World War Z

Within this assignment I shall be exploring the movie "World War Z"

The movie begins with various shots from all around the globe. This is to build up to what causes the "Zombie outbreak", this is achieved with a mix of real life footage such as news reports and cinematic footage of city streets. It also features sound bites from celebrity personalities such as Piers Morgan and Michio Kaku who can be heard concerning over problematic scientific situation. The intro gradually builds in tempo which increases the level of unease you feel. The intro successfully establishes the genre of the movie by setting the developing stages of what causes the "outbreak".

World War Z falls under the Hollywood production context, we can identify this by various aspects of the film. The most common way of doing this is by taking note of the overall quality of the film. Good special effects usually imply a high budget which can be attributed to Hollywood. Within this film we can see from the quality of the shots, editing and overall look of the video that this film was created on a huge budget. Secondly the film also begins within the USA which further hints that the movie is a Hollywood production, it's incredibly common for Hollywood movies to be shot in America. The final area is the actors used, the lead role goes to Brad Pitt who's a Hollywood A-list celebrity, most movies created under the Hollywood context almost always use american actors in the majority this allows them to pull in more viewers because of the massive following that these Hollywood stars have.

World War Z is a Horror Action Film primarily because it incorporates zombies and the world famous actor Brad Pitt who is also known to play many action roles. Zombie Films are heavily associated within western culture especially so because of George A. Romero the man responsible for creating early zombie films which formed the “stereotypical” zombie that we know today. The zombies within this film are similar to what we’d usually expect, biting people, spreading blood and guts etc. It’s these factors which tell us this film is clearly a horror. The action element is clearly shown though the use of Brad Pitt, action scenes with large explosions/Gun fire and epic scenes. If we compare this to “rise of the zombie” we can see clear differences in budget. World War Z comes from a Hollywood production context which results in massive amounts of money being invested.

The overall look and narrative have clearly been affected by the production context of this film. We a have a fairly complex storyline with a key problem that needs to be solved (finding a cure) which takes the characters all over the world to find the solution. This is something that could only have been conceived with a massive budget in mind. The storyline has been designed in such a way that allows for these rich elaborate scenes to take place along with the incredible camera work which accompanies such scenes. An example of this is the helicopter shots commonly used to establish new scenes and give the viewer an idea of where the characters are.