LO2: Applying codes and conventions of my genre

 

When creating a media product it's important to look at the genre codes and conventions of my media product. As my genre is horror I looked at a mix of large scale productions and other short films for inspiration around how I could apply the tropes of the genre to my movie. 

In my primary scene (the kitchen scene) which creates a horror atmosphere I looked at how I could create an effective scare. I used a common trope/scare of the genre to mislead my audience. I gained inspiration for this from the horror Scream 5. Similarly to my short film the scene takes place in a kitchen and constantly uses the camera to mislead the audience about where the antagonist might be, so the audience are left waiting for the doors to close and the antagonist to be waiting behind one of them. The reason why this scene is effective is because it plays on the tropes of the genre as the audience are aware of what the scare is, as it's often over used. This is why it's good at misleading the audience as it focuses their attention entirely to the mislead. 

Here is a rush from my short film of the inspired scene. I used a similar angle to Scream 5 of being side ways on to the character to invoke that same tense feeling of waiting for our character to finish what they're doing.  This allows me to create tension within the scene which is important for wether or not I want to follow the codes and conventions of a typical horror film, as horrors are known and recognised by audiences to be scary and tense, meaning that is what they want and expect my film to have. 

Another product I looked at when researching how I can apply codes and conventions to my planned film is the horror short film on YouTube 'Shadowed' created by David F. Sandberg who directed the horror film 'Lights Out' which came to production due to his widely successful, low budget YouTube short of the same name. Sandberg still creates low budget horror short films in his own home using limited resources, meaning its perfect for me to analyse as I have a similar set up (although a lot more limited talent/resources). 

Although my horror is vastly different from Shadowed, I still took inspiration from how Sandberg lights his scenes in the short film due to the similar setting of being alone in your house in the middle of the night. This way I could figure out how I could light my scenes effectively in a similar way to other short films of the same genre with the same setting. Sandberg uses very low-key lighting in his scenes as he wanted to emphasise the brightness of his characters flashlight so that it's easier to see the shadows. He also uses the fact the character has a flashlight to create a way in which he could light the character so that the audience can see them which also makes sense within the narrative. This is because in the narrative there is no other light source in the scene other than the moonlight from the window and the light from the flashlight. This means that he can conform to the horror genres codes and conventions of lowkey lighting without sacrificing the audiences suspension of disbelief by being pulled out of the narrative thinking 'why can I currently see the character?'. 

Here is a screenshot from the first shot we see in my short film. Here I used the fact that within the narrative the TV in the room is on. This means that I could use my camera mounted light to film the scene as the audience wouldn't be wondering why the scene is so bright in the middle of the night. 

In the same scene I created a 'flashlight searching around the room' visual by using very low key lighting inspired by Sandberg. This allowed me to emphasise the light from the flashlight I was using so that the scene was able to look exactly how I wanted, with the concentrated beam of light showing us where our character is looking/pointing the light exactly.