PLANNING: GENRE

 For our promotional pack, Harrison, Jake and I decided to focus on the horror genre, with a deeper focus on the paranormal and found footage sub-genres. I have already watched many horror movies including the insidious series, The Conjuring series and other stand alone movies like the Blair Witch Project.

The horror genre has two common directions, found footage and narrative. Found footage is commonly teamed with action, with a focus on a group of people who have gone through the events of the footage already. The films often take place in woods or old houses. Narrative films show a more structured film, with more emphasis on the tropes as well as well-rounded characters.

There are four main sub-genres that I looked at within my research. 

Paranormal:

Often has a ghost as the antagonist which is defeated by a group of teens.

Case studies include The Paranormal Activity series (2007-2022), The Conjuring Universe (2013-2021), the Blair Witch Project (1999), the Insidious series (2010-2018), the Grave Encounters series (2011-2012) and the Quiet Ones (2014).

Slasher:

Often the goriest of the horror genre, slasher often has a group that turns on each other or a murderer as the villain.

Case studies include The Cabin in the Woods (2011), Happy Death Day 2 U (2019), The Babysitter (2017), Halloween (2018), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), the Saw franchise (2004-2021) and The Human Centipede (2009).

Psychological:

Often has the danger as an urban legend or the uncanny which plays with the audiences' minds.

Case studies include A Tale of Two Sisters (2003), The Purge Franchise (2013-2021), Psycho (1960), Frozen (2010), The Ward (2010), 347 F (2011), The Descent (2008), Inside (2007), The Strangers (2008) and Buried (2008).

Zombie/Virus:

Like the title says, the main threat in this category is either a zombie or a virus outbreak.

Case studies include Night of the Living Dead (1968), Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1974), Dawn of the Dead (1978), 28 Weeks Later (2007), Resident Evil (2002), Pontypool (2008), Rammbook (2018), White Zombie (1932) and Zombie (1979).

I also looked at relevant horror tropes that I knew we could use in our own work. The most important one is the Final Girl trope. Often the sole survivor of the group is the girl that often has abstained from drinking or sleeping around. She will often be the one to defeat the antagonist. Others include the Mirror trope (often the protagonists will look into a mirror and see a glimpse of the antagonist, but not a major look so the mystery remains), the no signal trope (where characters don't have signal, so can't contact for help- entities drain batteries to try and manifest from the stolen entity), the Basement trope (where the basement is the single most haunted place- no characters want to go down there but they do anyway), the Shaggy Search Technique (instead of showing characters actively search for clues, they stumble across them like Shaggy from Scooby Doo), Credibility trope (where often for audiences, a sign that says based on true events will make a story scarier- especially for stories with a paranormal plot device) and the Constant, Lurking Evil (by showing brief glimpses of the antagonist, the audience keeps the mystery but are satisfied with speculating about the antagonist).