Movie Opening: Genre

For my portfolio project I decided to use the horror genre. My main reasoning is because I love the horror genre and I am familiar with the Genre and it's conventions.

Fist the target audience must be identified. Horror usually is constrained with the R rating for ages 17 and up, but blumhouse has had success with PG-13 horror films. The target audience then is most likely to be within the ages of 13-20s. I include people in their 20s as horror films are mainly targeted towards young people looking for a good thrill. Despite an R or PG-13 rating that is one similarity that all horror films share.

The choice of genre was calculated as well. Many horror films are made on extremely low budgets. For example Sam Rami's The Evil Dead was made with a tiny budget of 350,000 dollars. And the hit film Paranormal activity was made on a budget of 15,000. This means to me that horror is a genre that thrives on low budgets, and that no matter how much money you have the one thing that could get in the way of making a good horror film is that the director just doesn't know what is scary.

$350,000

$1,500

Though money is not the only important thing. Its all about the thrill. That's why people see these films. I feel like my opinion means quite a bit as coming from a horror fan that is why I and so many horror fans love the genre. We want to be scared, we want to feel that thrill, we want to go to bed that night afraid, it's all about the thrill and that is what makes horror special. The Evil Dead is a Gore fest, and Paranormal activity is a slow crawl of grounded horror that feels too real sometimes. That is their way of thrilling the audience. 

Now the way a director chooses to thrill their audience is something that always differs. But the common convention of a horror film is a dark moody atmosphere and low key lighting.

A still from "The Lighthouse Dir- Robert Eggers"
Demonstrating both low-key lighting and a dark moody atmosphere.