BA7 | Concept and Pre-Production #06

Documenting Research For My Report

I have been doing a lot of reading, playing, watching and resource searching so far for my research report but other than the brief history of horror fiction as a genre, I haven't written up any of my notes/work.

I have been scrutinizing over the order in which to do this, because my research report is split into three sections, and im unsure of the best way to explain my findings - I dont want to keep going back and forth from time periods and themes.

I thought I would start by saying that my research report is ultimately about how and why horror games are scary. This obviously links in with my studio project where im studying how to inject horror into 3D environments. However, for my research report related blog posts, I think it’s probably good to start with the history of horror fiction because my ultimate argument is how(?), therefore I am looking for influences and inspirations from various historical horror fictions. 

H.P. Lovecraft

As stated in my learning agreement, I intend to focus my “history of horror fiction” into a few key influential figures, one of whom is H.P. Lovecraft.

Howard Phillips “H. P.” Lovecraft was, and still remains, one of the most significant authors in the history of horror fiction. He wrote many famous horror stories and poems such as The Call of Cthulhu and The Shadow Out of Time.

Studying and analysing Lovecraft seems like a good starting point towards the historical horror fiction section of my research report because his work has influenced so many others; including video game developers. 

“According to Joyce Carol Oates, Lovecraft - as with Edgar Allan Poe in the 19th century - has exceeded ‘an incalculable influence on succeeding generations[…]”.  - Wikipedia

 

I decided that my knowledge on the history of Lovecraft and his work wasn’t strong enough and so I decided to watch a documentary called Fear of the Unknown: Lovecraft. Shown at Comic-Con International Independent Film Festival (USA) in July 2008, Fear of the Unknown is a film discussing the life of Lovecraft and is a fantastic introduction to his most influential work in the 20th century. Many famous faces contribute to the making of the documentary including John Carpenter and Guillermo Del Toro. 

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• Commentators suggest that Lovecraft's upbringing was a source of his writing, influenced by a vast library his Grandfather kept which Lovecraft would read when young.
• Apparently Lovecraft tried to write similarly to Poe in his teenage years but failed, nothing published, but spurred on his horror fiction writing.
• Lovecraft was fuelled by the vex of other subjects outside of normal school classes, odd extracurricular activities influenced his ideas. 
• Lovecraft left school and was reported to, by evidence of his letters, have the equivalent of a deep depression.
• Something that kept  him going through his depression was his reading, pulp fiction magazines inspired his future works.
• He created his own armature magazine The Conservative. 

 

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• He was famous for overusing adjectives to describe the mood and atmosphere (eldritch, gibbous) in his stories. He often wrote from a first person perspective which was often said to increase fear in the reader, putting them right there in the story - perhaps a vague link to many horror games being released in a first person perspective? Or at least a mechanical link to why first person perspective horror games are scarier. (A selection of screenshots I have taken from first person horror games: Amnesia, Outlast, Gary's Mod: Slender & Slender: The Arival)

•  The guest commentators refer to his writing suggesting that his work is incredibly deep and metaphorical , especially linking to his  autobiography, his life, and that others can translate and relate to his stories with often underlying real life themes. This is evident in narratives within games such as Silent Hill where metaphors are the core of everything; characters, enemies, monsters and behaviour - I will study this at a later date though.

• Herbert West: Reanimator is a short story that was written for Gruesome Tales, a magazine written by a friend of Lovecraft. The friend asked that Lovecraft not make the stories too scary or horrific, so Lovecraft added an air of humour to the horror.  The story was translated onto the big screen by Stuart Gordon and Brian Yunza who adapted the stories comical side to stay true its original source. This can be seen in the trailer which has comical scenes despite being a horror film.

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• Apparently during moonlit walks with Sonia, she and Lovecraft would hear horrific unidentified roars/grunts and this led to Lovecraft encouraging Sonia to write her own horror story about it.
• The Necronomicon was a fiction book created by Lovecraft, it is a spell book that is supposed to contain spells able to bring back creatures and beings from other worlds and times past.
• The guest commentators of the documentary mention that Lovecraft often used gothic horror related tropes such as a family with a hidden secret. 
  
• The Call of Cthulhu was a mixture of anthropology, cosmology and horror. This is reminiscent of horror today where there are various sub genres of horror, often including elements from other genres such as sci-fi (Dead Space 1), psychological (Amnesia) and action (Resident Evil 5).
• The Angell box is fragmented "story telling", there's no specific or real plot meaning it has an obscure and complex to comprehend narrative structure. The Silent Hill series is famous for having a questionable narrative and games such as Siren Blood Curse and The Walking Dead are released in episodes much like the Angell Box.
• Cthulhu wasn't supposed to be pronounced by human tongues, it's an alien language.
•  Lovecraft's work went further than just horror stories, it was tremendously metaphorical.
• Lovecraft's life was the embodiment of fear of the unknown, he never wanted to leave his home town and doing so was reflected in his work, returning to his city saw him create some of his best work beginning with Mountains of  At the Mountains of Madness which was very much about the unknown.
• An interesting comparison was made during the documentary suggesting that the Davey Jones character from The Pirates of the Caribbean was influenced by, and had dominant characteristics' of the infamous Cthulhu. 

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•  Lovecraft was considered to spawn modern day horror.
•  Lovecraft stories inspired almost religions, made people believe in "the old ones", believe Cthulhu is real, called Cultists.

        

        I will end my study response with a quote that I found really inspirational and helpful towards both my studio and research report projects. I plan to continue my study into Lovecraft beyond this point, making studies into his most famous work, how they influenced other mediums and how the brand of horror called “lovecraftian” came about. 

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“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown".  - H. P. Lovecraft (Fear of the Unknown)

...Okay, maybe I lied, im actually going to end on this note, a South park video where Cartman has befriended the infamous Cthulhu character from Lovecraft's mythology and is riding him around in a comical parody of Studio Ghibli’s Totoro!

Enjoy :’) 
 

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