My chosen genre

My chosen genre

The genre I have chosen for my short film opening will he the horror genre. I chose this genre for a number of reasons, those of which including; horrors can be effectively hade on a little to no budget, the time of the year means that we will have many dark and cold days which will be effective in the creating of the low key lighting, and finally horrors can be more easily pulled off by students, whereas other genres such as comedies will not probe to be effective by our age due t the lack of the script needed for the horror genre.

Here is a mood board showing the repertoire of elements in the horror genre: 

The mood board above shows many of the codes and conventions that are commonly seen amongst films in the horror genre. The most noticeable convention of all these horror images is the darkness; this is created by both the lack of colour and low-key lighting. This is something notable that I will have to take into consideration as in none of these images are bright colours such as pinks and yellows in either the characters costumes or the location around the characters. The mood board also suggests that I should involve some kind of aggression to my opening, whether its self inflicted or causation from another character, but in almost all these images, there is either a character who is viably terrified, or a character has some for of blood on them.

Horror is a genre that is created to cause a negative reaction from its audience by playing off parts of the publics fears at any given time period. Horrors often feature people’s deep fears and worries of the unknown to cause fear when watching the film. The common story lines that are featured in horror films often involve ordinary people facing the effect of an evil force, event or personage. These are usually of a supernatural origin. The common antagonists featured in horrors include: Witches, Monsters, Demons, Zombies, Vampires, Aliens, Killers and Ghosts. And the protagonist in the films is usually just a stereotypically ordinary family.

Technical codes of horrors

Common technical codes in horror films include many different things. Camera angles are usually very expressive, as a low angle can play up to fears by making something appear to be a lot taller and daunting than it is in reality. Also the lighting in horrors is usually high contrast and low key, this gives more of a dark mood to the films. A common shot that cam be seen in horrors will be point of view shots. This is used to make the audience feel more at one with the character in the film and these usually occur when the character can be seen running away from some form of evil. Many non-diegetic sounds are added such as the characters heartbeat, and a more dramatic tone is made from the diegetic sounds such as footsteps to make more of an impact into the unknown, which in turn cuases more tension with the audience watching the film.

Common themes seen in horrors would include:

o   Religion

o   Insanity

o   Revenge

o   Good vs Evil

o   Envy

o   Beyond death

o   Nightmares

o   Apocalype

o   Madness

o   Childhood issues

o   Killing

o   Science

o   Experiments

o   Depression

o   Supernatural