Summer Research

The Conventions of Horror:

For the summer holidays i was asked to do some research on Horror films.

• In a horror film, there is usually a good person and an evil person. These two people are usually against each other & the two characters conflict.
• There is always a main character and this character usually survives at the end of the film.
•  In most horror films the killer has a unique weapon which they are easily recognised with.
• There is usually low key lightening and usually shadows around.
•   In most films the main character is a female
• Also at the beginning of the film someone or people die
• There are close ups to show the facial expressions of fear in the faces of the characters
• There are long cut when tension is being built.
• Tension is usually built through sound or background music
• In horror fills the killer or monster of the film has a mask or a weird, scary and not normal look.
• In the settings of many horror film are based in houses , in woods, or in abandoned towns
• The weapon that are usually used are knives, bate or spade
• Silence is used to build tension
• There’s usually loud sound then a bang with is used to scare the audience
• Horror films always include a lot of screaming, shock the killer or monster noises or cry of pain.

Three Different Horror Films:

• Insidious
• Drag me to Hell
• The Hills have eyes

A Horror Film Director:

A horror film director : James Wan

• He was the director of 'Insidious (2011)'
• He was the director of 'Dead Silence (2007)'
• He was the director of 'Death Sentence (2007)'

The Conventions of Horror Film Teaser Trailers:

• Trailers have limited time to build tension and to fright the viewers
• Music used in trailers are usually built up really quickly
• There are usually quick cuts in trailers which show different scenes 
• There is usually a scream in most trailers 
• There's usually a sound track in most trailers
• Trailers leave the viewer wanting to know more
• After watching a trailer, the audience are usually left with a question, "what happened to him/her?" or "Did he/she survive?"

Writing about a horror Film that i have watched...

The horror film that I decided to watch was insidious. I wasn’t able to watch insidious recently, but I have watched it twice before.

Insidious is a Psychological/supernatural horror film which was released this year.

Psychological/supernatural horror is all about an evil force trying to persecute someone/people and bringing back something that happened in the past. That is what insidious is about.

In the first scene of insidious there is a figure of an old woman creep around the house of the family. Already the film has started with ghostly figures to scare the audience and to get the audience thinking. Later on in the film, Dalton, the son of Rengi and Josh, fall into a coma ands is taken to hospital. This coma was an unexplained comma. Again this gets the audience thinking.

Later on in the film Rengi starts to believe that the house they are staying in is haunted, and that she keeps on hearing noises as if there are people in the house and she even starts to see people in the house which are mostly ghostly figures. This works on the disturbance of human psyche.   

Analysing Lighting 

I was asked to analyse pictures with low key lighting...

Teaser trailer Storyline

·         Two main Characters

·         One of them will be the Killer and The other will be the Boy that sketches

·         The trailer will start of with the boy in a deserted room with sketches of different scenes of a killer killing people or with its weapon

·         The boy will then pick up one of the sketches and then a close up will show the sketch

·         That sketch will then come alive, but this will be quick shots of that scene

·          Then at the end of the scene there will be a zoom in of the boy still holding the picture, still zooming in but into it face, at this point we can only see the side of his face which seems to have been slightly burnt. The face will be turning around but then there will be a cut where it will show the killer just standing there holding its weapon. And that would be the picture that the boy at the end is holding.

·         The killer will be wearing an overall with shackles on their feet. They will have a burnt face. But all over the face. The boy will also have the same burnt but just a little on the cheek.

·         Throughout the boy’s scene we will never see the full figure of the boy he will be shot from the back, then it will only be one side of his face that we will see.