Editing techniques and effects of horror films

Horror films have always been extremely popular and have generated huge amounts of profit for the worldwide film industry. For example, Halloween, Friday the 13th, Scream and Alien have been big blockbusters and have spanned into sequels and more. Yet, whilst these films often relied on a big budget, gore and successful actors to captivate the viewers, there are many other techniques which we can incorporate into our trailer, in order to make it more scary and full of suspense, since we do not have the budget to make a typical Hollywood standard trailer, as we are only two A-level media students!

· Let The Audience See What The Rest Of The Cast Cannot
A common, but effective, technique that is used in horror is the one in which only the audience and the subject (the ‘killer’) know what is happening except for the rest of the cast. Therefore, shots of the subject sneaking up on their victim who is oblivious to the situation often creates a scary, intense moment of the film. This is achieved to its greatest effect by filming over the shoulder of the killer, known as ‘Over the Shoulder’ shot.

· The Killer’s Eye View
Katie and I think that probably the best example of this can be seen in the film Jaws, where the audience can see a shot of the swimmer’s legs from underneath the surface of the water paddling. This ‘Point of View’ shot and very tense scene shows us the shark’s perspective of the swimmer, putting us in the world of the killer and creating discomfort to the audience.

· The Unexpected
All horror films rely on the unexpected to scare the audience at specific moments of the plot. For example in the film Jaws, the decapitated head floating out into the water is a prime example where most of viewers watching the scene would have experienced an unpleasant shock. An alternative take on this technique is a focus of the camera on a particular area, such as a curtain next to an open window, which zooms in slowly. This scary technique creates the illusion of you expecting the killer to be behind the curtain so when it’s someone else, the viewer is still expected to be shocked. It also serves to indicate that the killer’s still around somewhere.

Horror films use so many special effects these days in order to thrill the audiences. Nevertheless, the main techniques we have studied still have an amazing ability to be able to scare audiences and are simple to incorporate into films- or in our case trailer- without needing many effects or a big budget. For example, by also adding scary non-diegetic sound to our trailer, it can heighten the intensity considerably and filming at night also adds dramatic effect. Therefore by trying these basic techniques, it will give us a useful start in the creative process of filming our psychological horror trailer.