How research has impacted our ideasBy Kesia Trevor-Massey

D.I.S.T.I.N.C.T Research was important to our project as we needed to connect to a target audience and

also connect on a wider scale to the horror genre. So I decided to take in to consideration the key horror conventions for example D.I.S.T.I.N.C.T. This means, setting, technical, iconography, characterisation and themes + tones. These are all equally important when creating a horror trailer as I will go on to explain further in this post.

As a class we watched multiple horror movies as inspiration, for example, Halloween, The Crazies, The Woman In Black and The Cabin in the Woods. These films each gave a different horror theme in each movie, for example, Halloween focused more on the slasher style movie which wasn’t unusual for its release date in 1978. Whereas The Crazies focused more on gore and apocalyptic genre of horror. The movie that my group liked the most and decided we would get the most inspiration from would be The Woman In Black. This was because it focused more on the paranormal horror, which is seen as the ‘scariest’ genre of horror in the 21st film industry. It focused on the revenge plot of a wronged ghost.

Apart from our class screening of horror movies I also applied my own knowledge of horror movies to this project. Although my knowledge of horror movies is limited compared to others as my personal preference of film is not the horror genre. I do enjoy watching trailers and applied my knowledge of horror trailers in the making of my own.

D.I.S.T.I.N.C.T Don’t Ignore Setting Technical Iconography Narrative Characterisation Themes + Tones

Setting When creating a horror movie it is important to take in to

consideration the setting of your film. This is because you need a place that will converge with the horror genre and make the trailer and film scary to the audience. Also it needs to be in a setting that is believable, allowing the audience to actually believe that something like thatwould happen in that setting, this will make the audience’s fear factor increase making the trailer and movie more enjoyable overall.

It was important for me to take in the Binary Opposites theory by Claude Levi-Strauss. This theory basically means, for example, say one character was bathed in light and another character covered by darkness; this could indicate that the person in the light is the ‘hero’ of the film, Whereas, the ‘Villain’ would be the person in the darkness. We took this theory into consideration while thinking of setting as we wanted someplace that would be dark and muggy so that it would indicate to the audience that something bad was about to happen in the plot.

The marshland setting we chose was perfect as it was dark, muddy and we felt that it had the potential for a horror setting.

However, having said all that more recent horror movies like, Poltergeist, Insidious and Paranormal Activity all feature nice looking, sunny suburban houses. I think this was done because it gives a shock to the audience when something bad happens inside the house as it will not be expected because of how light and nice-looking the setting is.

Technical When thinking about technical codes it is important to think about

sound, lighting, focus, mise-en-scene and shots. Sound – Through my research that most trailers use diegetic and non-diegetic sound. This was

something that we later incorporated into our own trailer. Voice overs are often used in horror trailers and therefore in order for our to converge we also used a voice over in our own trailer. And some diegetic sound that was used in out trailer was screaming coming from the main character.

Lighting – Horror films often consist of a lot of low key lighting andlittle high key lighting. This is conventional to horror movies as it well know that scary things happen in the dark and the producers are trying to increase the fear factor in the audience. So in my own horror trailer we used lots of low key lighting and low contrast lighting to create a moody and dramatic effect.

Focus – horror trailer use a range of focus, from deep, selective and soft. This is so it is more interesting to the audience. We did the same as we used deep focus to look at everything in the surroundings and used selective to focus on the main character and also soft to sometimes have the edges blur together.

Technical Mise-en-scene – This is basically what is in the shot. In horror trailers that I

have researched I have often found that the main character is often in the shit no matter where the setting is. This is something we incorporated into our own trailer where the ghost is often in nearly every mise-en-scene.

Shots – It is important to get a variety of different shots throughout the film making process as it makes the trailer more interesting overall. We used lots of close up shots and wide shots with high and low angles.

Iconography Iconography is used in films to describe the visual language of cinema, particularly in the field of genre. It is important to genre conventions as we expect to see a certain object of screen when we see a particular genre, for example, horror movies often have props such a knifes, guns and blood. These are all things we expect to see within a horror movie. In modern horror films we expect to see the use of dark lighting (low key lighting). These are all genre indicators and are called the iconography of the mise-en-scene or genre.

Narrative When doing research on horror films I watched a lot of different types of horror movies.

