Audience perceptions of horror films - Survey results

Myself and Lauren created a questionnaire about horror films and posted it on www.surveymonkey.com. (you can find our questionnaire at this link - http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CKS5VZJ)

Here are a few of the results gathered from our online questionnaire:


- 66% of people were aged 12-18. 33% were aged 19 - 25.
- Over half were female.
- 66% of people said they enjoy horror films whereas the remainder said they did not.
- We gave four genres of horrors and gave the choice of a favourite - all four genres were chosen by all the people who took the questionnaire. The genres were Blood, Guts & Gore, Slasher, Comedy Horror and Supernatural Horror.
- The most common favourite horror films were Saw and Wrong Turn.
- We then asked what the two main things were that people expected to be in a good horror film - everybody who answered said "a good scare".

Looking at Film Openings

We have been looking at different film openings to give us an idea of how common horror films draw people in. We watched a few minutes of the opening of The Shining, and learned that it is important that the opening of a film looks good, in order to attract a viewing audience. It must make them want to find out the rest of the plot, to carry on watching your film. It must also establish a tone to make the viewers fall into the mood of the film that they are watching - for example, if your film opening is mysterious, they should wonder what is going to happen next, if someone has died then the viewers should feel sad. This research will help us when creating our own film opening.

Looking at Film Openings - Wrong Turn

To get an idea of what common film openings are like, we have been looking at Wrong Turn. We watched the opening several times and studied the different camera angles and different diagetic and non-diagetic sounds.

Horror Film Questionnaire

Myself and Lauren have created a questionnaire on horror films.
You can see and answer the survey by clicking here.

5th October - London!

On 5th October our media class took a day trip to London.

We left at 8:00am and got to London just after 10:30am. First stop for me and Lauren was McDonalds! We had breakfast and spent an hour walking around London and exploring. We had to be at the London Film Museum for 12:00pm.

Once we were inside, we were taken upstairs and given a tour of the Museum. We saw original costumes used from films like Batman, Superman, Shaun Of The Dead, Star Wars, and Doctor Who. There were also different models and statues - a dinasour from Night At The Museum 2, the model of Medusa that was used for animation,  a model of the alien from Alien.
After the tour we had a lunch break, before returning to the Museum for a media workshop. We had to write our own short scripts, and film ourselves acting them out. We were then shown a previously made music video and shown how the effects made the video more interesting.

We left once the workshop had finished and had a fun and informative day.

Scream write up

Scream

Scream is an American slasher film, released on 20th December 1996. It was written by Kevin Williamson and directed by Wes Craven. The film follows the main character, Sidney Prescott (played by Neve Campbell), a high school student in the fictional town of Woodsboro, as she becomes the target of a mysterious killer known as Ghostface. Two other important characters in the film are Sidney’s best friend Tatum Riley, and Sidney’s boyfriend Billy Loomis.

Scream was inspired by Kevin Williamson’s passion for horror films, and was partly based on the real-life case of the Gainesville Ripper. The script was originally named “Scary Movie”, but it was bought by Dimension films and renamed Scream by the Weinstein Brothers, just before the filming was complete.

The film earned $173 million worldwide, and became the highest rated gross-slasher film in the US. It received several awards and award nominations. The soundtrack (written by Marco Beltrami) was said to be “one of the most intriguing horror scores composed in years".

Scream was credited with bringing the horror genre back after it had died down in the late 1980s. Scream was one of the highest grossing films of 1996 and became, and remains, the highest grossing slasher film in the world.

It went on to successfully release sequels Scream 2 (December 12th 1997), Scream 3 (February 4th 2000), and Scream 4 (April 15^th 2011).

In the next few years after the release of Scream, the film was accused of inspiring violent crimes and murders.

Conventions commonly found in Horror Films.

We have learned about conventions that are commonly used in horror films, ancient and modern-day.
Some conventions that are commonly used, and are relevant to the sub-genre of teen horror, are:

A secluded location.
This is a setting commonly used in horror films. The characters are placed where there is nobody around to help them if they face trouble. These are normally places like abandoned theme parks, dark woods, derelict building sites - places that are very open and have lots of places for 'the baddy' to hide.

Someone investigates a strange noise.
This is a very overused convention, used in several (if not the majority of) horror films. A character will hear an odd noise, and will follow the noise and try and find out what it is, and what caused it. This normally leads to trouble and is a good build up if done well and effectively.

Warning goes unheeded.
The main character in a horror film is normally the one who is victimised the most. If another character, for example a family member or friend to the character, senses the approaching trouble and warns the main character, the warning is normally ignored. The character will often follow the trouble, instead of ignoring it as advised.

Powercut
At the scariest moment possible, the lights suddenly go out and nobody knows why. The main character is normally attacked or murdered or something of the sorts at this point.

Someone runs upstairs instead of outside
Whenever the killer enters the house, the main character seems to run away upstairs, instead of running out of the open front door. There is a safe path that they could easily take, by running down the street trying to find help, but they always seem to hide upstairs and normally get found and killed.


Some popular films that use these conventions are:

Zombieland

Secluded location - set in a derelict theme park.

Paranormal Activity

Someone investigates a strange noise - Mika hears a noise and goes downstairs to check. He gets attacked.

Jeepers Creepers

Power cut - The power goes out and the Beast start chasing the teenagers.