Setting
Isolation is key, making the audience feel like the character(s) are alone. eg. alley ways, run down houses, hotels & Insane Asylums - more rural/suburban than inner city, or a whole community to harbour a secret e.g Hot fuzz. Other, relateable/regocniseable settings such as homes, usually with different levels, celars and attics –places for secrets and past to inhabit. Basements connote our primitive insincts and attics our repressed terrors. Often places with a ‘past’ which will return. Abandoned houses, old lunatic asylums etc. e.g Halloween. The moment is typically night-time/out of hour – often times of lack of light, which we associate with fears and the unknown. Iconically daytime is known as saftey, that nothing bad will happen, but this is not always a true saftey net to rely on, especially places of innocence such as a school, maybe abandoned or when pupils/staff etc. are preocupied elsewhere. Places of religion/medical treatment - institutions typically have possesion, demonic and psychosis factors. Dreams and the unconscious mind are usually applied in horror/thriller or drama/horror films as some 'extra link', maybe another person to some extent is causing these dream terrors - character drama.
Technical Code
Camerawork is expressive rather than naturalistic. High and low angles canted camerawork common disorientating connotate nightmares/surrealness. ECUs on victim to enable audience identification with terror and to exlude threat from frame (more scary as you don’t know where it is). Sudden ECUs on monster to connote invasion of our personal space. POV shooting – subjective, hand-held camerawork often allows audience to see through the characters or ‘monsters’ eyes, putting themselves within the films world, making it relatable – can help disorientate the audience and raises issues about audience identification. Camerawork often makes use of depth of frame – allows things to approach the camera slowly therefore causing suspense by putting the protagonist in foreground that is unaware of monster emerging in background. Etitting may create unsettling jumps from LS to CU, rather than smooth use of MS. Sudden increases in editing pace when there is no apparent threat creates the feeling of jumpiness – something must be about to happen. (suspense)
Camerawork is expressive rather than naturalistic. High and low angles canted camerawork common disorientating connotate nightmares/surrealness. ECUs on victim to enable audience identification with terror and to exlude threat from frame (more scary as you don’t know where it is). Sudden ECUs on monster to connote invasion of our personal space. POV shooting – subjective, hand-held camerawork often allows audience to see through the characters or ‘monsters’ eyes, putting themselves within the films world, making it relatable – can help disorientate the audience and raises issues about audience identification. Camerawork often makes use of depth of frame – allows things to approach the camera slowly therefore causing suspense by putting the protagonist in foreground that is unaware of monster emerging in background. Etitting may create unsettling jumps from LS to CU, rather than smooth use of MS. Sudden increases in editing pace when there is no apparent threat creates the feeling of jumpiness – something must be about to happen. (suspense)
Sound
Sound strengthens the other convetions by creating supsense/misleading scares. Ambient sound creates a sense of a realistic atomosphere - foley sound; footsteps, heartbeats high in the sound mix. Exaggerated diegetic sound will allow tension to build within the film world. Fast and loud non-diegetic sound can add to making the audience jump or feel scared I.e. the music in the shower scene in Psycho.
Sound strengthens the other convetions by creating supsense/misleading scares. Ambient sound creates a sense of a realistic atomosphere - foley sound; footsteps, heartbeats high in the sound mix. Exaggerated diegetic sound will allow tension to build within the film world. Fast and loud non-diegetic sound can add to making the audience jump or feel scared I.e. the music in the shower scene in Psycho.
Iconography
Visual ignifiers of genre are readily apparent. The colour scheme in horrors consist of a mixture of dull/muted tones and contrasting vibrant colour/s depending on the sub genre i.e green for sci-fi horrors and red for slashers. The colours black and red have obvious and well known/publically shared connotations of darkness, evil, blood and danger. Lighting expressive and non-naturalistic. Motivated, low-key, high contrast, chiaroscuro, to emphasise shadows. Lighting direction often from unexpected angles – e.g bellow, to create unfamiliar shadows which can connote hell, primitive instincts etc, as natural light – sunlight, moonlight, room lights – is always from above ‘us’. A selection of the commoner objects in the mise-en-scene would include weapons (bladed), blood, masks, icons of the supernatural (ghosts, moving objects) and religion (crucifices, pagan symbols). Horror films typically have shared and strong iconography aspects of childhood/innocence – dolls, playgrounds, clowns – children’s songs (bathes binary opposites).
