Genre Conventions
Storylines:
A Nightmare on Elm Street - Freddy Krueger, an evil being from another world, stalks a group of teenagers and kills them through their dreams.
Saw - Two men are held hostage by a psychopath, who is set on teaching his victims the value of life by putting them into demented life or death games.
Friday the 13th - While trying to re-open a summer camp, a group of camp counselors are mysteriously murdered by a machete swinging slasher.
Characters
Characters in horror films usually have a different characteristic to others which makes them look different to the others in the film.
Storylines:
A Nightmare on Elm Street - Freddy Krueger, an evil being from another world, stalks a group of teenagers and kills them through their dreams.
Saw - Two men are held hostage by a psychopath, who is set on teaching his victims the value of life by putting them into demented life or death games.
Friday the 13th - While trying to re-open a summer camp, a group of camp counselors are mysteriously murdered by a machete swinging slasher.
Characters
Characters in horror films usually have a different characteristic to others which makes them look different to the others in the film.
Characteristics: suspicion, distrust, self-doubt and paranoia of others, themselves and the world. The elements of psychological horror focus on mental conflict and become important as the characters face perverse situations, often involving the supernatural, immorality and conspiracies.
Iconography
Iconography is used to describe the visual language of cinema, particularly within the field of genre criticism. Iconography is an important aspect of genre such as; if a film was western then we would expect to see dusty roads, horses, guns, etc. If this was to be a modern horror film then we would expect to see dark scenes, pop-ups, etc. The genre indicators are called the iconography.
Music
Music creates a representation in genre conventions as different music themes can set a different emotion which makes a scene different to others. Horror films usually have themes that build up tension and suspense of what may happen next but if this was to be an emotional scene then music such as instruments like violins would be used to create a different emotion to the audience.
The video below is an extract from the psycho which uses non-diegetic music to help create and build up tense within this part of the scene.
Settings
Setting in films can connote the genre of a film which are usually helped along with lighting used in the shot; if it was to be a comedy genre film then the setting could be a room filled with high key lighting as there is no need to have dark shots. However with horror films, you would expect to see silhouettes and low key lighting not showing much of the setting which makes the audience feel uncomfortable as they would want to see what's around them.
Settings that are usually used in horror films are; hotels, abandoned houses, cemeteries, etc.
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