Something that I came to realize was that they each follow a narrative structure, this made me realize that this was something we needed to plan out ourselves. So in order to achieve this my group sat down and planed the plot of out horror film, this would also make filming easier. However, horror trailers I have come to realize follow a structure too, they often start of slow and use longer clips and towards the end of the trailer the pace quickens, music gets louder and more dramatic and clips get shorter and shorter. We took this into consideration when editing out own trailer.

Todorov’s Narrative Structure theory is very important when it comes to the plot of the movie as suggested earlier. The theory explains that every movie starts of with an equilibrium then disruption of the equilibrium, after that, recognition of he disruption then an attempt to repair the damage and finally a new equilibrium is made. When writing out plot we decided to follow these rules made by Todorov.

Characterisation Vladimir Propp’ Character Functions:1. The villain (struggles against the hero)2. The donor (prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object)3. The (magical) helper (helps the hero in the quest)4. The princess (person the hero marries, often sought for during the

narrative)5. The false hero (perceived as good character in beginning but emerges as

evil)6. The dispatcher (character who makes the lack known and sends the hero

off)7. The hero [AKA victim/seeker/paladin/winner, reacts to the donor, usually

marries the princess

Characterisation When researching characters in horror movies it became clear that Propp’s character functions theory is evident in not only horror movies but also other genre’s. This theory is evident in our own work as the villain is first seen as the ghost, however, the audience later find that it is actually the teacher who is the villain. Also the hero is ‘chloe’ as she saves the day by getting rid the teacher ‘john’ and allowing the ghost to get her revenge.

Another theory I looked at was Bordwell and Thompson’s time and space theory. They believed that a chain of events within a media form cause effect on a relationship occurring in time and space and the narrative shapes this material in terms of time space such as; where and when things take place.

Themes + Tones Whilst doing my research on horror films i found that there were some

reoccurring themes in nearly every horror film, for example, the main themes of horror films are:

Ghosts, serial killers, demons, exorcisms, hauntings, gore and revenge. Of course all of these themes are used for entertainment to the audience

and to also scare them. Taking into consideration these main themes of horror we decided to also

use a standard horror theme. Whilst creating the plot of our story we decided to use a revenge plot with a serial killer as the villain.

Representation Whilst researching for my horror project it became clear

that women are often sexualised in horror movies. There have been many theory’s to this observation, here are a few:

Laura Mulvey – The concept of gaze is how the audience (mainly men) look at women or how woman are presented. The camera often lingers on the curves of the female body. This relegates woman to be seen as objects.

Jeremy Tunstall – He argues that woman are represented in 4 ways; domestic, sexual, consumer and marital. He says that women are depicted as busy housewives, as contended mothers, as eager consumers and as sex objects.

Carol Clover – This theory argues that the person who usually survives the slasher movies is the sexually inactive girl. She usually has dark hair and is rather masculine. This theory could be used in a way to show the audience that sex is a dangerous thing.

Audience Research When creating a horror movie it is important to create a target audience.

My group also decided to create a target demographic as all movies have an age rating restriction on. Ours we decided would be a 15 as it had elements in that would not be suitable for a younger audience. In order for us to get a good understanding of our target audience I also made various questionnaires asking things like ‘horror preference’ and how they may have found out about upcoming horror movies. We also screened our first draft in front of our class and got feedback on the plot and if they liked or disliked it.

Audience + Institutions As our film is loosely based on ‘The Woman In Black’ we figured it would handy to

do some research on marketing and distribution of the film. One thing I did notice about the film was that it was rated a 12A, this is not something that I agreed with as I thought it was rather scary and inappropriate for children of that age, with my understand of horror films I thought it should have been rated a 15.

The woman in black promoted their film very well and also used a well known actor in who had a big fan-base.

The release of the film was massive having 2,855 screenings in the USA generating $20,874,072 and 412 screenings in the UK generating £3,153,020. As mentioned earlier it was advertised over a wide range of media platforms which is a reason for why it was such a big success.

Theorist’s used overall Claude Levi-Strauss – Binary opposites Tzvetan Todorov – Narrative Structure Vladimir Propp – Character Functions Bordwell and Thompson – Time and Space Laura Mulvey – Male gaze Jeremy Tunstall – Character Roles Carol Clover – Final Girl