Genre Theory

For my AS Media coursework I made the opening sequence of a horror called: PLAY. Horror is a genre I understand well and I felt that I could expand and explore the typical codes and conventions. Two sisters venture through to woods when one goes missing. Can Molly conquer her biggest fear to save her sister, or will sibling rivalry get the best of her? Born in 1931, Christian Metz was a film theorist who was made famous for his semiotic approach to cinema studies. He stated that every film genre has four types of film: The Classic, The Experimental, The Parody and The Deconstruction. My production followed the basic outlines of Christian Metz’s ‘Experimental’ model because it did not contain the right types of characters to fit The Classic model. I wanted to try and challenge some of the usual codes in the genre, I used characters and a plot that would be more believable and get to people’s nerves due to the more realistic chances of it happening to them. Daniel Chandler’s theory was that all films within a genre follow similar narratives, characterisation, setting, filmic techniques and iconography. My production challenged quite a few of the stereotypes within these sections whilst still fitting the horror genre. The narrative of PLAY followed the dead vs. alive plot, which is a common occurrence between horror films. However, it is usual for all films to follow this good vs. evil stance. For my characters, I really wanted to push the stereotypes for a horror. Instead of having a white, middle aged man as my antagonist, I decided to go with the opposite: two white, young girls. This sort of fits the theme that has really started coming about recently with films such as Anabelle (2014) and The Doll (2016) of young children posing as the antagonists. My two main characters were white, teenage girls, in any other horror film they would be the target victims because of them being young and naïve. In PLAY, one of the sisters (Molly) is scared of the woods, which was rumoured to be haunted, whereas the other (Emily) thinks that Molly is stupid to believe in ghosts, Emily is the one to be taken away, leaving Molly to try and save her. Typically, you would find that the most naïve girl is the one to go missing and for some young male to save her, I wanted to challenge that convention to twist my story further, as the sibling rivalry could potentially halt Molly from saving Emily. Horror films are usually very dark, which adds to the suspense by not being able to see very clearly. It would have been difficult to try and film in the dark with my camera, so I filmed when the weather was slightly grey and then toned the brightness down in Adobe Premiere afterwards, I tried to put a slight blue tint on the final product, however the screen was a bit dark so the blue really stood out in the final product. The music I used for my opening followed some of the common features of horror soundtracks, normally you would find that it is orchestral and the pace and tempo would change. The music I used was a wind up box version of “It’s A Small World” from Disney, I then changed the pitch and the speed in Premiere by using the Audio Mixer. I thought the song was fitting because the two ghosts were small girls, and people associate young girls with Disney.