The document outlines a proposed opening scene for a short horror film based on the home invasion subgenre. The scene involves a victim hearing noises in their home at night while on a video call. They discover via CCTV footage that an intruder is inside. The victim hides but is found and stabbed by the masked killer. Key conventions like the use of a knife and the failure of emergency services to help in time are addressed. Original elements like the use of fake blood and varied camera shots are proposed to make the scene tense and effective.

1. Assignment 26 – Individual
Pitch
By Jamie Charters

2. Horror Subgenre
• The horror subgenre I am choosing to base my idea around is home
invasion. This is because these are the type of films I find most scary
and most interesting to watch. They contain horror and lead to many
tense scenes, that keep you thrilled and scared.

3. Film Examples
The strangers
shows a young
couple being
stalked and
hunted by 3
strangers who
eventually kill
them
You’re next
shows a family
being stalked
and killed in
their own home
by men masked
as sheep
Hangman is
about
another
family being
stalked and
killed by a
man who
comes in at
night
Panic room is about a
single mother and her
son who go into a panic
room to escape to
villains but the they
notice and end up
trying to break into the
panic room
The aggressive
scale is about a
family who move
into a new home
and are being
hunted by men.
They retaliate and
try to escape

4. Conventions
• Most of these horror films, contain men with masks to cover their
identity and to make it more enigmatic and frightening. However, in
some cases such as The Purge and The Strangers has woman as
killers.
• Most of the killers commit their crimes with knifes rather than guns,
because knifes have connotations of violence and death, which relate
to my subgenre more.
• Most of the violence takes place at night time, in the victims home
rather than a rented place, such as a caravan/ cabin
• All of the victims try to ring for help but it does not arrive in time and
when it does, it does not work.

5. Synopsis of Idea
• The victim is carrying out daily activities at night, such as talking to their friends on snapchat or face time
• They hear noises and start to look around the house
• They look at cctv and see a man walking around in their house
• They run to hide and call emergency services
• Voice over of emergency services is used to create tension and victim starts giving details whilst in a scared/crying state
• Villain comes into hiding spot of victim but fails to find anything so leaves the house
• As he leaves, the victims phone line cuts off and the emergency services call back, resulting in the villain to hear the
ringtone and to continue looking for them
• The victim is hiding in a closet or under the bed, when the villain comes in and is trying to be silent
• The villain looks under the bed/in the closet and finds the victim
• The victim is trying to fight the villain, but fails to
• The victim is stabbed multiple times and is killed

6. How am I meeting conventions?
• I have made sure the villain is using a knife to kill rather than a gun,
because a gun is associated with crime thriller movies, whereas a
knife is more related to slasher type horror movies.
• The emergency services fail to rescue the victim, but instead end up
getting them killed
• The scene takes place at night in their own home, and the victim tries
to hide in traditional hiding spots, such as under the bed or in the
closet.
• The villain is going to be masked to hide his identity and to create
enigmas, as to who he is and why he has targeted that specific victim

7. How we will be original and unique?
• Most other opening sequences in the past have not used the home
invasion subgenre
• We will be using a house, somewhere which is easy to film
• We can also make fake blood to emphasise the horror of the film, as
in most home invasion films you don’t actually see the wounded body
of the victim, you just see them getting killed.

8. Narrative Enigmas
• The main narrative enigmas is to who the villain is. The villain will be
masked so his identity will be hidden. This means that the audience
don’t get to see the victims reaction if they find out who he is, e.g.
they could find out the killer is the victims cousin seeking revenge etc.
• The audience also don’t know why to victim has been targeted.
Therefore the audience are made to think if it has something to do
with their body appearance, promiscuousness or just a randomly
selected person.

9. Targets
• A good target to achieve would be to have excellent mise-en-scene.
This could come from using a lot of fake blood for stabbing wounds,
and making the setting believable to realistic.
• We also want to make sure we use a range of camera shots to
emphasise the fear in the victim, but showing where about the victim
is hiding and where the villain is. This would make the scene very
tense, which would make it an effective opening sequence.
• We also want to make the acting believable which might be hard,
since we are all boys, but if the acting is good then this might help our
opening sequence more professional and realistic.

10. Inspiration
• My main inspirational clip was from the movie ‘The Call’ which is
about a young girl getting kidnapped. The opening sequence showed
a girl getting murdered, and had me and my friends hooked and
frightened. The opening sequence of this film was very tense, and
managed to scare us, hence why I thought it was so effective and
came up with a similar idea.