Thursday 2 January 2014

Cinematography within the Horror/Thriller genre

As expected within any film, there is a variety of shots ranging from Close Ups, for dramatic facial expressions to establishing shots which help convey the setting and location for the audience. It is common for the horror genre to include a few other types in order to emphasize tension and fear:

  • Birds Eye View - Usually associated with the establishing shot, this helps to illustrate the setting whether it is an isolated forest or a creep, abandoned house the tone of the film can generally be set through this type of shot
  • Wide Shots - Useful for showing an enlarged image of the location and sometimes used when the "villain" can be seen in the distance, whilst the character upfront remains unaware
  • Point of View - Films such as Doom have established this shot (in this films case to act as though it were a videogame) to portray the events happening through the eyes of the character, making the audience feel as if they were immersed within the movies' environment
  • Pan - Paranormal Activity has seen to use a few of these, when the camera moves from left to right showing the room, whereby the pan is used, when the entity suddenly appears the next time the shot is shown; useful for making you jump
  • Tracking Shot - Also used in a lot of action films, this is sometimes used in a chase scene, which can emphasise tension through anxiety of whether the character will get caught (or for the horror genre, be killed)
  • Zoom - The final piece of cinematography is a zoom, which is useful in projecting a distressed or surprised look on a character's face whether it be them dying or hiding from inevitable death

All of these different types of shots (or at least most of them) can be included within the 2 minute introduction of my film in order to raise awareness of its tone and atmosphere. The few we attain to include will be the shots which establish a location and add detail to the character to get a sense of what the story's about and who is in the film (their role.)

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