Conducting Genre Research - Horror.

In the process of researching the genre of Horror, group member Faye produced a Horror History Timeline through Dipity, analysing the history of Horror movies and the evolution of plots, technology and content. The timeline is embedded below.

History of the horror genre on Dipity.

I then created a presentation on Prezi into the conventions of a horror film and narrative, including narrative theories from Todorov and Claude Levi-Strauss, embedded below.

Group member Kala then created a collage on Photovisi, using images from Google to combine a collective image of stereotypical iconographies of Horror movies, embedded below.

The images represent the typical icons present in mainstream horror movies, for example blood, weapons, zombies, masks, prosthetics, ghosts, and vampires. The villains in horrors usually have a distinctive identity, as seen in the images above. Images also included are common horror locations, for example a haunted house. All of these images are dark in colour, most dominant colours being red and black. This represents the basic expectations of a horror film.

Kala also researched into the certificate rating of many horror movies and the reasons behind the ratings. They range on average between 15 and 18, purely because of the contents of the movie, consisting of bad language, violent scenes, sex scenes and graphic content in scenes. These factors are what cause the films to fall under the category of 15-18 certificate ratings.

Horror films previously found difficulty in passing as an 18 certificate rating because violence was a problematic situation and caused a lot of moral panic, in order for the film to get the rating certificate and be able to be shown in cinemas, they would have to remove the scenes that were inappropriate although these scenes will be shown in uncut versions released to the public, for example DVD. In the present movie industry, a lot more is accepted in movies, for example until recently any sex scenes were not allowed in 18 certificate rating movies.
An example of a movie is Cannibal Holocaust. This movie had to be cut by 5.44 minutes because of violent sex scenes and scenes of animal cruelty. 

Movies such as the Saw series are all rated 18, this is because of the excessive blood, gore and violence. Movies like Saw are more appropriate to have these ratings because the content is not particularly suitable for an audience under that age, which contains explicit language and is filled with loads of different violent ways of killing people. You can also see from movies like this that entertainment has changed so much over the years because the content of saw would not have been accepted even as a 18 certificate rating movie where as over the years they have had to be more lenient and accept more into 18 rating movies because it is what the audience now want to see and they want.

Group member Faye and myself then completed a video displaying the main conventions of a stereotypical horror movie, in parody format, embedded below.