Evaluation Question Q1 Slasher Conventions

When looking at our own film we took into account a number of different conventions we had seen in previous slasher films and put them into our opening.

Crow sounds

Our first convention was the sound of the crows as heard in the opening of The last house on the left we felt this would link in well as the patient escaped the mental asylum as the sound of crows screeching is recognised with horror which is why it links well with our opening. As we wanted the audience to have some anticipation to what was going to happen.

Rock Music

Another convention linked in with sound was the rock music that we used. The music comes from Red Hot Chili Peppers - Cant Stop. Rock music was used in The Return of The Living Dead which is why we used to use this convention. It also links in with the death as the music stops as the 'scream queen' is killed.

POV shot

The POV camere shot was another convention we used however this convention has not been used many times in films we have seen apart from Halloween which is where we got our shot form as our killer hides behind the bushes to give the audience a sense of view from the killer

False Scare

The convention of a false scare is not just apparent in most slasher films but in almost any horror film as well. The false scare brings up the audiences sense of anticipation to then relieve them to make the real scare of a much more significance to the audience.

Male Gaze Theory

The final girl was a new addition to our film opening, the convention of a scream queen is in a lot of slasher movies. We took our convention fromNightmare On Elm Street the scream queen was Heather Langenkamp who played Nancy. To anchor our final girl we used revealing clothes and made it apparent to our audience that she was sexually active.

Scream Queen

                                                                      With our final girl we also played up to Laura Mulvey's male gaze theory. She believes that audiences have to view characters form the view of a heterosexual male. Our camera lingers on parts of the female body in context of a males reaction. We used this to appeal to a wider male audience.

Weapon

We took our convention of the weapon from Halloween the iconic kitchen knife, because its nothing out of the un-ordinary it is just a standard kitchen knife, but it becomes a lot more scarier when it is put in to context of killing someone which is the effect we tried to achieve.









Key slasher genre conventions Conclusion

As our film categories into the slasher genre below is a Vodcast on the overview of the slasher genre. It will cover some of the key conventions.







Exposition
Like psycho provides an exposition for the audience so did we. The time and date and the setting for our film which isn't included in all slasher genre films.

Narrative enigma
Narrative enigma is very commonly used in a lot of slasher films, Halloween is a key example as a POV shot i used to hide the killers identity. Which is what we did to a certain extent as it was just the opening we hid our killer identity for a short while in the first few shots to create a sense of anticipation for the audience however we did break this slasher convention because we showed our killer.

Weapon
Weapons are undoubtedly one of the key Signifiers for a slasher film which is why we chose a knife for our weapon

Location
We felt that the location would be a key part of our opening which is why we chose our first few shots to be filmed at a mental asylum. This is because we wanted our audience to follow our preferred reading, that a patient has escaped from this asylum and is seeking his revenge. For example Hell Night which is filmed in some woods.

Scream Queen
In our film we decided a key slasher convention we had to include was a scream queen. A scream queen is a girl in the slasher films who screams a lot, she is the one who is binary opposites with the final girl. Unlike the final girl the scream queen is always signified to be a rebellious character through uses of mise en scene such as smoking. They are often portrayed to be a sexually active blonde character with revealing clothes. For our film a friend played the scream queen for us. To signify this she was blonde for starters, she wore revealing clothes and shes the one who leads her boyfriend to the bedroom. 

Narrative 
In most slasher film openings it goes with Todorovs theory of equilibrium, this is that the film starts with equilibrium it is all calm etc. then it gets into dis-equilibium with a murder or disruption of some sort. It then goes to new equlibrium after disequilibrium. Our film however was different and was more inspired by Texas Chainsaw Massacre as it starts with dis-equilbrium into equilibrium. 

We also went with the slasher convention of using narrative enigma to hide the killers identity, we did this mainly by POV shots, completely inspired by Halloween as Michael Myers approaches the house, which is exactly what our character is doing.

IdentsIn all of the films i have watched there is at least 1 ident at the start of the film. The ident is almost always animated or has a moving part, if not it is just plain text. The film i have seen which uses just the plain text is Halloween with dimension films this uses just a simple ident, the most simple i have seen in all the films i have watched. First of all we included idents which are common in every single film whether it falls into the slasher genre or not. Most idents are the company logo name and brand image however we decided to theme one of idents for the slasher genre itself. To do this we used a San serif font to show that the film would be a horror of some sort and in this case a slasher film.



Editing and Sound

There are many editing conventions we used in our opening. One of the main conventions we used is Laura Maulvey's Theory of the male gaze, we used editing to focus on Heather's legs and show that she is the archetype scream queen. We also used editing to show that it is a POV shot of the killer as we made it a circular view of everything so you can just see through what would be the eye. We also used shaky camera techniques to make it more realistic when walking etc. We Also signified the protagonist by this POV shot as he is stalking the house, with a shot of him in the window. In all the slashers i observed this, The slashers signify the protagonist by them stalking the Victim using things like POV shots. 

Another editing technique we used is cross cutting, from the killer to the Dr at the start of our opening, this created a lot of tension. The panic editing makes the viewer feel more uneasy. this is used in all the slashers i observed. The classic example of this is the psycho shower scene when the did numerous shots within a very short space of time to create more panic.

We used continuity editing to make the opening much more flowing by using traditional techniques like the 180 degree role and match on action.

In our film, at the beginning we provide exposition, as our film is inspired largely by Halloween we felt that we should take inspiration from the film. Therefore we provided the location at the start of our film opening saying 'High Royds' this was to introduce the film and to give the audience a sense of where the location is.

We then took another inspiration from Halloween and provided another bit of exposition with providing the times/dates of when the scenes are. This also gives the viewer a sense of time and information. As the film is not continuous exposition is needed for the viewer.

Here is the titles of the film SAW it is a sequence of titles after the short introduction, just like our film. it has the effect of running blood down the screen then has the letters in blood like effect, this is the kind of inspiration that gave us to do our titles and what our titles are going to look like.

In the titles of Halloween it introduces two of the main characters, with their name in big letter the 'in'. this is because the names of these two are either recognized or are main parts in the film. As me and Curtis Tiplady are both recognized names in our media society from doing the swede and the micro-drama, we are going to do the same as this