Genre Research: Horror

 Horror films are surrounded by the ability to make the audience feel cared for and uneasy by the aspects of the movie. I made a PowerPoint and researched the horror genre, and I learned many things about the conventions of the genre. This includes lighting, costumes, sound, movement, and many other things. The camera angles commonly used in the horror genre create an uneasy and disturbing feel by using low angles, tilted angles, bird's eye, and close-ups. Low angles and titled angles provide a sense of power and psychotic mood of the character or setting the camera angle is done on. Close-ups are also used to reflect fear into the audience as a facial expression and feelings of the character are reflected onto the audience. Bird's eye views are also common conventions used to show the setting and situation to the audience so they feel the fear the audience feels while watching the situation of the character. Although camera angles are important, the movements are also, horror films use tracking and reverse shots when filming. Tracking is something commonly used to create suspense and mimic as if the character is being followed. Another common horror genre also uses different sounds, such as diegetic, non-diegetic sound, sound perspective, and sound motifs. Non-diegetic sounds are more commonly used as a convention of horror films because it provides an underlying passage to direct the mood of the audience into the director's vision. An example of this is eerie music playing in the background of a scene to amplify the mood created in a horror film beyond visual and diegetic sound in a scene. Although the diegetic sound is used to amplify the visual aspects there have to be strong visual aspects to exemplify. Costumes and makeup are a very important visual convention of horror films. For visual aspects blood, torn clothes, dirt, and many unpleasant things. Horror films provide the audience with a sense of suspense and investment in the character's life, as fear is struck into the audience. Every director in horror films has their own touches and twists on the natural conventions found in the genre of horror movies. However, mainly all films in the genre of horror aim with the goal of using conventions such as camera angles, camera movement, sound, and costumes. Some examples of movies that do this are, "The Shining" and the "Conjuring". All horror genres make all of their choices to get the director's vision to the audience and also to get the director's feeling to the audience too, through the screen.