Movie Classification

Every film that gets released at cinemas have a classification (shown as a symbol) to tell people if they can watch the film or not.
These include: U, PG, 12, 12a, 15 and 18

15

The "15" symbol means that no one under the age of 15 is allowed to watch the film that is shown.

What makes a 15 stronger than a 12 or a 12a include:

• strong violence
• frequent strong language (e.g. f***)
• portrayals of sex and some sexual nudity
• strong verbal references about sex
• some scenes of sexual violence or verbal references about sexual violence
• some drug taking
• discriminatory language or behaviour

The majority of horror films have a 15 certificate. In most horror films, they have or a set around teenagers, this means that they are more likely to have a lot of sex and taking drugs. This is because there are some sexual nudity and sexual scenes in the majority of horror films. This is also because the film makers target a teenage audience for the film, as there are many teenagers in them. They have also got a lot of strong language as there is someone going around killing people. However, there can be some gore but not an exceptional amount, this is inappropriate for a 15 certificate film and is used for a 18.

What certificate did I use for my film?

For my film, I decided to give the certificate of my film as a 15. This is because there is a lot of violence in my film as the killer goes on a killing spree. There will also be some strong language and sexual references like in other horror films like Scream (1996).

The Wrong Tracks Rough Cut

This was my rough cut for my film "The Wrong Tracks". The genre of the film was a slasher horror films as the many conventions of a horror film are shown. The idea of a secluded location to show tension is what I wanted to show in the film. The audience is rooting for the boy as he is the main protagonist in the film. However, the audience knows but the boy doesn't know that he is being watched.

To improve my film I needed to

• Explain the need for the bag pack and the tent in the scene and why that was significant in the film.
• I needed to use another film company other than the one that I created so that they could distribute it.
• Make the genre of my film more clear.
• Why is the boy walking through the woods on his own?
• What is he doing in the woods.

   

Horror Movie Codes and Conventions

In every film genre, there are many different types of codes and conventions which you find in many of the same films in that genre. Like in all genre's, horror films have many too.

Secluded Location

In many horror films, the characters are placed in a location where they are far away from somewhere where they cannot get help, or are in a location which they are not used to. These can include a summer camp, a house in a remote location or a wood. In my film I chose the location of a wood because the character is very isolated and isn't sure of his surroundings. This means that he is very vulnerable and therefore gets murdered by the killer.

Someone inventigates a strange noise

When someone hears a noise in the distance, they usually go and see what it is. As humans, we like to find things out and this is shown in many horror films. This can usually happen before a group of people get killed because it is more obvious that a person would check it out. However, when they does so they, the majority of the time, get killed. However, in my film this is different. The boy hears the noise and does the opposite to what many characters do in horror films. However, this comes to no avail because the boy ends up getting murdered anyway. This shows that when you hear a noise, you will get killed anyway.

The victim falls over

Even though it sounds stupid, many people in horror films fall over before or when they are getting chased by the killer. In my films case, when the boy hears the noise from behind he starts to run away. However, momentum makes him fall over. This shows that the killer is watching him and due to horror film codes and conventions, the character is about to die.

Someone gets killed in the opening scene

In many horror films, especially "slasher" films, someone dies in the first opening scene in the film. For example in Halloween, Michael kills his sister when he is a boy. This is to show a little bit about the character and the killer and also sets the mood for the rest of the film. The scene can be highly significant for the rest of the plot of the film or may be just a sign of how dangerous the killer is. Our my film, the boy gets killed in the first scene also. At the ending of the film we see that the killer wears a blue hoodie and that he kills people in the wood, as it is isolated from everywhere else. This sets the mood for the rest of the film which may include a back story of the boy that gets killed and someone looking to find the killer.

Why I chose to research this?

I decided to research this because I needed to know the horror codes of conventions so that I knew what other horror films were like. This meant that I could develop or challenge these conventions into the horror film that I make. 

Horror Sub Genres

There are four Horror sub-genres that I focused on for my research. This was because they were the most popular and the most popular of mine.   

Slasher

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) 
Halloween (1978)
Friday the 13th (1980)
A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)

Most slasher films have one main killer throughout the film. They usually don't die or they come back to life so that there can be a sequel so that the people who make the film can make more money. This is why slasher films, and the four most famous slashers have spawned many sequels and remakes made in the 2000's. 

Psychological 

Psycho (1960)
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
The Shining (1980)
Saw (2004) 

Psychological horrors need to make tension and The Shining does that. Also, some psychological horrors have a lot of gore which can put off some audiences if they don't like a lot of gore. However, the success of the Saw franchise has shown that a lot of gore is a good thing and that people like to see psychological horrors. 

Supernatural 

The Exorcist (1973)
The Omen (1976)
The Amityville Horror (1979)
Paranormal Activity (2009)
The Woman In Black (2012)
The Conjuring (2013)

Supernatural horrors are usually involve haunted houses, ghosts or the devil. In the 70's, these films were usually about the devil, who possessed children or impregnated women. In The Exorcist and The Omen however, children were possessed by the devil to do awful things that you wouldn't expect from children, which is why it is more chilling to watch. In the last few years the supernatural horror has come back, with the recent success of Paranormal Activity (on a budget of around $15,000) get millions at the box office. This has led to other supernatural horrors including The Woman In Black and The Conjuring. 

Science-Fiction

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
George A. Romero's "Dead" Series (1968-) 
Alien (1979)
The Thing (1982)
World War Z (2013)

Science-fiction horror films involve aliens in some way. We have no idea what they look like or even if they exist but for about eighty years cinema has given us an idea of what they might be like. They teach us about how we overcome zombies or aliens. Because of Cold War paranoia and the atomic bomb, most horror films made in America during the 50's were sci-fi films or mutated people, animals or plants to show the worst that could happen with society at that time. This led to films like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Hollywood blockbuster Alien (1979) gave the most realistic look at aliens and have spawned three sequels and a prequel. John Carpenter then remade The Thing based by The Thing From Another World (1951) from the sci-fi hay day in the 50's. In the late 60's, George A. Romero re-created zombies for today's societies, and does his "Dead" film every decade. 

