Horror conventions

D = Don't I = Ignore S = Setting Small communities or isolated places - more rural/suburban than inner city. This offers more opportunities for a sense of isolation, or for a whole community to harbour a secret. Often places with a “past” which will return. Abandoned house, old lunatic asylum etc. Homes, usually with different levels and cellars and attics – places for secrets and the past to inhabit. Basements connote our primitive instincts and attics our repressed terrors? Night-time/out of hour – often places of “innocent” daytime fun Religions/medical institutions – possession, demons, psychosis. Dreams and the unconscious mind “The East” –strange, other cultures with weird traditions

  T = Technical codes Camerawork is expressive rather than naturalistic. Weird high and low angles. Canted camerawork common – disorientating. ECUs on victim to enable audience identification with terror and to exclude threat from frame (more scary as you don’t know where it is). Sudden ECUs on monster to connote invasion of our personal space. POV shooting very important – subjective, hand-held or steadicam camerawork often places audience in monster’s eyes – raises issues about audience identification. Clover (Men, Women and Chainsaws) argues this usually switches to the victim/protagonist/final girl as the film progresses. Again raises issues about audience identification. Camerawork often makes use of depth of frame – protagonist in foreground, unaware of monster emerging in background. Editing may create unsettling jumps from LS to CU, rather than smooth use of MS. Editing pace may be used to create suspense. Sudden increases in editing pace when there is no apparent threat creates feeling of jumpiness – something must be about to happen… Sound may be very important. Ambient sound for atmosphere, footsteps, heartbeats high in the sound mix.

  I = Iconography iconography: Visual conventions of genre.. The colours black and red (obvious connotations of darkness, evil, blood and danger etc). Lighting expressive and non-naturalistic. Motivated, low-key, high contrast, chiaroscuro, to emphasize shadows. Lighting direction often from unexpected angles – e.g below, to create unfamiliar shadows (and connote hell, bonfires, primitive instincts etc, as natural light - sunlight, moonlight, room lights - is always from above us). A selection of the commoner objects in the mise-en-scene would include weapons, (particularly bladed), blood, masks, icons of the supernatural (ghosts, moving objects) and religion (crucifixes, pagan symbols). Iconography of childhood/innocence –dolls, playgrounds, clowns – children’s songs (see Barthes structuralist narrative theory of binary oppositions).

  N = Narrative narrative structure: Classic realist/classic Hollywood narrative structure (normality-enigma-path to resolution-closure, or hero-agent of change-quest- resolution-closure) largely applicable to genre, although there may be “false closures” and the real closure often left ambiguous for two reasons – 1 to suggest mythic quality of the monster and 2 to enable a sequel. This conception of narrative structure is based on Todorov’s theories. The clear, unambiguous hero of the classic Hollywood narrative is somewhat problematic in many horrors – as a main protagonist, the “final girl”of the slasher and many other horror films is a victim/hero rather than a simple hero, and thus provides a point of masochistic identification for the spectator which is more complicated than in many other genres. The narratives of some sub-genres, such as the slasher, are very formulaic. Childhood psychotic event creates killer who return to a past location on an anniversary to kill again – usually a group of stupid, “immoral” teenagers etc, with one (virginal, slightly masculine) female character who survives – the “final girl”. Propp’s theories of narrative? We will try to apply them to our next film… Barthes’ and Levi Strauss’, structuralist narrative analysis – not so concerned with linear development but more with underlying mythic structures – works particularly well with horror. Binary oppositions abound, for example innocence/evil. Horror often plays on this by developing very sinister atmospheres through a reliance on our awareness of the existence of the “opposite term” to innocence. Hence the use of dolls, fairgrounds, nursery rhymes, children etc.

 C = Characters character types: Main protagonist often “victim/hero” – see points on narrative structure. The Final Girl, androgynous, virginal. Monsters with a hidden secret or made psychotic by an earlier event. Stupid/”immoral” teens to get killed Children. Ineffectual police and “normal” law enforcers (horror is not containable through normal channels). The “have a go” hero who will get killed Scientists who do stupid things or over-reach their powers People who refuse to believe T = Themes Themes: Binary oppositions – natural VS unnatural; good Vs evil; known Vs unknown. Return of the repressed – Freudian theory… horror is often close to sex in some way… The hidden evil inside. Science out of control. What lies on the other side of death?