Development of Genre

When we had begun the planning stage, including storyboarding, we as a group had decided to produce a slasher horror film opening. As the planning and even filming stages progressed, we continued to build and produce our film opening as a slasher horror. However, once it came to the post-production stage and after receiving audience feedback, we had decided to label the genre as psychological as the conventions we portrayed more greatly conformed to this genre rather than slasher. 

Original Idea:

Initially, we had created our storyboard and all planning documents based around our film opening being of the Slasher Horror genre. Despite the narrative of our film opening being based around fire and burns and thus, lacking blood and gore, we had planned to included detailed shots of oozing and bloody burn marks. This incorporation of blood and cuts would have solidified the film opening to be slasher horror. 

Figure 1

Figure 2

Our ideas to conform to the Slasher aspect was to include numerous burn marks such as figure 1, including showing a burnt face and other parts of the body. Additionally, we burnt an old shirt for the victim to wear to help highlight the burn marks, as shown in figure 2. By incorporating these effects, we would have still been able to explore the gore aspect of the slasher horror genre. 

Amending the genre:

One of the biggest factors of our opening that convinced us to amend the genre was the implementation of the CCTV effect and use of hand held camera as these filters suggest the idea that the victim is being watched, a convention of a psychological horror. 




In addition to this, we added various effects to the remainder of the footage, including the 'Trails' filter in order to create layering of the footage and a glitch effect. The overall look of this then created the idea of disorientation and confusion, which better conforms to the psychological genre also rather than slasher. 

Audience feedback:

In addition to our own decision making, we carried out an audience feedback focus group whereby we asked volunteers of our target market to watch our film opening and provide feedback. One of the questions was 'What is the genre?' to which many replied psychological horror, which also persuaded us to amend the genre. 

Evaluation:

For the reasons explored above, we collectively decided as a group to amend the chosen genre for our film opening from slasher to psychological. Although our film opening still contains aspects of the slasher horror genre, the majority of conventions conformed to more greatly apply to the psychological genre. Once we decided on this change, we was then able to further manipulate our film opening, altering saturations and filters to more greatly conform to this chosen genre.