Research: My Chosen Genre

After much deliberation, my partner and I have chosen the horror genre for the 2 minute opening of a film. I believe that this genre can be easy portray with conventions, such as, iconography (knifes and weapons). The horror genre therefore can be easily identified by audience because of the conventions that horror films use, making it assessable to make a success film.

The image on the left can be identified as a horror genre because of the micro features used in it's image. For example, the antagonists are all wearing masks which is portrayed as a horror iconography. The positioning of the characters is also significance because the antagonists have a dominating presence over the victims which are lower (sitting down) in the image, this authority shows that they have power of the victims. Also the wording they use is important in explaining why an audience can identify the horror genre because the title is written in a Gothic font, and the title itself: 'the strangers' shows mystery towards the events that would happen within the film.
The target audience for the horror genre is mainly teenagers and adult audiences because of the characters they use are normally young and this makes teenage audiences easy to relate to them. To further reason my choice in genre is that I am a teenager and tend to watch and enjoy many horror films so I have a diverse range of ideas from previous films I have watched. Also, I have a connection with peers the same age as I and slightly older of which I can access further information and views of different types of horror films. This makes it easier to access research and conduct theories about the types of conventions that work best in horror films.

We have discovered and created ideas that have generated from the horror films, 'The Strangers' and 'Scream' - particularly 'Scream' as we are fond of the idea of a phone call from the antagonist previous to the attack to create anxiety and mystery. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFCStOMqpfk We have analyse the way in which the character is portrayed within the film and desire to create a character similar to this one.

The planning I will conduct previous to filming my horror film is to research into different views age groups carry about horror films through a questionnaire. I will also analyse different effective horror film openings to further the ideas I originally carry concerning my horror film opening.