Sequels and Remakes 

The horror genre like making sequels. Nearly every successful horror film has a sequel. Which is why the villain in horror films don't usually die, because then there wouldn't be a sequel. Especially with slasher films like A Nightmare On Elm Street, they remade many horror films in the 2000's for a new audience, suggesting that Hollywood are running out of ideas and using their old films for solutions.

History of Horror Films

Horror films have always been a part of cinema and have been around since the early stages of film. They have made a big impact on cinema in the twentieth and twenty-first century. 

1920's 

The first horror films were silent films. The German films, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922) influenced many other films. Hollywood followed suit, with films including Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1920), The Phantom of the Opera (1925) and The Unknown (1927), all starring Lon Chaney. Chaney was Hollywood's first horror movie star. 

1930's - 1940's 

In the early part of the 30's, Universal Pictures in America began a successful Gothic horror film series. These included Dracula (1931) starring Bela Lugosi and Frankenstein (1931) starring Boris Karloff. Frankenstein was the first in a series which included the monster, with Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and Son of Frankenstein (1939). Other films in the period were Freaks, The Invisible Man (1933), The Wolf Man (1941) Cat People (1942) and The Leopard Man (1943).  

1950's - 1960's 

With advances in technology, the genre focused more on contemporary themes in American horror. Many films focused on humans overcoming threats from aliens and mutations of people, plants and insects. These films included The Thing from Another World (1951), Tarantula (1955) and The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). In Britain, Hammer films focused more on Gothic themes from the thirties and re-created Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958) and made successful sequels going into the sixties. In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock made Psycho, which is birth of the modern horror film. Hitchcock then followed Psycho with The Birds (1963). By the end of the 60's the counter-culture was building, and Rosemary's Baby (1968) and George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968), with Romero creating his his "Dead" series, were influential and successful and showed what was coming in the seventies. 

1970's - 1980's 

Following the success of Rosemary's Baby, many similar films followed suit including The Exorcist (1973) and the The Omen (1976) which saw the Devil as the villain impregnating women or possessing children. The ideas of the 60's started to influence 70's horror, with the counter-culture the focus in The Last House on the Left (1972), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and The Hills Have Eyes (1977). Romero created his 70's zombie film with Dawn of the Dead (1978) set in a shopping mall. Stephen King's novels started to be made into films with Carrie (1976) and The Shining (1980). By the late 70's, the "slasher" film was coming in with John Carpenter's Halloween (1978), Sean Cunningham's Friday the 13th (1980) and Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) were significant for horror movies. These films created many sequels, remakes and even a join up in Freddy vs Jason (2003). The films Jaws (1975) and Alien (1979) saw horror films start to become Hollywood blockbusters and not just 'B' movies. By the end of the 80's the low-budget gorefests became popular, with Sam Reimi's Evil Dead movies, Gremlins (1984) and Fright Night (1985) being prime examples.  

1990's - 2000's 

The 90's saw many sequels of the slasher films A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th and Halloween although The Silence of the Lambs (1991) was hugely successful. Other films including Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994) and Scream (1996) mimicked other horror films and made a lot of references to other films, especially Scream. These films were also teenage influenced and other films like I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and The Blair Witch Project (1999) were like this also. As CGI had advanced and special effects were better, some horror films that used CGI included Blade (1998) and House On Haunted Hill (1999). At the dawn of the new millennium, Hollywood decided to re-create the hay day of horror films, so remakes of Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Dawn of the Dead and Friday the 13th were made. Final Destination (2000) dawned more teen-focused horror like the Scream sequels. However the more successful horror films were the new genre known as "horror porn" with a lot of blood and gore. These include Saw (2004), Hostel (2005) and The Human Centipede (2009) which spawned many sequels. Zombie films have been reborn in the 2000's starting with the British films 28 Days Later (2002) and the comedy Shaun of the Dead (2004). This led veteran zombie director George A. Romero to make Land of the Dead (2005), Diary of the Dead (2007) and Survival of the Dead (2010). The films I Am Legend (2007) and Zombieland (2009) also helped the rebirth of zombie films which had disappeared in the 90's. 

2010's 

The 2010's have seen a fond for supernatural horror films including Paranormal Activity (2009), Insidious (2011) and The Conjuring (2013). Other supernatural horrors include The Women In Black (2012) and The Cabin in the Woods (2012) These have spawned many sequels due to their successes. There have also been remakes of Carrie and Evil Dead. There have also been a Hollywood blockbuster zombie film World War Z (2013) continuing the zombie rebirth from the 2000's and also many more sequels from the successful horror movies of the 2000's. 

Camera Shots

The different shot types I used in my video. This is to show when I used them and why I used that specific shot. Every shot that is used is significant during the film.

Shooting Schedule

On Thursday 9th January, we went out to start filming and get a taster and ideas about where to film our film. On that day we decided where we would film each cut. We also did a couple of cuts on the day which appear in our film. On the 10th we went to same location again. However, this time was to do the rest of the film. After filming we would look at the footage over that weekend and start editing the film on the following Monday and Tuesday. After editing the majority of the film on Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday would be going out filming again if any more improvements are necessary. 

Risk Assessment

The location that is being used for the video is in the woods. There are many hazards that could be at risk during filming, these include:

• falling in a river
• trip and break something, e.g. leg, arm, foot
• a tree or a branch falling over
• crossing a road
• crossing a train track