HORROR CODES AND

CONVENTIONS
WHAT IS MEANT BY CODES AND CONVENTIONS?

the overall thing that you see in most horrors for example in a slasher movie you always see a big man with
a knife

USE THE TAGS BELOW TO LIST CONVENTIONS YOU EXPECT TO SEE IN HORROR VIDEO
PRODUCTS
PLOT Slasher, paranormal, religious, somewhere isolated
CINEMATOGRAPHY Close ups make you feel claustrophobic, pov,
AUDIO Scary sound effects and high pitch to make it feel scary and build suspense, also
silence to make it suspense
SETTING In woods, in an old house, creepy village, lighting should be dark and scary and dull,
also a dark colour pallet
CHARACTER TYPES always a dumb good looking one a smart ugly one and the one in the middle who is
usually last alive
NARRATIVE The person had a bad childhood, so they kill people, the person got possessed
EDITING during editing scary sound effects will need to be added to make it scary, also short
shots to scare people
LIGHTING Dark and gloomy, dark colours
PROPS Dolls, bibles, costumes, weapons, blood, guts,
mobile phone, car
LIST THE HORROR CODES AND CONVENTIONS YOU IDENTIFY IN THE EXAMPLE CLIP
BELOW
Dumb blonde, in her house in the middle of nowhere , creepy guy rings the phone, sudden surprise on the
phone, close ups, stays in the house, you don’t see the killers face, blood and guts, jump scares, her back to
everything, slow tension build, night time and darkness

LIST AS MANY HORROR SUB-GENRES/HYBRIDS YOU CAN THINK OF

Actions horror, bloody or gory horror, comedy horror, gothic horror, psychological horror, slasher, science fiction
horror, zombie or pandemic end of the world horror, teen horror

CHOOSE A FILM FROM THE HORROR TIMELINE AND FIND THE TRAILER ON YOUTUBE.
MAKE NOTES ON THE CODES AND CONVENTIONS USED AND ADD TO WEEBLY UNIT 4 PAGE.
USE SCREENSHOTS TO HELP ILLUSTRATE POINTS
 SCREENSHOT
Link to the trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=kaU2A7KyOu4
this is blade an action horror
CODE/CONVENTION
Plot: the plot is one bad vampire and one good
immortal person trying to protect the world against
vampires
Cinematography: there are lots of close ups and
moving shots to exaggerate the action in the movie
Audio: there are lots of loud noises and lots of
creepy noises when the vampires come on scene
there are also lots of knife sound effects
Setting: its set in a big city this is to make you feel
like you can’t hide and there’s loads of people, so
you don’t know who is who
Character type: there is the men who are both trying
to stop each other one good one bad and there is a
mysterious woman who is falling in love with blade
Narrative: his mum was killed by a vampire and he
got powers so he has to save the world form evil
Editing: they have used short cuts to make the pace
of things feel really fast and there are also slow
points to build suspension for a jump scare
Lighting: dark and gloomy besides when he’s with
that girl
Props, blood, guts, weapons, fake teeth, coffins