Horror Genre Research

Conventions

Here is a presentation I've created that looks into the conventions of the horror genre. From creating this presentation, I've learnt about a variety of stereotypical conventions within horror movies. For example, dark lighting is a key convention of the genre. It was helpful to carry out this research as, I've now got a better idea of what to include within my final project to make it a success. The research task has also helped to spark some ideas of the narrative of my final project.

Certificate Ratings

Many horror films are rated 15 and 18. With horror films rated 15, the film can present strong threat and menace as long as story lines aren't too sexualised or sadistic. Strong gory imagery and narrative's aren't likely to be accepted within the 15 age rating.
The strongest and most extreme horror films are generally passed as being rated at 18. Horrors at this rating contain strong gore, sustained threats and menace and strong horror themes. Also, violence is very strong within 18 rated films.
 From researching the certificate ratings, the ratings should be taken into consideration when aiming our final project. If my group wanted to aim our horror film at 15-17 year olds we would have to make sure we followed the 15/15A age ratings. So, we would have to make sure that the storyline for our film isn't too gory, brutal and violent. Also, the narrative can't involve strong violence or discriminatory language and behaviour.
However, if we wanted to aim our final project at 18 year olds then there's more room for a strong horror storyline. Things like strong violence, bad language and strong gore and blood are all allowed with an 18 certificate film.
So, we need to make sure we choose a specific target audience to make sure the film meets it's certificate age rating.

Horror genre timeline
Here is a link to a time line created by my group member Beth, on dipity, that documents the horror genre and it's development over time. This helped me gain more insight into the genre as a whole and it's also given me further knowledge of horror films I can research before creating my final project.

Horror Genre and its history on Dipity.

Iconography

My group member Amy has created a collage on the website Photovisi to look at iconography associated with the horror genre.

Horror iconography usually follows a pattern, using the same or similar iconography in order to make the genre identifiable to the audience. This means it makes it easier to label who is the protagonist and who is the antagonist through the iconography associated with them. Iconography can be a symbols that are featured in all horror movies. These include:

• The Haunted House
• Symbols of Death
• Disfigured face
• Masks
• The screaming victim ('The final girl').
• Murder weapon aka: Knife, meat cleaver, chainsaw etc.
• Binary opposites of good vs evil.
• Dark places.
• Blood and bloody body parts.

Director Research: 

My group member Beth also chose to research a famous horror films conventional to the genre. She chose to look at Wes Craven, as he has directed many famous horror films including many of the Scream series and Nightmare On Elm Street series. She has chose to answer the question in the form of an online slideshow made on the website, Zenfolio to demonstrate further research into our genre.

Click here to view the slideshow on Wes Craven


This genre research is very important in the creation of our project as it allowed us to become familiar with the conventions within the horror genre. Also some of the research helped us think about what kind of conventions we can include in our opening sequence and also what kind of horror film we want to create.