Happy Halloween, everyone! I hope everyone is ready for some good scares this year. I mean of course giving them, not getting them. It's a whole lot harder to get scared when you're expecting it, isn't it? I know it is for me.
I'll go to a haunted house, see the seams in the wall where it's going to pull away, or the strings on a piece of furniture that's going to jump across the room, or which employees are just phoning it in.
Same at a horror movie. We've all seen the rules, either in SCREAM, or online, or just talked about after a particularly cliché horror movie.
- You don't run up the steps when you should leave.
- You don't go into a dark and quiet basement.
- Investigating strange noises is a bad idea.
- Try not to be the funny one of the group.
- If people are disappearing, it's not a good time to go have sex.
Those sort of rules, and plenty more if you want to look up the various lists, have been figured out. Enough people saw them enough times, and now most audiences know them. They've stopped being scary in general. Sure, some people like the safe and secure feeling of familiar horror, but do you want to be the person making it for them?
If "yes," do your research and turn to page 93. Lesson over, you're welcome!
In "no," keep reading this page for things to consider.
First rule of horror is that it needs to be what the audience does not expect or want to happen. Actually, that's the only real rule, if you think about it. Another way to put it, which may sick a little better (it has for me) is "How do I get somebody watching this to say 'Fuck!'"
What you don't expect to happen tends to be the jump scares. The killer is in the room, the cat jumps in the window, the clown doll turns its head, and so forth. It doesn't have to be an attack on a character, just a surprise for the audience. It's a jump start.
The best way to achieve these is misdirection, smoke and mirrors. If you have somebody walking down a long hallway in the dark, quietly calling their friends' names, then you know something os going to happen. You don't know when. Getting the exact timing of a "when" for it to happen, since audiences can vary, people can get impatient, and besides, they know what is probably going to happen anyway. In that scene, if your plans are to have:
- The killer pop out for a quick kill
- A friend pop out and comically startle the person we're watching
- A cat jump in a window or similar gag
- A phone to ring
You've wasted tension. They may jump, but they'll feel cheap. Like they just put out for a Value Meal, and not even Super Sized. Better to look at that list and come up with something different, or combine elements. Some ideas:
- The friend pops out for the cheap gag, and while the other person is distracted the killer gets them. Now the wacky friend is on the run and responsible for a death.
- They find a room full of mutilation or horror, maybe a clue to the apocalypse.
- The walk down the hall is played harmlessly and light until the second something bad happens.
- I'm not giving my best ideas. I'm using them for myself.
Within the context of the story you can build in things to distract the audience so they don't expect to jump. That shuts them up. These tend to the best sort of scares for a crowded and possibly unruly theater, since even if somebody isn't into the film they tend to jerk or jump a little when everyone around them does all at once. Unfortunately, at home these sort of scares can be seen as cheap scares in favor of really built up unease.
If you really like building the creepy vibes, good for you. You like suspense, which falls into "what the audience doesn't want to happen." The audience knows what is going on and it is unpleasant, or they know what is coming and they don't want to see it. In the hallway scenario, the reason it would fail with a jump more often than not is that there is no proper use of tension. You blow up a balloon halfway, then give it an unceremonious pop right in front of everyone.
Hitchcock called suspense a bomb under the table that you show the audience, but never let go off. The explosion may kill people, but it's also a release of tension. When your killer strikes, you need to rebuild all of the tension you've just spent, or keep upping the ante until the end.
The reason horror franchises get less and less scary as they go along is because you know who the killer is, how to kill them, and that they're the only sure bet to be in the next movie. The audience doesn't care about the new victims as much as how Freddy is going to kill a new crop. There is no tension to that.
Take the time to build scenes. Don't show the villain unless you need to. Let it be a force of evil that we don't understand. Questions keep people interested. Answers mean we're almost done. Show us the bombs under the table and decide what goes off when. If it seems natural to do it in one place, do it in another.
One experiment is to number your ensemble. Every so often, when somebody needs to die, roll some dice. Kill that character. That way you aren't telegraphing who dies next. It's a surprise. You', like your characters, will have to think on your feet.
Also, have he characters react to the deaths of other characters.This reminds the audience that just because a scene or character is done, the situation remains intact until the bad guy is defeated.
Nowadays suspense seems to become that generic catch all of "torture porn." If you have a air amount of gore for gore's sake, yes, it's a long running sequence people want to be over, but it's not really suspense per se. It's just a lot of killing and mean spirited hijinks. Sure, it can be scary as hell, but it's tough to recommend to friends. "Hey, want to see a movie where a bunch people get eviscerated for two hours?" We all have friends that would say yes, but with plot, characters, and style you could do so much more.
Make sure to build a nice framework for what happens. Keep things moving from one location to the next. Reveal information about the killers, the location, and the lead in slow and deliberate morsels. Give a real voice to the characters. If we don't care who these people are, we don't care what happens to them. If we aren't afraid for their safety, we won't be nervous about their impending doom.
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| Make Me Proud |
Every other Monday
Exploring everything you should consider as you make your
indie masterpiece.
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| Patrick Storck |
Patrick hails from Baltimore, MD, where playing by the rules is frowned upon. Only average things come from playing it safe.
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