3. Setting Camera
Angles
Character types
Iconography
Task 2
4. Themes
Good vs Evil
Depression
Religion
Childhood issues
Revenge
Supernatural
Beyond death
Science gone bad
Zombie apocalypse
Nightmares
Madness
Insanity
Lust
Self consciousness (makes you question
what is real or not)
Envy
Suicide
5. Horror Conventions Explained
Setting Camera Angles
• Normally small communities or isolated • High angles can make the victim seem
places. smaller, whereas low angles make the
• Urban environments, dark streets, dark villain/monster seem bigger.
narrow alleyways, large cities or run • Also high and low angles can imply fears
down ghost towns. and nightmares.
• Anything that implies being alone or • Point of view shots are highly important
isolated because they allow the audience to see
the world and the victim in the monsters
• Places with abandoned houses/hotels or eyes. This will normally happen towards
with asylums. the end or during the middle of the film.
• Locations – lake, highways, roads, farms, • Handheld shots make it hard for the
countryside, barns, dark woods, subways, audience to make out what is
creepy hotels, haunted/abandoned happening.
houses, graveyards, deserted ships, meat • Framework, like depth of field, will make
factories, London underground, shopping it harder to see the monster coming up
centre and deserts. behind the protagonist.
6. Horror Conventions Explained Cont.
Iconography Character types
• Visual affects – mainly dark colours like • The main Protagonist – victim and/or
red and black, links to evil, bloody and hero.
danger.
• The villain – mainly monsters, mutated
• Lighting – low key lighting helps to freak, alien or serial killer.
create dark shadows and unfamiliar
• Stupid or morally wrong teenagers,
shapes in the darkness.
nearly always get killed.
• Props help us to identify the horror genre
• Creepy children.
more, specific props can be identified with
a certain villain or character. • Police officers, mainly good but
sometimes bad.
• Common objects are weapons, masks,
icons or supernatural and religious icons. • Others like Ghosts, zombies, demons,
psychopath, stalker, weirdo, etc.
• Iconography of monsters help us to have
extreme fear, disgust and terror.
• Monsters like werewolves, vampires,
mummies and scientific monsters gone
wrong are common in horror movies.
7. Adds the sense Colour red = death,
of horror and danger, blood.
suspense.
“sound” links
to the phone
he/she is Subtle, don’t
holding really notice
until you look
more closely.
Black
background –
dark, cant see
Doesn’t have what’s behind
the same him,
connotations representation
of fear, the of fear – fear
mouth it up of the dark,
turned into a etc.
smile, a sort of
scary smile
though.
8. Film Treatment
Granted Wish From Hell is a horror film about Charlotte Howards, a teenage girl who moves to a small
isolated community in the suburbs of northern America with her parents and her twin brother Sam
Howards. During her stay she bonds with Tim a local teenage lad who has a harsh secret he can’t share
with anyone.
Tim kidnaps and kills Sam in a jealous state as he loves Charlotte and doesn’t like her Brother Sam being
so close to her. When Tim starts stalking and coming onto Charlotte soon after Sam's disappearance and
recently found out death, she notices a side to Tim she doesn’t like and has never noticed or seen before.
A few months later on Friday the 13th of November, Tim invites Charlotte to his house, she feels rude to
decline his offer being such close friends. Unaware of the fact he killed her brother and wants to kill her
because she doesn't have mutual feelings, she says “yes”. When he starts to tell her his secret and what he
did to Sam, he reveals how he will kill Charlotte; her world comes crashing down as her friendship comes
to a dramatic and disastrous end.
After escaping his hands and house she is dazed by the darkness and what she has just heard and runs to
the forest where she gets herself lost and into a frantic state. She hears breathing and foot steps behind
her and turns to see who it is, but gets knocked out by a harsh blow to the head. When she finally wakes
in a clearing in the forest a fire by her side, she manages to stagger to her feet, seeing Tim had fallen
asleep she makes her escape, only to step on a twig and wake Tim. He goes for the kill and a fight for life
is played out with Charlotte coming on top and killing her brother’s kidnapper, killer and her best friend.
This film is for 15+ due to the fact that it has gory horror scenes, violence and crude language.
