ERT- Research

• We have looked at 6 films in detail: “The exorcism of Emily Rose”( Derrickson 2005), “Sixth Sense” ( Night 1999) , “Hide and seek“ (Polson 2005) , “Childs play“ (Holland 1988), “The ring” ( Verbinski 2002) and “ The hole” ( Hamm 2001).
• All of these films are relevant for us because they all include children or girls and are horror films. The majority involve death, missing people or psychological problems.
• We learnt from doing a technical analysis on the first 2 minutes of the films “Exorcism of Emily Rose“, “Sixth sense“ and “hide and seek“ that there are a lot of different shots used in such a short time, and that it works very effectively in the horror genre by hooking in the audience. A lot of close ups are used of both the characters and other objects, this increase concentration and mystery as the audience try and find the links and necessity of each item or expression of the character. They are all generally set in dark and isolated areas with old fashioned set . All 3 tend to have a soundtrack, which is of a low pitch and slow pace. In some shots there are noises added such as screaming or bird sounds or the wind, creating dramatic tension. Each of these films included little dialogue in the opening sequence which creates the mystery.
• From analysing the other three films we could see that two of the films include the conventions of thriller films as well as horror, and the other just horror conventions. The locations created in one circumstance is a girls room, which is a location we ourselves would like to use. The film made it fit into the horror theme through mise-en-scene, lighting and sound. The room included simple objects nothing to distracting but still held all necessary items for example a bed, it was dark and had a big bare window which created a spooky and mysterious atmosphere.
• In conclusion from this research we can see that using a lot of shots is effective, using dark lighting works very well to create a fearful atmosphere and a soundtrack should be used which has a slow, monotone and low pitch.