Assignement 1: Genres & Sub-genres

Horror Sub-genre PresentationBY LIAM HOWSE, MICHAEL IVAN AND LIAM CORNWALL-TOMBS

SLASHER

SLASHER FILMS

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.

Themes• Death

• Destruction• Pain• Fear• Gore• Despair• Tragedy Psyco- Showing fear.

Friday the 13th- Showing gore and death.

Scream 4- Showing fear and despair.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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)

Maniac(2012)

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.

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.