RH - Institutional context

Horror films are produced in the same fashion as all other films and go through the same process in terms of development, production, and distribution. However like every other film these 3 stages can impact the films effect on the target audience and can help the film to get noticed by the public no matter if it is and independent film or a blockbuster.

Horror films have the odds stacked against them from the start since there is a very specific target audience consisting of mainly males between the ages of 15 and 25, this means that the potential of a horror film is less significant than something the whole family would be able to enjoy.

like all films a horror film would start out in development where the ideas for the film are first created, rights are bought and the screenplay is written. this is also where the company producing the film has to determine whether the film will be financially worth producing and if the company reckons the idea will capture the audience, once the project has been green lit the film can then begin to think about production. However this phase is different with every film since it has to be financially calculated by the production company and decide whether the company can afford to make the film for example for a independent company such as Vertigo the budget needs to be considered.

Warner brothers however would be able to afford to spend a lot more money on the film and this means they will only usually use ideas which will make a considerable amount of profit; for example a horror film produced by Warner brothers is 'Friday the 13th' (Marcus Nispel, 2009) and this was made using a budget of $19 Million and ended up making $91,379,051 at box office. However this was a remake of an original film so fans of the franchise would instantly be attracted, because of this New Line Cinema had to approach Platinum Dunes producers Michael Bay, Brad Fuller, and Andrew Form about rebooting the Friday the 13th franchise in the same fashion of rebooting The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise. Platinum Dunes agreed, and then spent over a year securing the film rights from all the involved parties: Paramount Pictures, New Line, and Crystal Lake Entertainment. This shows that due to the fact Warner Bros are a well established company with the money to spare they can afford to make big blockbuster films and this also gains them a wider audience consisting of the horror audience, fans of the company and fans of 'Friday the 13th'

Once the plans have been made the cast can be hired and sets, props and crew can all be organised however once again this differs massively for independent film companies compared to the main six studios. For example in 2007 Vertigo films produced a horror film called 'Shrooms' (Paddy Breathnach, 2007), we can see the difference in popularity of these two films straight away due to the fact Shrooms only made £313,758 on opening weekend in the UK and the budget for the film is not available but we can assume it is low because the filming was mainly done in Rossmore park in Monaghan, Ireland and the filming took place over seven weeks

The distribution of any film heavily relies on the producer for the money that the film would need to get a wider audience through advertising this fact does not change between genre of the film. The main factor of of getting a large audience for a film always comes from money which is why the main 6 studios remain the top 6 even within the horror film genre.