Visual ignifiers of genre are readily apparent. The colour scheme in horrors consist of a mixture of dull/muted tones and contrasting vibrant colour/s depending on the sub genre i.e green for sci-fi horrors and red for slashers. The colours black and red have obvious and well known/publically shared connotations of darkness, evil, blood and danger. Lighting expressive and non-naturalistic. Motivated, low-key, high contrast, chiaroscuro, to emphasise shadows. Lighting direction often from unexpected angles – e.g bellow, to create unfamiliar shadows which can connote hell, primitive instincts etc, as natural light – sunlight, moonlight, room lights – is always from above ‘us’. A selection of the commoner objects in the mise-en-scene would include weapons (bladed), blood, masks, icons of the supernatural (ghosts, moving objects) and religion (crucifices, pagan symbols). Horror films typically have shared and strong iconography aspects of childhood/innocence – dolls, playgrounds, clowns – children’s songs (bathes binary opposites).
Narrative structure
Classic realist/classic Hollywood narrative structure (normality-enimage-path to resolution-closure, or hero agent of change-quest-resoultion-closure) largely applicable to genre, although there may be ‘faulse closures’ and the real closure often left ambiguous for two reasons – 1, to suggest mythic quality of the monster (brings the audience in and makes them a possible ‘victim’, where has the ‘monster’ gone will it come after me?) and 2, to enable a sequel. This conception of narrative structure is based on Todorov’s theories. The clear, unambiguous hero of the classic Hollywood narrative is somewhat problematic in many horrors – as a main protagonist, the ‘final girl’ of the slasher and many other horror films is a victim/hero rather than a simple hero, and thus provides a point of masochistic idenitifcation for the spectator which is more complicated in many other genres. The narratives of some sub-genres, such as the slasher, are very formulaic - childhood/psychotic events creates killer who returns to a past location on an anniversary to kill again (Halloween) – usually a group of stupid, ‘immoral’ teenagers with one (virginal, slightly masculine) female character who survives – the 'final girl'(Propp’s theories of character rolls). Bathes’ and Levi Strauss’, structuralist narrative analysis – not so concerned with linear development but more with underlying mythic structures – works particualry well with horror. Binary opposition abound, for example innocence/evil. Horror often plays on this by developing very sinsister atmospheres through a reliance on our awareness of the existence of the ‘opposite term’ to innocence. Thus the common uses of dolls, fairgrounds, nursery rhymes, children etc. in horror films.
Classic realist/classic Hollywood narrative structure (normality-enimage-path to resolution-closure, or hero agent of change-quest-resoultion-closure) largely applicable to genre, although there may be ‘faulse closures’ and the real closure often left ambiguous for two reasons – 1, to suggest mythic quality of the monster (brings the audience in and makes them a possible ‘victim’, where has the ‘monster’ gone will it come after me?) and 2, to enable a sequel. This conception of narrative structure is based on Todorov’s theories. The clear, unambiguous hero of the classic Hollywood narrative is somewhat problematic in many horrors – as a main protagonist, the ‘final girl’ of the slasher and many other horror films is a victim/hero rather than a simple hero, and thus provides a point of masochistic idenitifcation for the spectator which is more complicated in many other genres. The narratives of some sub-genres, such as the slasher, are very formulaic - childhood/psychotic events creates killer who returns to a past location on an anniversary to kill again (Halloween) – usually a group of stupid, ‘immoral’ teenagers with one (virginal, slightly masculine) female character who survives – the 'final girl'(Propp’s theories of character rolls). Bathes’ and Levi Strauss’, structuralist narrative analysis – not so concerned with linear development but more with underlying mythic structures – works particualry well with horror. Binary opposition abound, for example innocence/evil. Horror often plays on this by developing very sinsister atmospheres through a reliance on our awareness of the existence of the ‘opposite term’ to innocence. Thus the common uses of dolls, fairgrounds, nursery rhymes, children etc. in horror films.
Character types
Stereotypically in horror films the same type of characters appear in nearly every modern horror film, such as:
- Main protagonist often ‘victim/hero’ (final girl –
androgynous, virginal etc.) – This character is normally the only character that survives as she represent 'purity' which is something not associated with evil.
- Monsters with a secret or made psychotic by an earlier event
-Stupid/’immoral’ teens to get killed; 'The Blonde' – Often represented as being stupid and slutty, and often dies first
-Children
-Ineffectual police and law enforces
-People who refuse to believe…
Themes
-Binary oppostions – natural Vs unattural/supernatural, good
Vs evil, known Vs unknown-Return of the repressed
-The hidden evil inside
-Science out of control
-What lies on the other side of death?
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