), with
the eye/camera playing an important role in this, it is additionally used to identify the
absolute antagonist, and present him as an “other”. Bordwell has identified an
increased inclination towards a more visceral aesthetic, such as that utilised by Yu,
in Hollywood in general, which he claims came to prominence particularly in the
1980s. This can be found in his writing on what he calls “intensified continuity.”
(2006; 121-138) The general aesthetic qualities he attributes to intensified continuity
are “rapid editing, bipolar extremes of lens lengths, reliance on close shots, and
wide-ranging camera movements.” (121)
The variety of eye/camera usage in these examples demonstrates that the
eye/camera can contribute to a complex aesthetic effect, and that the context of the
shot can alter emotional response and engagement with a film text. However,
eye/camera shots have not been used in a consistent manner, and more intricate
visual codes have been developed for the eye/camera over time.