When making our horror film we tried to stick as much as possible to Nick Lacey’s schema of genre. We did not challenge the conventions of genre as we did not have as much time or as large of a budget to be able to pull this off with maximum effect.
Character:
When we were creating a character we decided to appeal to our audience by having a character which can relate to the audience. The character is the typical character you would have in a horror film, he is alone, scared and doesn’t know what to do or what is going on. We were trying to stick to typical conventions of a character in a horror film. The character has no dialogue, in doing this we were hoping to gain tension through the background music and have it build up that way and to show the horror more clearly through the facial expressions of the character, also through the lack of dialogue it is less evident of the inexperience of the actor as he does not have to say anything..
Setting:
Single location. Normal semi-detached house, dark at night. We chose to do this as we thought it would be the best way to shoot a horror film, the reason for this is is so that the audience can relate to the character and the setting as this is a standard house for an average person, and this will scare the audience further as it will allow the audience to think that this could happen to them. Again, we tried to stick to the stereotypical conventions of genre, having a dark setting which creates a tense atmosphere through the setting and the music.
Iconography:
We used a torch as our iconography to show that this film is a horror film, this would show the darkness of the film and through this we were able to create more of a tense atmosphere for the audience. Also, I used a shot of the torch when it came to making the poster, this again was to allow the audience to clearly identify the genre of this film, horror.
Narrative and Theme:
Considering narrative we followed Vladimir Todorov’s theory of narrative, having an equilibrium, disequilibrium and a new equilibrium, we stuck to this as we thought this would be the best possible narrative structure for our film, and would make it easier during filming because we had some guide lines to follow, which it did. However, we did not follow Propp’s theory of characters, we only had one character so it wouldn’t be possible for us to follow this theory, so we challenged this theory, we did however have a ‘hero’ in our film, our ‘hero’ could be classed as our main character ‘Joe’ as he would be considered brave for trying to face the entity himself, being brave, a stereotypical trait of a hero. Also, we could have the entity classed as a ‘villain’ but however we did not have any of the other roles so like I said previously we could not follow this theory.
We followed two specific themes which had been set by us, we had to include technology and time somehow within our short film.
We introduced the theme of time through the change of the day, starting with having light shining into the house showing afternoon, then dusk when we see Joe in his bed and then followed by when the audiences sees Joe waking up, we can clearly see that this is now night as the setting has now switched to being a dark setting and this is when we see the introduction of our technology aspect.
To show technology in our film we used a torch, we didn’t know how else we could introduce technology in our horror and we believed this would be the best way as it would create tension due to not everything can be seen on screen and the audience doesn’t know what is there. This also gives a sense of mystery for the audience as it makes them wonder what is actually haunting the character, while creating a sense of fear.
Editing:
When editing we stuck with the typical conventions of editing due to lack of budget and the lack of experience with the editing software. We stuck with the regular typical cuts you would find as we did not have time to experiment with the different types of cuts we could of used. Although, overall I am pleased with how the cuts have worked out, because they do show a passage of time, and during the tense scenes the fast cuts create and build tension well for the audience, as we learnt in the audience feedback.
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