Thursday, 21 November 2013

JP: Horror and its Sub-Genres

Horror has many key concepts that we should conisder in our production; making up the generic formula. These include:

  • Being flexible and dynamic.
  • Being used institutionally to connect with an audience.
  • Being used as a blueprint, framework, label, contract.
  • Having overriding conventions such as: the Scare Factor, the Monster, the Use of Lighting, Recognisable Iconography (including location, props and casting), and the Use of Sound.
  • Having a clear protagonist(s) / victim(s).
  • Having archetypes of both heroes and villains.
  • The inclusion of stock characters, plots and situations.
  • Having a set theme. 
Horror also contains sub-genres, one of which we should focus on for our production. These include: 

  • Slasher
  • Psychological
  • Zombie
  • Torture
  • Monster
  • Gothic
  • Supernatural
  • Sci-fi
  • Comedy / Parody
In regards to the sub-genre, I believe we should focus on creating an opening to a psychological horror film as it has a clear style with the conventions being easily accessible for us to conform to through our access to limited props and locations.

3 comments:

  1. I agree with the idea of utilising aspects of psychological horror- but there are a number of different styles that can be used, often taking influence from other sub-genres. Maybe it'd be helpful to see which aspects of other film styles we could take on? Be creative :)

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  2. That sounds good, I think combining psychological horror with monster could work quite well. I'll do some background research on monster horror to see if it could work. :)

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  3. Hey i thought i would do some research into supernatural horrors after looking this post, i reckon we may be able to use some of the techniques that are conventional in this sub-genre in our final piece. :)

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