Conventions in the Horror and Thriller Genres

Horror

Horror is designed to frighten or panic, to cause dread and alarm, and to invoke our worst nightmares. Horror films are usually combined with science-fiction, where the menace or monster is related to the corruption of technology or earth is threatened.

Vampires,  bats and zombies are generally used to invoke terror into the audience, this is down to many folk tales, religions, cults and myths using the idea of obtaining blood (the life-source) and at its most extreme cannibalism. 


Thriller


Thrillers are created to cause suspense to the audience watching. This is achieved by the music used, violent scenes, low key lighting and mystery surrounding characters.

  "Psyco" is a good example of this as it has low key lighting, the famous music used and the typical detective whos solves the case. 
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDtJUSYoLDE

Early Horror Films 1890's-1920's

Georges Melies was the first creator of Horror, in 1896 he created Le Manoir du diable. Another of his creations where The cave of the unholy one, which was created 1n 1898. Japan also created horror films such as Blake Jizo and Shinin no Sosei which were both created in 1898. 

The 20th century changed the horror genre for ever, with the first "monster" to feature in a full length horror film "Quasimodo" the hunch back of Notre-Dame, the idea was taken from the novel Notre-Dame De Paris  


The first thought we had about our film was researching about the genres that related to what we hoped to create, these were horror and thriller. we watched many films such as “Nosferatu” from the early 1920s. We liked the idea of creating a silent movie or black comedy/spoof.


After this we decided to research iconic and popular early horror films such as Frankenstein and Phantom Of The Opera.
   The first horror film was created by Gorges Melies, his first creation was the "Devils Mansion" he later made numerous iconic films.

Lon Chaney...



Lon Chaney
as The Phantom of
the Opera





Lon Chaney was a famous actor during the silent movie period. He was the post powerful actor during the 1920's with his tortured horror characters, from  1912 through til 1930 Lon Chaney was cast in over 100 silent films,

which include:

• Oliver Twist
• The Mark of Cain
• and his most famous Phantom Of The Opera.

Béla Lugosi 

Béla Lugosi as Count Dracula (1931)

Béla Lugosi was another major actor in the early horror film industry, his career spanned over four decades. He is best known for his role as Count Dracula in 1931. through out his career he was typecast as a "horror villain" due to his performance of Dracula.



  He later went on to star in The Black cat, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein and Black Friday, all produced by Universal pictures.

Boris Karloff
Boris Karloff was one of the biggest and successful actors of the early 20th century, his most famous roles was of Frankenstein,as this role he was cast in 3 Frankenstein films. He was also cast as Imhotep in The Mummy. Boris also starred alongside Béla Lugosi in The Body Snatcher.

1930's-1940's

In the 1930's Universal Pictures popularised horror films and produced many Gothic horror films such as Dracula, Frankenstein and The Invisible man.  Warner Brothers also produced a film "Mystery of the Wax Museum" and Paramount made "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"  

The Phantom of the Opera (1925) - Full Movie

After we had researched the genre we then watched The Phantom Of The Opera,this has given us a few pointers of what horror films should include.

Our Horror Film

Location

Jordan - is a stern character who doesn't like too much fun, and tries to keep the group in control. 

Our idea: 1 

The first idea was to have a group of friends visiting a movie convention, as they trawl through the horror fils they come across an old movie clip of "Night Of The Living Dead"as they begin to watch the film Jordan gets up and storms  out nocks the project of its stand, as it crashes to the floor the group are then sent flying into the film this would have taken the group to the next location (west park) here the group are attacked by zombies which results in Jordan being killed by the crazed attackers. we then interpreted how the movie could have progressed after our two minute film, this would be with the group trying to find away out of the horror film and back to normality

Shooting script

1. Establishing shot 20seconds 

2. Mid shot dialogue 20 seconds

3. Close up 10 seconds

4. tracking shot 20 seconds

5. Wide shot - 10 seconds

6. zoom in on screen. 

2nd Location

We then decided that we would shoot the first minute of our film at my house, this tied in with our changed story as we didn't have enough characters to film in the location we first decided. As the film progresses we switch to west park as it matches location used in the film the couple were watching.

Characters 

Jordan - is a stern character who doesn't like too much fun, and tries to keep everything in control.

Joseph - is Jordan's boyfriend, he is the opposite to his girlfriend. He likes to have as much fun as possible.

Our idea: 2 

Our second idea was to have a couple watching a horror movie, as the movie progresses, Jordan (the girlfriend) decides that she doesn't want to watch the film anymore, and grabs the remote from her boyfriend at this moment they begin to fight over the remote which ends up with the remote being thrown across the floor. This event causes the couple to be sucked into the horror film. As the remote flies across the floor the group are sucked in to the horror film which switches to our second location (west Park) here the couple are attacked by a group of zombies who don't quit until one of the group end up dead. our two minute film ended with Jordan being killed by the zombies leaving her boyfriend heartbroken, the film could the carry on with Joseph having to figure out how to escape the film.

Shooting script

1. establishing shot - 10 seconds

2. mid shot - 20 seconds

3. zoom- 15 seconds

4. mid shot of screen - 10 seconds

5. mid shot 10 seconds, long shot 10 seconds

6. Over the shoulder shot- 10 seconds 

Construction of Movie Opening

At the beginning of our film we used a tripod to film the couple watching the movies, i used this so that the audience could see the expressions on the actors faces, you couldn't really see this with a hand held camera as it was too shaky. With the use of the tripod it meant that i could easily adjust the height, angle and speed in which the camera moved.

To film the television i also used a tripod, this meant that i could concentrate on getting the camera to focus on the t.v. this also meant that i could zoom on specific parts of the film.

As the couple were watching a horror film which was set in a lightly wooded area, we tried to keep the setting the same as possible. We thought that our location best fit the setting in the film as we thinking of filming in other places such as open fields, but this didn't really work as we kept being interrupted by members of the public keep walking past the camera.

  We had a few problems with filming outside, one problem was the weather. We had to wait until the weather changed as when we wanted to film, it began to rain. We didn't want to shoot in the rain due to the equipment getting wet, also this wouldn't match our film idea as we wanted perfect lighting so that the audience could clearly see what was happening. Unfortunately at the beginning of the film whilst the couple were watching the film, i had problems with lighting, either it was too dark or to bright. I tried to over come this by trying different lights that i had available and also by trying to use natural bright lights.



Editing

i suggested that my group should edit the film to give it a grainy texture, i think that this stuck to our original idea of creating an old style film. This along with the music i created gives the effect that it was created years ago. whilst editing, we added ripples where the couple are sucked into the movie, this actually tells the audience what is happening without there being any dialogue. I edited the music so that it fits with the actual film, i also changed the timings of the music so that is dies away and fades in at the right moments. 

Music

As we have taken inspiration from early silent horror films we needed music to fill in the silent parts of our movie this needed to relate to the film. 

   I created the music using Garage band, i have tried to create suspense and get the audience to know what is happening with just the music playing, i have used a variety of types of music ranging from suspense to romantic.

In some parts the music is rather predictable, i listened to as much early horror music i could to get inspiration, horror films such as phantom and thrillers such as psycho. i didn't really plan the music i just created it as the editing and the film came together. I didn't want to use music from a film as that really wouldn't be "ours" and most of the music didn't match with our film.

Sucked In

http://youtu.be/GhuDZszA1gU