Film Task Research

Genre's of films
 Comedy
Action
Horror/thriller
Rom Com
Science Fiction


One of the genre's that we were the most interesting in doing for our film task Horror, because after watching a number of Horror films, the opening of them have always managed to grab my attention within the first 2 minutes. Some ot the common things that we noticed from watching a number of Film openings were:

-Lots of close ups (we dont tend to get the full images, just small parts of them)
-dark colours/ often black and white, sometimes hints of red (representing the gore in some films)
- Lack of speech (often none at all)
- Powerful, but slow and mysterious much, often orchestra music e.g violins.
-  Images fading into eachother slowly.
We noticed this is films such a Se7en, The Dead Zone, 30 Days of Night and Silent Hill- all horror films.



Conventions of Horror Films

Lighting
Dark/showdy lighting
Dim - often used to hide what characters look like. e.g in 'Signs' (2002) the aliens are only revealed at the very end of the film, because they are constantly covered by shadowy/dark lights.

Locations
Isolated locations - often houses out in the middle of no where. e.g In the strangers (2008) the house where it is set is right in the middle of no where in a big house (meaning if something happens to the characters in the house there is no one to help them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wY_1911aUUw <---- Trailer for The Strangers. At the beggining of the clip we see a shot of the house surrounded by tree's. This inspires us for our own film opening.


Woods/ Forests e.g In the Blair Witch Project (1999)

Characters
Zombies - 28 days later, Dawn of the dead, Walking Dead.
Monsters -  Monsters, Boogey Man.
Vampires -  Dracula, 30 days of night, Fright Night.
Ghosts/Sprits - Paranormal Activity, Polterguist, Sixth Sense.
Serial Killers/Murders - Scream, Saw, From Hell, The Boston Strangler.

Victim - In every horror film there is always at least on Victim, who the main 'Scary' character is trying to get. e.g  Above, it shows the victims in 'The Stangers',  a couple who are targeted by the murderes throughout the film. 

Comedy Horror - Shaun of the dead

I watched the opening and the titles of Shaun of the dead, a comedy about zombies. Although Shaun of the dead typically falls into the 'comdey' category, it also has some typical conventions of a horror movie. For example; during the titles, it shows people doing everyday jobs such as working at a supermarket checkout, and a man pushing trollys in a car park, however they appear in a 'zombie-like' way. Although they arent Zombies yet, we can see that zombies will appear later on in the film.

This made me think that in our film task, we could use an idea like this in the opening; we could give hints of what may happen, but not actually show it. For example, if the film was about people people killed with knives, the opening of it could just focus on knives themselves, but not neccessarly associated with death at this early stage.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZmjsWAfn14 <---------- Click on this link to see the opening scene from Shaun of the Dead.

Typical Horror
We then decided to look at a typical Horror film that we would expect to see typical horror conventions in, 30 days of night. It was released in 2007, directed by David Slade, where an Alaskan town prepares for their anual '30 days of night' - a period in which there is no sun. In this time period vampires attack the town.

Vampires are typically associated with horror, and are featured in 'Dracula', 'Fright Night' and 'An interview with a vampire. They are known for their pale skin, fangs are glowing red eyes, so this could be something that we would be able to feature in our opening for a  Horror film.
One thing about the opening titles to this film is that it doesnt actually give away any information that the film may include vampires; it shows images of the destruction that the vampires have caused, but you would not know this unless you had researched the film.
Although I like the idea of using Vampires in our horror trailor, I think it would be important to show part of them in the opening to give the audience an idea of what is going to happen, so they can see whether it would appeal to them or not.

The lighting in the opening titles of 30 days of night is completley dark all the way through, and the music is very shocking with piercing sounds. This is suitable for thistype of film (horror) because if it had started with bright lighting and happy music, it would not match with the gore, blood and death that was later to come in the film. It is made of a serious of close ups, which links back to what I said about this being effective due to the fact that is doesnt give too much away, but the lighting, music and eery sense we get tells us that it is going to be scary.