Analysis of a Horror Still

1. Describe your shot and identify in what way it could be seen as representing ‘horror’.

- Mid, low angle shot in a darkened room, only shaft of light coming through a crack in the door.

- Female body lying motionless on the floor, suggesting she is sleeping or, more likely, injured or dead – the lifeless body is obviously the victim in the still.

- Silhouetted legs standing above the body in a powerful stance with feet spread connoting this person as an attacker as they are clearly not helping the person on the floor even though they would be in a position to do so.

- The assumed killer’s legs are framing the shot, showing they are dominating the still.

- Female body following the typical conventions of a ‘horror’ victim – innocent and helpless against a mindless killer.

- The body is cast in a white light connoting innocence and showing her as the ‘goodie’ in the still.

- The long shadows and silhouettes promote the feeling of a horror genre and the darkness lets the audience’s imaginations run wild as to where the characters are and what has happened.

- What little of the room is visible is clearly run down and not treated well suggesting that the still is set in a dingy building, possibly a basement – commonly used in horror films.

- The light and dark contrast follows the main horror convention of good vs. evil

2. What did you actually do to achieve the effect?

- We turned off all the lighting in our chosen setting in order to create darkness – needed for suspense and mystery – and a paglight was shone through a crack in the door to create the silhouette effect on the legs and also light up the victim’s body.

- In order to achieve the low-angle shot, a key feature in creating the unique horror effect in our still, the person taking the shot was lying on the ground beneath the ‘killers’ legs and on the same level as the body – this created a third person view of the scene and brought the audience’s focus to the body, whilst still keeping the mystery of the legs.

- We used a setting of a dark room, which promoted a feeling of remoteness and isolation, making it seem like the victim would have found it hard to escape the killer and also adding mystery to the shot as the audience cannot see anything but the two people in the room – they don’t know what else is out there.

3. What is successful about your shot?

- I feel that we managed to light the scene well; by creating the silhouette of the legs we managed to follow horror conventions by creating mystery and also made it obvious to the audience who was who in the scene.

- I think the low-angle shot worked well in terms of drawing attention towards the body on the floor and making the killers legs seem more important and imposing.

- The large shadow cast by the legs adds a feeling of horror to the shot and by framing the body with the legs we managed to make both characters equally important but in different ways – the body was clearly motionless and the white light connoted innocence whereas the legs were fully in darkness and standing in a very dominant, scary position.

4. What would you do differently in hindsight?

- If we were going to retake the shot I think we should make the framing a bit tighter – by coming in closer to the two characters we would draw more attention to them and create more suspense and feeling in the shot without losing any key imagery.

- I would like to have moved the table leg to yet again draw more focus towards the characters and make the still less busy – this would increase the raw emotion of the shot.

- I would make the light source less sharp and obvious in order to make the image more eerie, this would be achievable by moving the light source and using a different filter.