What to include in our preliminary:

 

Before planning and creating the preliminary we had to think about what we actually find scary in a horror film:

In this mind map there are a few of the classic things we thought were always successful in scaring audiences of horrors, the main areas that are effective in creating fear is the angles or shots used, usually quite unusual shots create a tension. The next is the actual storyline. You cannot have a horror film based on a high school romance for example it's just not scary however, plots of gore, serial killers and spirits is what scares an audience. Along with this, the characters, props and setting all add to the tension. Even just a dark lighting can cause some amount of anxiety in a viewer. Lastly, the sound. Hitchcock was very good at using sound to build tension, the most famous example being the staggered use of strings in the shower scene which creates an atmosphere of dread and creates tension.