Introduction

There are four members in my group: Sam, James, James and me, Christian. No one in my group has studied Media before and so we are all new to the process of film making.

In a group we discussed the many different film genres and each of our own, individual preferences. I favour the horror genre as there are very few restraints as to what you can include in a horror film, which means our ideas are not as limited as say another genre like action. However, there are certain conventions you have to follow such as: the setting; the technical codes; the iconography; the narrative structure and character types.

Conveniently, the other members of my group were not completely against the horror genre, even though it would not have been their first choice, we all have an interest in the history of the horror genre and so compromising wasn’t a problem.

We decided upon the horror genre and so I began my individual research into significant areas of the genre, in order to help me and my group prepare for when it comes time to film our title sequence. I produced a power point presentation including all the relevant information. Here it is: From the research I have done on the horror genre I have determined that there are many different sub – genres of horror such as: action – horror; comedy – horror; science fiction – horror and psychological – horror to name a few. This gives us a variety of options when we come up with our ideas for an entire film and opening sequence. Another realisation I had whilst doing the research was that we are going to have to follow the majority of the conventions like the final girl theory and Vladimir Propp’s character theory as well as trying to prevent our opening sequence from becoming to generic and unoriginal.

The next step for my group is for each of us to come up with our individual ideas for the films narrative. In order to help me come up with an idea for a good, distinctive narrative I watched these films:

• Sinister
• The conjuring
• Annabelle
• Scream 1,2 and 3
• Paranormal activity 1
• Shaun of the dead
• Childs play
• SAW 1
• Alien
• The Blair Witch Project
• A Nightmare on Elm Street
• Halloween
• Friday the 13th

 I made a mind map of all the different types of characters and here is an image of it: