Genre

I have chosen the Horror Genre, I chose this because I feel it could give me a lot of freedom whilst thinking up and creating my film. The genre itself is very vast and rich in sub-genres, yet at the same time there's almost always a solid core of codes & conventions that run beneath all the sub-genres, some films can manipulate these conventions and yet still appear to be new and fresh. The downside of the presence of these fairly solid conventions is that some films can become repetitive, stale and unfashionable, but I feel this happens when the conventions are followed exactly. In my own opinion I think whilst the bedrock of the horror genre is its well established codes and conventions, the film maker is required to choose which codes and conventions he/she wants to use in conjunction with their own ideas to create a truly good and terrifying horror film.

“Horror films are movies that strive to elicit the emotions of fear, horror and terror from viewers. Their plots frequently involve themes of death, the supernatural or mental illness. Many horror movies also include a central villain.
Early horror movies are largely based on classic literature of the gothic/horror genre, such as Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Phantom of the Opera and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
More recent horror films, in contrast, often draw inspiration from the insecurities of life after World War II, giving rise to the three distinct, but related, sub-genres: the horror-of-personality Psycho film, the horror-of-Armageddon Invasion of the Body Snatchers film, and the horror-of-the-demonic The Exorcist film.”
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_film#References 10-06-2009

“That's a difficult question. In recent years the very term has become misleading. If you tell people you write horror fiction, the image that immediately pops into their minds is one of Freddy Krueger or maybe Michael Myers, while you were hoping for Shelley's Frankenstein or Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The popularity of the modern horror film, with its endless scenes of blood and gore, has eclipsed the reality of horror fiction. When you add to that a comprehension of how horror evolved as both a marketing category and a publishing niche during the late eighties -- horror's boom time -- it's easy to understand why answering the question of what today's horror fiction actually is has become so difficult.. Webster's Collegiate Dictionary gives the primary definition of horror as "a painful and intense fear, dread, or dismay." It stands to reason then that "horror fiction" is fiction that elicits those emotions in the reader..”
- http://www.horror.org/horror-is.htm - 10-06-2009