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Horror FIlm Techniques?
What techniques do horror movies such as camera movements and editing techniques in order to get that suspense feeling?
I am doing a project on Nosfertau, Night of the Living dead, and The Shining
and need to pull a scene from each one and explain how it is a horror film and how it was achieved by the director
The old movies that you’re specifically talking about, and really most movies that are not so recent, tend to be more static with their camera movements throughout, representing the apparent calm of the situation and then becoming more energetic with their movements when the moments of pure horror take place. It jars the audience because they get used to the calm nature of static shots, then increasing the movement at moments of horror unsettles them and almost forces them to feel the horror too. Doing this frequently (calm, horror, calm, horror…) in horror movies makes for a greater impact upon the audience, which for something like horror is very important.
Like wise editing will speed up at times of horror, but really for many, many reasons… using practical effects that are perhaps not of fantastic quality requires quick cuts purely so the audience can’t see how horribly cheap they look, again this unsettles the audience to use quick cuts and not really get a clear glimpse of whatever is happening (its often not what the audience can see, but what is implied, and fleeting glimpses of some mysterious foe can offer the audience a chance to fill in the gaps with their own, much greater imaginative creation). Also the quick cuts of editing can represent the adrenaline of such situations.
Also editing can be used to provide a clear balance between what is known and what is unknown, and by this I mean effective editing between the characters that we see as the heroes in the story, and the characters/beings/??? that are the enemy. For example, when the boy is walking around the house looking for the killer, when is best to show the audience where the killer is? It is partly editing that makes those choices, which can shaped a horror movie very clearly with its choices.
Lighting is perhaps the most important aspect of suspense… simply put, when have you ever seen a horror movie take place during the day? Never, and if they do then they are not very good. The deliberate blending of light and shadow, the juxtaposition between darks shadows and dazzlingly bright lights can be used to great effect in horror movies to not just unsettle the audience and create a suspenseful atmosphere, but to unsettle the characters, and encourage the audience to further empathize with their situation. The most important thing to remember is that people have always been afraid of the dark, and they always will be. Effective lighting can tap into that fear, and exploit it in a number of ways because darkness, the unknown, is always scarier.
In recent years sound has played a big part, for better or for worse… Now symphonic accents are being used to highlight smaller moments of great terror, and signal what is going to happen. Older movies, whilst using the same techniques, seems to be doing this in a much more subtle, and effective way, tending instead to offer a creepy theme tune, or haunting melody to unsettle the audience and accentuate the horror.
Also location can have a bearing… in The Shining the location is an isolated hotel, which symbolizes Jack’s own isolation in his mind from both his family and his sanity. Locations often have a way of echoing the themes of the movie, and can become instigators of the main action in any movie. In The Shining for instance, if Jack and his family were spending the winter looking after the Mirage in Las Vegas none of that would have happened and everything would have been perfectly fine (bar some potential child psychology sessions).
Hope this helps.
Camera Techniques Horror
Run. (short scary homemade film)