Clayton George Wickham - final thesis

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narrative, although it is apparent that there is a significant amount of information that
has been missed. Franchise viewers, however, may recognize characters and events,
but will be drawn into the franchise experience more by the crime scene sequence,
which creates a reminder of setting and precise positioning, particularly where the
body of Jason is concerned, despite being played by a different actor, and this
sequence being shot after the completion of the previous film, Jason’s dead body
lays in precisely the same position as it did at the end of Friday the 13 th Part III 3-D.
Again, the perspective of the franchise viewer is rewarded by having seen the
previous films, while the new viewer is placed in a disorienting position until the
narrative pacing demonstrates a fluidity and aesthetic equilibrium absent from the
pre-credits clip sequence.
The New Blood returns to the use of film clips in order to establish the prior
narrative of the series. The clip sequences used in Friday the 13 th Part 2 and The
Final Chapter, as noted, retain close similarities to the aesthetics of cinema trailers,
and the opening of The New Blood more closely adopts this aesthetic than either of
these previous films. After the production titles, there is a long high angle shot of a
graveyard seen through a thick sheet of rain, the camera lowering as if on a crane.
This is a shot filmed for The New Blood, and is used as a repeated visual to tie the
film clips together. At this point, a voice over accompanies the image, saying
“There’s a legend ‘round here. A killer buried, but not dead.” It is a deep male
voice, and slightly gravelly. The latter of the two sentences runs over a cut to a clip
of Jason’s hand holding a machete as he walks through the woods, and then breaking
through a window to grab Tommy in The Final Chapter. The film then cuts back to
the lowering crane shot of the graveyard, the spikes of a high iron fence rising up
from the bottom of the frame. The voice over accompanies this shot again, saying,