Genre

Genre is French for ‘type’. Genre is important for the film industry because it can then gage its target audience, which would in turn then help make the package for the prospected film. Audiences in turn find genre appealing because it allows them to know their expectations of a film. The genre for our film trailer that we will make will be mainly in the horror genre. However it will be more of a hybrid genre as we intend to have elements of comedy in our trailer and will thus be horror/comedy like the film Shaun of the Dead.

The key characteristics of a horror film are to depict, address or explore the audience’s hidden fears, nightmares and phobias. Horror tends to evoke emotions such as panic, fear, disgust or shock through the actions of an evil force, whether it is natural or supernatural. Like the slasher film franchise Friday the 13^th, these films focus on an evil person Jason who kills people systematically and without remorse for revenge of what happened to him. This plays on people’s nightmares as it looks to cause fear and panic in the audience about the methods he uses to target and kill his victims. It also focuses on blood and gore content to further emphasise this fear and shock. The Friday the 13^th films are very similar to what our film trailer will be like as it’s about a masked villain hunting down and killing people in a cold unremorseful manner.

Another horror film but is of a completely different nature to the Friday the 13^th films is the Paranormal Activity films which focuses on the psychological aspects of fear rather than being graphic. This also fits in with our trailer as the masked villain psychologically harasses his victims as he stalks them. This would also put the audience on edge as coupled with creepy sound effects would put the audience very much on edge as the trailer plays out.

My understanding of the horror genre will impact my decisions of how I will develop my coursework as I will try to keep true to the horror genre. However it is to be noted that I will add a bit of comedy to the trailer so that we could try to get a different angle and to try and surprise the audience by giving an element they might not expect. The initial ideas for our trailer is that a masked villain would stalk a group of friends taking a short cut through a field or wooded area home and how he systematically kills them one by one and to try and shock the audience by the methods of how he does this. This would coincide with both of the discussed movies above as it would use blood and gore like a slasher film would portray coupled with the psychological horror of them being stalked in an isolated dark area. However at the start of the trailer there would be an element of comedy to surprise and show the audience how their night has gone from being quite happy and innocent to being tortuous and a nightmare.