For the next few columns I'll be going genre by genre, covering how to use all of the bits and pieces we've been going over to manipulate the reactions you want out of your audience. If you don't want to manipulate the audience, instead trusting the internal truths of your work, you might be missing the core of what storytelling is. Manipulation doesn't have to be dishonest. It can just be the methods you use to present the elements of your story in the most emotionally evocative way. To start with, we're hitting an overview of one of the most manipulative genres: horror.
Horror fans consume horror at an incredible rate. Big budget, low budget, good, bad, acclaimed, derided, old, and new. They know all of the tricks. The audience goes into a movie assuming who will live and who will die, make their guesses as to who the killer is, how the situation gets escaped, or if, and goes through every single scene convinced they know what's coming next.
You know what the "cat in the window" scare is. It's a cheap and meaningless gag. You know when there's a dark basement and somebody is about to go into it that the audience declares that person an idiot. If you show a wood chipper anywhere in the movie, you damn well better be sending a person, partially or entirely, through that sucker.
The audience is always trying to predict what will happen. That's the point. Horror is about scaring people. To scare people you have to surprise them. If they know you're trying to surprise them, they'll want to try and stay one step ahead of you. Being scared is embarrassing for most people, so when we decide to watch a scary movie we're on the defensive. We've entered a battle of wits with the film makers.
This is why you need to avoid the cheap gags. The cat in the window gets the people to jump, sure. The random falling object, the sudden cut with a loud musical sting, the bold sudden visual and sound gets a very easy jump. But is it scary? Will it stick with the audience afterwards, make them sleep with the lights on, or, most importantly, recommend the movie to friends? Probably not.
The reason the jump gag comes off badly is because you haven't given the audience a chance to think ahead, to see it coming. You're just dropping in an element out of nowhere, and that feels like a cheat. It's like revealing the killer is a character we've never met or even heard of. You might get a reaction, but there will be some resentment with it.
If you're going to use a jump scare, place it someplace useful. Know that ultimately every build up needs a payoff. For the long example here, we'll combine a long scare and some short ones to see how they work.
If they know something hasn't jumped out in a while, nobody has been killed, nothing "scary" has happened in a while, they'll be expecting something. Give them all the signs that it's coming. Shots linger longer, the music gets lower, the dialogue gets sparse. The lights go out, an open door is found, someone finds them self suddenly alone.
Then drag it out. Let them pass several open doors, round corners, and nothing happens. Go to another, longer shot. Let the audience know you know what they expect. You agree on the what, but you're in control of the when and how. If you give them a long enough nothing you can get a good scary reveal without having to kill off a character or some other major moment. They round that third corner, and after a moment the bad guy steps out of the shadows in the background. He approaches the character, who remains unaware of the immediate peril.
Now the audience is locked in anticipation. They know the what, they how, and the slow visible fuse to the when. You now have their undivided attention, but more importantly they think they know what's coming. That gives you several options.
You can have the character discover the villain at the last moment. This lets you pump some adrenaline into the scene. A chase, a fight, something letting the character have a chance at survival. It opens up the options of them living or dieing, maybe learning a weakness in the villain for later.
Have another character jump out to the rescue. For some reason it's less of a cheat for something good to happen suddenly. Be careful not to play it as a scare, because that gives the wrong association. If you use a good guy to get a quick scare, the audience will get that subtle resentment I mentioned built up and they will want and expect that character to die. Actually, with that in mind, you may want to use that trick if you know the character is going to die anyway.
Last suggestion, though there are plenty of other options, you can do exactly what they expect. Let the killer catch up to the victim and kill them. This works on several levels if done sparingly. For one, we don't usually see something with such a slow build up pay off so directly. It's not expected, which is the point. It can also set a low expectation for the audience. They will start to assume that what you see is what you get, so they start to trust the surface of what you're giving them. Their guard will be lowered, giving you more places to set things up for surprises later.
The scare is a plot point. You need to be moving character, story, or location. The status needs to change. As long as what you're scaring people with affects something, you're good. The nice thing is, a lot of this can be the slow reveal of the villain. What they look like, what their strengths and weaknesses are, what the back story is. Each time you show the villain, you get some more scares and you set up your ending.
Yes, that can be a bit obvious, but remember that your audience does expect certain things. Let them figure out a few easy things in between the real twists. Even the most groundbreaking horror films use some of the standard trapping of the genre. There are only so many tricks, and so many ways to use them.
Okay, that's enough on that. Next time I'll cover a lot of the physical elements to use, music, light, etc.
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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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