Editing Horror Films

Editing is one of the most crucial areas of the micro elements used in keeping the pace and or plot of a horror film flowing. Horror films rely on such flow to keep the audience frightened and intrigued. An example of this would be the fast paced atmosphere that could be set from a jump scare and the momentum built by the is kept by fast cut editing between the antagonist and main character.

The scene above is from a horror film called Annabelle which uses techniques such as Shot-Reverse-Shot which helps us to grasp the reaction of the character to the face of the antagonist on the stairs.

Hybrid Genres in Horror Films

Hybrid genres refers to a combination of two or more genres in one production. This enables the film producers to possibly get a wider range of viewers and increase the profits and also boost the ratings of the film as it is far more likely that the audience will enjoy the film if the genre is similar to their taste. 

Here are some examples of films that use the hybrid genre:

The Stranger's incorporates both Horror and Thriller. 

After returning from a wedding reception, a couple staying in an isolated vacation house receive a knock on the door in the mid-hours of the night. What ensues is a violent invasion by three strangers, their faces hidden behind masks. The couple find themselves in a violent struggle, in which they go beyond what either of them thought capable in order to survive. IMDB description

The Hills have eyes uses Action, Horror and Gore genres.

A group of National Guard trainees find themselves battling against a vicious group of mutants on their last day of training in the desert. IMDB description 

Alien uses both Horror and Sci-fi which is rare and unique

After a space merchant vessel perceives an unknown transmission as distress call, their landing on the source planet finds one of the crew attacked by a mysterious life-form. Continuing their journey back to Earth with the attacked crew having recovered and the critter deceased, they soon realize that its life cycle has merely begun.

IMDB Description 

In our Main brief we are incorporating both crime and horror genre as an example of a hybrid genre which means we will use many of the same ideas from films produced such as Scream or Psycho.

Pitch of Main Brief

We presented our ideas and plan for our main brief to the class so that we can make changes where necessary, we spoke about our

• Target Audience 
• Chosen Institution 
• Mise-en-scene 
• Plot 
• Age rating

This is me with my two group mates Liv and Lily giving our Pitch to the class and explaining our plot and ideas as displayed on the sheet that Lily is holding.

Below are two images of the sheet which displayed our Pitch and what we presented to the class.

We believe and the class agrees that the use of social media in our main brief is a technique to engage the audience as the film then becomes relate able by the audience as it represents modern day technology used in horror. Lily suggested that we use a Facebook post as a way to draw two of our characters to the scene where the body will be discovered.

Main brief Planning

The plan of a main brief is simple, it requires that of 4 people to act and there are only two locations where it shall be filmed.

The story line is that 4 friends find out that one of the girls from the group has gone missing is suspected killed in a nearby park. This leads on to 2 girls to go out looking for their friend which later leads to the reveal of the body of the missing friend as well as the antagonist who is watching nearby.

My role in the main brief is to act as one of the characters round the table of friends and film the two girls in the park. Also i will be helping with the editing and sourcing different sound effects we can use. 

Scream Analysis

In class we did brief analysis of scream similar to that of Blade.

The opening of Scream begins with the main title being written across in white writing. The white writing could connote purity however it is contrasted by the black background which could connote evil or danger. This is followed by a flash of red that could similarly connote danger or death. There is an element of foreshadowing seen here as there is a non-digetic sound of a woman screaming as well as the sound effect of a knife which could be relating to the imminent situation that the audience is about to witness which starts to build tension.

The camera angle is slightly slanted later in the scene which exposes the back door which raises suspicion and causes the audience should look at it. This keeps the audience on edge and their eyes on the door as they expect something to happen and enables us to see reflections and what is outside. Later we see an external shot of the garden looking at the house which reveals a tire swing moving which implies that someone had been sitting there and is moving around in the garden which not only adds to the suspense but means the suspected antagonist is close by which installs fear into the audience.

The shot quickly snaps back to the woman which relates again to the sense of proximity from the antagonist and the popcorn supports this feeling as there is a connotation of time cooking and fire to the fact she is running out of time and the fire represents the danger. 

Relating to the Mise-en-scene is the blonde hair on the girl which represent the stereo type of most horror films in that she is vulnerable to threats, as well as this we can tell from her dialogue that she is ditsy and easily manipulated into dangerous situations as she speaks to the murderer and allows him time to talk and scare her. In this dialogue the girl and the murderer talk about horror movies within a movie. This is called post modernism which reveals the film convention to the audience. Whilst doing this the girl plays with knives which relates again to the iconography of the film. This representation shows her playing with something dangerous much like the fact she is playing with the murderer on the phone.

Filming the Mini Brief

As you can imagine there were a few problems raised in the production of our Mini Brief, Typically the weather was one of them. The temperature dropped to -4, due to the fact it was winter the brightness fell rapidly around 4 o clock which meant filming became harder as we had to use torches to light up the scene. 

The pictures above are of me freezing in -4 before we continued filming our mini brief. We waited until it became much darker as we wanted the setting to be spooky.

Mini Brief and evaluation of Mini Brief

Evaluation of Mini Brief:

The location used in our Mini brief was a good choice as it fitted in well with the horror genre due to the isolation that we would normally expect from a horror film. Although this was a good area to shoot it did come with issues, for example to maintain a spooky setting we had to wait until it was dark, but this also meant that lighting was limited which resulted in us using our phones as torches, this created a very artificial and fake look towards a film. On the other hand, this could be seen as a positive as the black background could give the audience a sense of abandonment or danger as we are unaware of what is behind. Also we used fake blood to put on the tree which strengthened as it is key iconography in the horror genre and was very realistic.

Our mini brief is accurate to that of our storyboard as we managed to maintain most of the scenes and cuts we had planned. However it was deemed that we couldn't have many of our props that we had first thought to use; for example we were unable to start a fire which our characters would sit around as we were in a park that was private property. This affected our script which meant we had some minor changes to the conversation between the characters. 

An issue was raised with sound during our mini brief because we didn't have a microphone, only a camera which means the digetic sound in the mini brief often changes depending on the different locations of the park we are in which can alter the flow of the film. Also the dialogue was affected by the loudness of background noise which makes it difficult to hear what me and Liv are saying which means it will be hard for the audience to know what is going on in terms of the plot. Although we have found an issue here with sound we countered this by adding our own sound effects, these work well as they have been put in places that do not have dialogue, and when the character Morgan walks up to the tree the music builds tension and mystery as there is a long wait to see what he is looking at. The non-diegetic sound works well as it includes the noise of a dog. 

Another issue raised from our mini brief is that our camera angles were sometimes wrong, one of which was our 180 degree shot of me and Liv talking where we filmed over the line which took the shot out of place and this meant we were unable to use a valuable shot. In future we can counter issues like this by filming more of the angles needed before we move onto our next shot. Its vital that we use relevant camera angles that fit the horror genre and the 180 degree rule is important for horror as we can see both parts of a conversation between the two characters and keep the flow of the scene which is vital to maintain momentum for the horror film.