An analysis on media genre and their soundtracks
Introduction: In my academic report I will be talking what ideas me and my group came up with and what Genre conventions are and also why they are used in films and how me and my group will pick between all the ideas we have came up with and when we have picked a genre and we will start doing research on what genre we have picked.
Genre convention are what the specific elements and themes are in the genre you have picked what are the common rules are in your genre. Genre conventions are in films to represent what the key themes are in films like setting, lighting, camera angles and what type of shots we can use in our silent film.
Film 1: The first film I have picked is Scream the genre in the film Scream is horror the reason I have picked the film Scream is because it is the same genre as me and my group is doing so I feel like we can get a lot of ideas from the film and what type of camera shots and angles we can copied from their film because in all the scream films you can see that they use a type of dark lighting with a little glimpse of light so I think that me and my group can take that into thought.
Film 2: The second film of an idea I have picked is IT because I told my group that maybe we could have a mix of comedy and horror because a lot of people like both horror and comedy so I thought that we could combine the two and make it into a film but the reason I picked IT is because in some bits of the film there is bits of funny parts in the film but the main genre being horror because if me and my group ended up picking genre and comedy we wouldn’t want it all to be about comedy because we want our main genre to be horror.
Film 3: The 3rd film I decided to look at was the film Us. The reason i picked this film was because it has the genre of horror but also has the genre or theme of doppelganger the reason were looking at the theme doppelganger is because we think that it could work really well with the genre horror and it might make our horror film even more scarier than it was already going to be. What is Doppelganger? Doppelganger is a double figure of a person with one of them being the real one and the other one being the doppelganger which is a fake version of the already living person.
Film 4: The 4th and final film I have picked is The Texas chainsaw massacre the reason i have picked this film is because it is a very good horror film ( slasher ) because in the film they use a very old camera because it was filmed in the 70s and i feel like with old cameras it makes horror films more watchable some other reasons it is good is because they use very good genre convention.
In this scene of The Texas chain saw massacre you can see that they are using a very old camera you can see this because of the quality of the camera also in this scene on the car you can see that the lights have a really bright white tone to it but when you see cars in real life you can see that not all cars have white lights there mostly like a dark orange colour so they’ve used the white lights to show the audience that there is a car or truck coming and also with the car lights on it lets the audience see the characters better.
In horror films they like to use a lot of music to show the audience what is happening in their films by using instruments like violins because violins can have a very high pitch and also a very low pitch so in horror films they use the violin in a very low tone to make the audience more interested and that’s why music is a key theme in films because they can make any noise fit in any genre. For example in the film Scream when something bad is going to happen like a murder or a phone call is about to be made from scream they tend to put on very tense music to make the audience more into the film.
Here is an example: https://youtu.be/pY7sDm4QzYk?si=2OiDSC_Lgqmd4S_H
In this scene when the girl goes close up to the closet dramatic music starts playing and the audience thinks that Ghostface is going to be in the closet so it makes the scene very tense for the audience and the character.
Visuals:
In films directors like to make their films entertaining so some directors only use visuals to tell the story so when I say visuals I’m talking about lighting, shadows and sometimes certain backgrounds first I’m going to talk about lighting in films the most easiest way to find out what genre film is by lighting because in most horror films they use a very dark lighting where as in non- horror films they use normal lighting but to also make the lighting more darker in horror films they mainly film it at night or in dark areas.
Shadows are used in films to make the audience the audience more interested in watching because it will make them ask there selves questions like who is that and it will make them want to know what will happen next.
Bibliography
youtube.com
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20161031-what-makes-a-great-horror-movie-soundtrack
https://www.blog.thefilmfund.co/
https://nofilmschool.com/ultimate-guide-to-horror-subgenres
Horror Movie Lighting: Techniques that the Masters Use (scarystudies.com)
Media Life 