Identifying Genre: Film

My brief is to create a short film, and I have chosen horror as I enjoy the genre. To create a successful horror film, I believe that I have to provoke fear in the audience, either by jump scares, terrifying concepts or shocking imagery. At the heart of the genre, the sole purpose is to scare the audience. Other conventions include:

• Isolated setting such as a wood or small urban town.
• Amplified diegetic sounds (e.g. footsteps) along with unsettling non diegetic sounds (e.g. protagonist's heartbeat).
• Editing not in bias of the antagonist. The horror from these films is usually achieved from the unknown, and we therefore don't see much of the antagonist, but when we do, it is sudden and gruesome or we see a shadow move in the background which builds suspense. There are examples of films that break conventions, for example, most zombie films have zombies in the main focus.

Within the genre however, there are many sub genres, all that have there own conventions. As my film will incorporate conventions from found footage films and slashers, I will focus on those


Slasher film often revolve around a person who has either been succumb to trauma or been abused as a child and as a result is insane. A typical storyline of a slasher is a person returns to their hometown and kill those that he thinks deserve it, this is usually a group of teenagers, as they would deem them immoral. The killer succeeds in most murders but may fail and either be taken into custody or killed. An example of this is the franchise 'Halloween' in which a killer institutionalised since childhood escapes from his psychiatric hospital and stalks his sister. His psychiatrist expects his movements and tries to follow him. He kills teenagers as they commit 'immoral' acts and eventually attempts to kill his sister, when he is repeatedly shot and supposedly killed.