Resit: Sounds in Horror genre

As we were going to create a horror genre film opening we needed to consider the sounds that we will use in our piece.
I researched into the generic conventions for sound for the horror genre. Firstly I created a qucik questionaire that I asked 10 people what sound they would expect to hear during a horror opening.

What pitch sound would you expect to hear for a horror genre film?

High pitch - 1
Low pitch - 2
Mixture - 7

The answers differed most people answered that there should be a mixture between high and low pitch sound but it would be at a slow pace. The use of this creates a mysterious and frightful atmosphere and also builds suspence towards the audience. So with this in mind when creating our horror genre film opening I need to consider the sound that I will use, We will need to ensure it fits with the Horror genre conventions and creates the correct effect on the audience.
I watched a Horror opening and analysed the sound that I heard:



In this clip you can hear the mixture between high and low pitch sounds which creates a scary atmopshere. There is also use of non-diegetic sound that also have a frightening effect on the audience so I could think about using some non-diegetic chilling sounds in our opening to scare the audience.

I looked at very popular Horror films opening credit sounds to see whether these use the mix between high and low pitch and maybe even different sound effects. I looked at 'Nightmare on elm street' (1984), 'Halloween' (1978) and 'Friday the 13th' (1980) I used these films as they were very succesful so they must have been effective to the audience so if I follow the conventions of these films sound wise I will be sure to create the correct terryfying effect on the audience.

Friday the 13th (1980)



Nightmare on elm street (1984)



Halloween (1978)



In all of these clips the conventions that I obtained from my questionaire were all correct , these very popular Horror genre theme tunes include the use of a mixture of high and low pitch music and non-diegetic sounds and they all create a very scary atmosphere towards the audience.

Now that I have found this information out I will ensure I use it when creating our groups horror genre film opening so that I follow the correct generic conventions to create the correct effect on our horror genre audience.

Alex Cockburn