Horror Genre Research

Horror Genre and its History
I createdThis timeline shows how the Horror genre has transformed and changed over time, starting from 1920 to the present day. Creating this was useful as it has shown me that our video must be in keeping with the horror films of this decade.
http://www.dipity.com/bethbrewer100/Horror-Genre-and-its-history/

Horror and the conventions associated with horror
For the next part of the research, group member Simran created this video was created to demonstrate the conventions of the horror genre. The presentation that she has created has given us a deeper insight to some of the stereotypical conventions that are used in the horror genre. The creation of this presentation will help us when we create our final video because, we will know what types of conventions we can use that will follow the horror genre.



Certificate ratings:
During research we noticed that the majority of horror films are certificated 12 and above. The vast majority of horror films are rated 15 and 18, as some of the images and narratives are too; sexualised, sadistic, or extreme gore and violence. We will have to consider this when we create our final video, as it will have to meet the expectations of our target audience. 

Director Research: We also chose to look into our genre more by researching a famous Horror Film director, we chose to look at Wes Craven, as he has directed many famous horror films including many of the Scream series and Nightmare On Elm Street series. Below is a slideshow I created on a website called Zenfolio to demonstrate further research into our genre.
http://bethbrewer.zenfolio.com/p981291258/slideshow


Iconography:
We have also looked at some conventional iconography associated with the Horror genre, embedded below is a collage created on a website called Photovisl, with some detail that group member Amy has created to show some typical iconography. 

Horror iconography usually follow a pattern, using the same or similar iconography in order to make the genre identifiable to the audience. This means it makes it easier to label who is the protagonist and who is the antagonist through the iconography associated with them. Iconography can be a symbols that are featured in all horror movies. These include:

• The Haunted House
• Symbols of Death
• Disfigured face
• Masks
• The screaming victim ('The final girl').
• Murder weapon aka: Knife, meat cleaver, chainsaw etc.
• Binary opposites of good vs evil.
• Dark places.
• Blood and bloody body parts.