Clayton George Wickham - final thesis

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specific response in the viewer. Even films that intentionally remain ambiguous take
great pains to organize the elements to fit this intent.
As illustrated in Chapter 1, the communication of perspective is essential to
genres outside of horror. Although a direct incitement of fear may not be the goal of
creating perspective in comedy, for instance, it can still be used to engender an
inclusive immediacy either into the narrative as a whole, or as an isolated event.
Ultimately it becomes both the catalyst for and the vessel of emotional affect.
Perspective provides and monitors the emotional intensity not only from sequence to
sequence, but moment to moment, as my discussion of the fluidity of perspective
changes indicates.
Also, a filmmaker’s awareness of the perspective of the viewer affects the
overall design of the film and can, in turn, be used to influence the reading of a film.
Here issues can arise surrounding ‘target audiences’ and context. A film like
Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will) (1935; dir. Riefenstahl) was designed to
inspire the German people of the late 1930s/early 1940s with hope and confidence in
the ruling political party. Displacing this context to another country and/or
accounting for historical hindsight greatly alters the meaning of the film to viewers.
For the maker of a film sequel or remake, the filmmakers need to account for a
minimum of two viewer perspectives: those familiar with previous entries in the
series, and those unfamiliar with earlier films in the series. In some cases,
perspectives that lie in between the two become factors: those who have only seen
some of the earlier films, those who have seen none but are aware of the cultural and
iconographic significance of the series, etc.
Friday the 13 th , its sequels, the cross-franchise film, and the remake
incorporates such a wide range and variety of perspective usages as well as aesthetic