Monday 30 November 2009

Media theories about horror films

We have been researching different media theories about horror films. From this we wish to gain a further understanding of why people love horror movies? We want to broaden our knowledge of what peoples likes and dislikes are so we can create a film according to our viewers needs and desires.

Throughout our research of media theorists many questions have been asked, such as:
Do the audience like to be scared?
What do they enjoy most about the horror and gore?
Why do people pay for this?
How is it enjoyable?

Investigators generally use one of two theories to explain why people like horror movies. The first is that the person is not actually afraid, but excited by the movie. This gave us a wide range of ideas for our horror film and we have decided to create scenes which do include terror, murder and blood but also add an aspect of suspense whcih keep our viewers on the edge of their seat.

The second explanation that we researched is that the audience are willing to endure the terror in order to enjoy a euphoric sense of relief at the end. Also as the viewer is watching the film in the safety of their own home or local cinema for example, so they feel a sense of secureness as they can watch the film and feel the terror but not actually live it.

Conventions Of Horror Films



From the research that i have carried out,
watching both horror films and trailors i am now
able to identify the following conventions of the
horror genre. Horror films aim to elicit the emotions of fear, horror and terror from the audience. There are many conventions of horror films, for example, death, violence, weapons, blood and the supernatural characters. Many films also include the central villain.
In a large amount of horror movies, it is not just solely the genre of horror but a lot of them involve science fiction, fantasy, black comedy and thrillers.

Wednesday 25 November 2009

What did you learn from annotating different Horror film posters?

From researching and analysing different horror posters Hannah and I have learnt a lot about what is most popular among our target audience.

From the posters we researched it was learnt that dark colours were the most popular used. For example copious amounts of black and grey as these colours can be used well to portray the emotions of fear, darkness and death. Red is also a popular colour among the posters we analysed. Red is a strong representation of horror and murder as it is the colour of blood. After analysing image three we decided that red would be a very powerful colour to use throughout our poster and also in our trailer as it highlights the emotions we want to portray of fear and pain. Red is also a very bright colour. From the research we carried out on film posters we saw that usually one bright colour is used to captivate the audience and to grasp their attention onto an image. Because of this we wanted to take this idea and use it in our poster.

When analysing “The Uninvited” poster, Hannah and I discovered that it is the point that you cannot see the person in the foregrounds’ face that is extremely disturbing. They are also looking through a window which makes the audience ask are they looking at me? The colours in this poster are also very limited which is very effective. The dark colours highlight to the audience straight away that it is a horror genre.

Throughout are research we also found that mist was extremely common among many horror posters. Mist is associated with open air and being isolated in a wide open space. This was a great idea to use for our poster as our trailer is set in the woods at night time so mist would be very effective to have in our poster as it allows the audience to see where the story is set without watching the trailer. They hopefully will be thoroughly intrigued to learn more and see what it is about.

Images associated with horror can also be very dramatic. As a group we found that this would be a very effective way to make our poster very distinctive to our audience. A dramatic image can also be used to grab and captivate our viewers so they will want to watch the film to find out what it is about.

A title is also very important to have on your poster. We found that it is common among the horror poster we researched to have a very bold title. It is usually black or red as these are typical horror conventions. To have this very bold also means that it will stand out and it will be very distinctive and eye-catching.

Analysis Of "The Uninvited" Film Poster


Wednesday 4 November 2009

Our Slideshow

















Idea

Hannah and I have now began to plan our idea in more detail. We have decided on creating a movie trailer. The genre of our movie is horror. To grab and captivate our audience we have began to research various different horror film trailors and have analysed posters and websites to gain more of an understanding for our audiences needs and desires.

Our task is to create a short movie trailor, a film website and a poster advertising our idea.

Firstly we put together our ideas towards our film trailor into a slide show and performed it as a powerpoint to the rest of our class.