horror genre

Horror genre

 

Don't

Ignore
Setting
Technical
Iconography
Narrative
Characterisation
Themes

 

 

Setting

·         Anything that connotes isolation or being small communities or isolated places. Urban environments, dark streets and narrow alleyways large cities or rud down host towns.

·         A lot of the time the setting has a dark history, like abandoned houses, hotels and insane asylums.

·         Locations for horror genre could be anything along as its scary and invole the two pots above example, lakes, farms, dark woods, woodlands, houses cabins, subways, space-stations for Sci-fi horrors, and so on.

 

Technical

·         Camerawork is important in horrors with high and low angles can signify fear and nightmares.

·         POV shots are important because it allows the audience to see the through the eyes of the villain or monster.

·         Handheld shots makes it difficult for the audience to understand whats happening, also it make the audience feel they are there in the film. Cloverfield is a good example as the whole film is shot handheld to promote the feeling of terror and the unknown.

·         Depth of field works well as it makes it hard for the audience to see the Villain come after the protagonist.

·         Disturbing sounds are a big part of horror films. ambient diegetic sounds and non-diegetic sounds both play big parts make the film more scary and scenes more intense.

·         Editing create the feeling of unsettling tension and suspense.

 

 

Iconography

·         Often in horror films the colours are dark like red and black linking to evil and blood also danger.

·         Low-key lighting creates dark shadows and unfamiliar areas in darkness.

·         We can identify horror genre with the props used, some props can identify the villain which would be knife, chainsaws, machetes, any type of killing weapon.

 

Narrative structures

 

·         Classic narrative structure largely made applicable to horror genre but I can either be left on a cliff hanger leaving room for a sequel or a franchise to follow.

·         There is always a hero which would be a man or “final girl”, keeping with the normal conventions of this genre. Usually the hero must embark on a quest to kill or solve a problem also survival can be the quest and save the girl.

 

Characterisation

·         The main character often hero/victim.

·         The villain- a monster, alien or a serial killer.

·         The immoral teenagers that always gets killed for being immoral.

·         And many more monsters like ghosts, zombies, demons, psychopaths.

 

Themes

·         There is lots of themes for the horror genre here are some of them

·         Good versus Evil

·         Religion

·         Childhood issues

·         Supernatural

·         Science gone bad

·         Mad Scientist

·         Zombie Apocalypse

·         nightmares

·         Insanity

·         Monsters