Conventions of Horror Films

For our audience to be able to instantly connect with our horror film, we looked at different conventions of horror films that have been successful in the past.

Our opening scene is going to be set in a house. This is very common for many horror films as using a setting that the audience are familiar to will make them feel very uneasy. Films such as Paranormal Activity (2007), The Others (2001) and The Woman in Black (2012) all use a house as their main location. When a film is set in a house, one of the first impulses is for the audience to expect some form of exploration or hiding within the house.

(Paranormal Activity)

In a part of our opening sequence the girl is going to run up the stairs to escape the entity that she believes is in the house. This is often done in horror films and is effective as the stairs act as obstacle making the character's escape a lot more difficult. 

The film The Woman in Black (2012) has many conventions and signifiers that we are drawing inspiration from. It is focal on a presence that is haunting the house. One of the key symbols in the film is the sound of the rocking chair, hitting the ground repeatedly and creaking- it shows that the entity is present. But at first you don't see a visual of the chair. We have used this technique as in our opening scene, the knocking is symbolic. Again, the audience hear the audio of the knocks but they are unable to see who is responsible for it which make it a lot more enigmatic. Furthermore (as demonstrated by the clip below) the sound of the rocking chair starts off as faint then becomes louder and louder increasing the tension and fright in the audience. We're going to make the 3 knocks on the door get louder each time to have the similar build up of tension.