For my third blog post of this week, I will be focusing on genre. The genre I have chosen to research is horror since our film opening is meant to be horror/supernatural. Although my group has not come to a final decision on the exact genre we are pretty confident it will at least relate to the horror element.
We took inspiration from horror films such as Us (2019) and Skinamarink (2022). We want our film to focus on unsettling elements along with having our audience put together the pieces of our narrative, rather than communicating it through dialogue.
The horror genre is often associated with jump scares and frightening imagery. Although these techniques are effective at giving a good scare, we are aiming to create a disturbing atmosphere. We found that it is best to make the Mis-En-Scene of the film opening dark and dreary. This engages our audience by adding mystery, which incentivizes them to want to figure out the story.
I find that for an audience to be truly disturbed, we need to place our subject in clear danger that they are ignorant of. Alfred Hitchcock suggested that “to create suspense, you show the audience a bomb under the table before cutting to the clueless patrons seated around it.” We also want our scenes to feel off, but not make it obvious what is making the audience feel uncomfortable. I think this would work best if we let our audience sit with the aftermath of the eventual death of our main character. We could achieve this by having still shots of the house. We would not include any sound during these shots to highlight the idea that “life goes on even after death.” The silence will be uncomfortable as we can focus on some props that had some use earlier in the film, and how they no longer serve a purpose due to our character's death.
None of these narrative decisions are final as our script must be made, but I believe these ideas will contribute to our goal of capturing the essence of a horror film.
hannahgranberry, By: “The Anatomy of Disturbing Films.” Flip Screen, 24 July 2021, https://flipscreened.com/2021/07/25/the-anatomy-of-disturbing-films/.
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