5. Plot
• Game of 'Cat and Mouse'.
• Serial Killer murdering several victims (Goes on a
killing spree).
• Confrontation with killer at the end of the film.
• Police turn up near the end of the film.
(Sometimes one or two police officers are killed in
the middle of the film but at the end when
everything has died down, you will usually find
police investigating the remains in the area)
Alice’s confrontation with Mrs
Voorhees in Friday 13th
Police man (Perkins) killed in
Scream 4.
6. Themes
• Death
• Destruction
• Pain
• Fear
• Gore
• Despair
• Tragedy Psyco- Showing fear.
Friday the 13th- Showing gore
and death.
Scream 4- Showing fear and
despair.
7. Character Types
• Virgin (Female Character/Heroin)
• Jock
• Nerd
• Sexualized Girl
• Non-Believer (Doesn't acknowledge what's happening, refuses to
believe)
• Villain/Killer (Most of the time portrayed as an outcast)
Alice Hardy in Friday
13th is portrayed as a
virgin throughout the
movie.
In Scream 4, Robbie and Charlie are
seen as the nerds.
Norman Bates from Alfred
Hitchcock’s Psycho is portrayed
as an outcast (which makes him
the villain)
Character Types differ depending
on the year as 1960 was the year
that the Slasher genre was
introduced with Psycho and
Peeping Tom. Throughout the
years characters have developed
in the Slasher genre to give us
what we have today.
8. Setting/Location
• Isolated locations
• Forest/Woods
• Private Property
• Streets
Camp Crystal Lake from
Friday 13th is isolated as it’s
in the middle of nowhere
and had been abandoned
for over a decade.
Bates Motel form Psycho is essentially
out in the middle of nowhere.
In Scream 4, multiple locations are
used but most deaths happen in the
houses.
9. Music/Sounds
• Fast paced
• Tense
• Dramatic Build-up
• Crescendo
• Silence
• Volume Control
• Ambient sounds(Owl hoots, Wind howls etc.)
• Synchronous sound
Example: Friday the 13th Theme Song (1980)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uOKdiYA-PQ
10. Camerashots/Angles
• Wide-Shots
• Low angle
• Close-Ups
• Reaction Shots
• Establishing shots
• POV
• Tracking Shot Close-Up on Ghostface from Scream 4. Close-up shots
usually focus on a character’s expression but the
appearance on the mask is always the same.
POV (Point of View) Shot of Marion Cranes’
perspective from Psycho. Tracking shot from Friday 13th.
Movies in general have a wide
range of different shots and
angles that they film at.
11. Special Effects
• CGI
• Blood
• Pyrotechnics
• Fog/Smoke Machines
Jack’s (Kevin Bacon) neck being impaled in
Friday 13th.
The background in this scene from
Psycho was most likely to have been a
green screen or something similar. In Scream 4, they have used pyrotechnics in
order to create the sparks from the explosion in
this scene.
12. Editing Techniques
• Fast-Paced Editing
• Cross Cutting
• Eye-line Match
• S-R-S
• Slow-Motion
• Transitions (Fade, Dissolve etc.)
• Lighting (as it can be altered in editing)
In this scene from Friday 13th, the editors have
put the scene in slow motion in order to make
the part more dramatic and emphasise the
importance of it.
In this part of Psycho, there is a Shot-Reverse-Shot used
between Norman Bates and Marion’s Car. This is because
it’s so significant to the rest of the film.
In most Slasher movies, when a death or a chase scene
happens, many shots are played in quick succession in order to
increase the tension. This is an example in Scream 4.
13. Narrative Structure
• Introduces the main character first and focuses
around her/him for the duration of the film.
• Stereotypically the last survivor is the female
virgin.
• The last survivor tends to put up more of a
struggle than the rest.
• Killer either dies or gets sent to prison (or if the
film is setting up for a sequel they may keep the
killer alive in order to carry on the story)
15. Camera shots –Maniac (2012)
We see a POV shot in the film Maniac, to show
what the killer is looking at. We see a close up shot of Franc Zito, this is used to
emphasise how much pain he is going through.
We see a medium shot of Frank
to show that he is holding a
bloody knife which signifies that
he just killed someone,
portraying his dominance.
16. Special Effects-Maniac (2012)
Special effects such as blood are
heavily used in slasher films this is
because blood makes the film more
realistic and more gory, this
therefore fits the genre and meets
the expectations of what the
audience are expecting to see.
