What the genre 'Horror' is!

First of all, as me and my group have chosen to do horror for our final production, I decided to find out some extra research on horror altogether.

Horror

The aim of a typical horror film is to scare people, create tension, also it aims to fear people but also fascinate them at the same time. Horror can be up tight and really scary, it can also be psychological, this makes you think, but can get you freaked out at the same time.

Early horror movies are largely based on classic literature of the gothic/horror genre, such as Dracula, Frankenstein, The Phantom of the Opera, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. More recent horror films continue to exploit the monsters of literature. So as the years have gone on, horror movies have changed significantly, now they are more about freaking people out and really scaring them....'Saw' films are a good example of this, even 'Paranormal Activity' these are the more up to date horrors.

Characters in a horror film usually have specific roles, the killer, they have their identification hidden or there is a twist along the lines. The victims are either male or females (blonde females) the children are innocent, if not, it is typical staff if the film is set in a work based setting. E.g. Hotel.

The style in a horror film is key, it has many features: Lighting is low key, Usually dark, Noises, Refletions, Low angle shots, Close Ups, Mid-Shots and many more.

Typical settings ofa horror film are: Hotels, Work Places, Forests, Woods, Schools, anywhere really, as long as it has its conventions etc it makes the horror good, also needs the themes and visual style to create these affects.

Knifes, Blood, Killings, Houses, Phone Calls, typical things to expect in a horror film.

Finally, the themes of a horror film are: Thriller, Viloence, Disgust, Comedy, Suspense

So overall, horror creates a big pack of tension and it wants to make people be facinated but also fear at the same time, unexpected things happen in horror films, this makes people want to carry on watching and not leave their seats. Some are made just to purely freak people out.
This research will help me and my group put some ideas together on how we can make our film production, look as much as a horror film as possible, we will use some of the techniques and conventions to help us gain in the project ahead.