Sub-genre decision

30/09/15

In today's lesson, my group and I looked through each others textual analysis's so we could decide on which sub genre we should do- Paranormal, Psychological or Killer.


PARANORMAL: Jamie- Annabelle

From reading Jamie's analysis, I have learnt that paranormal horror follows similar conventions to psychological horror such as making the audience feel tense, the use of low key lighting, violence, semantic fields of darkness and similar props (knives). On the other hand, the main difference between them is the antagonist. This is because a psychological horror usually has a more realistic antagonist than in a paranormal as they are usually humans rather than ghosts, and dolls.


KILLER: Kayleigh-Texas Chainsaw Massacre

I thought this film followed the conventions of a horror film and it also had its own conventions such as gore, and violent murders with weapons such as chainsaws which aren't often seen as much as knifes. However, it would be difficult to produce a realistic violent murder scene as we don't have professional actors or weapons. Furthermore, the film followed stereotypical setting conventions by using an isolated setting to make the audience feel scared for the characters. I also learnt from this analysis that killer films, particularly this one and a few others such as 'Friday the 13th', use props such as masks therefore this is something to consider if we decide on this genre.

Decision- Psychological horror
After reflecting on our analysis's, we all decided that it would be best to produce a psychological horror as we felt we could make this realistic as we don't have the advanced equipment or technology to film a killer or paranormal without it looking 'cheesy' due to the characters and props involved with those sub genres. Also, filming a killer may be dangerous with real weapons such as knives and on the other hand illegal if we were to go in the streets with fake weapons therefore this wouldn't be achievable. We need to ensure that our antagonist is a human such as with a metal disability as this is what psychological horrors use, but they are sometimes covered up with masks which also links to the iconography of a horror so this is also something we need to consider.