Influences on my film

The production of different horror films have made the horror genre a broad, open idea. The human fears range from something as little as a spider, to the fear of the unknown, this making horror accessible in any form. The wide variety of ways horror can be created on screen has forced the genre to be divided into sub-genres. The three main types of sub-genres, including, slasher horror, psychological/ supernatural, thriller have proved successful in targeting certain types of audiences. While deciding on the type of horror movie I wanted to make I watched a number of different types of horror films. These included The Shining which represented the supernatural/psychological type of film and I also watched Halloween which was a mixture of a slasher and thriller. Both of these films influenced my choice because I was able to compare the conventions of each and decide which would be scarier. As audience sophistication has grown it was important that I made a film that would both shock and use the traditional ideas that are considered scary. Halloween, for example, took the convention of a monster figure and made it more scary by Michael Myers being a human being. As he is turned from an innocent child to a psychotic killer that 'couldn't die' it subverts the audiences expectations and plays on their minds because the killer after-all is merely a human.

Halloween starts with Michael Myers as a child who killed his sister, by taking this innocence and turning it into a brutal, menacing killer attracts viewers. This film is psychological and also gory, the blood and slasher-like scenes attracts viewers to see how far film companies will go in order to shock them. The settings of which most of the blood and gore happen in are houses, this is a factor which I particularly considered to be effective for my own film. By bringing the horror away from predictable settings such as: graveyards, castles it immediately creates suspense and fear because a house is the one place a character or a viewer is supposed to feel safe and protected in. The shots used in certain scenes of Halloween are also effective to creating suspense and fear. By leaving large amounts of space in the frame for something unexpected to fill it puts the viewer on the edge of their seats waiting for something to appear. This is  commonly used convention in supernatural films too, by leaving large amounts of space in the frame for a shadow to appear, or a ghost to be standing, it is a clever way to engage the audiences full attention and leave them in suspense if the director continues to leave the frame empty.

The Shining is a supernatural, psychological film that uses these types of screen shots to make the characters look vulnerable against the greater space in the frame. The demented and possessed feeling of Jack and the hotel throughout the movie chills viewers to feeling on edge. The use of using twin girls in this move has significantly influenced my film, this is because the eery innocence from a child, contrasted against the evil they possess now they are dead make viewers to feel like they shouldn't be scared because they are only children by they can't help but feel spooked by the eery, creepy voices and pale faces.