Film Still Analysis

Our task was to take shots to represent a particular genre of film, and the genre we were trying to achieve in this shot was horror.

Representation of Genre
We used the basement as the setting for this shot as it is dark and gloomy, which is a very generic setting for a horror film, but also contains everyday items such as the ladder, making the story seem more real and therefore making it more effectively scary. The character in this shot is a girl crouched, facing the corner in the dark. Her position suggests she afraid of something or trying to protect herself, and the high angle it is shot from makes the character seem smaller and more vulnerable as the viewer is looking down on her. This shows the viewer that there is something or someone that could be dangerous, which is often the case in a horror film.

How this was achieved
We decided to use a dark and creepy looking location to represent the tone of the movie as dark and scary with the low key lighting. Although most of the scene is in darkness, there light casting a shadow of an unknown hand and this emphasises it as the main focus. The fact that the viewer doesn't know who or where the hand is coming from creates suspense and tension, which is a common theme in the horror genre.

Successful?
I think the lighting in this shot is successful as it is mainly low key to match the tone of the film, with brighter lighting to highlight more important elements of the shot, for example the shadow of the hand on the wall.

Improvements that could be made
The representation of the character could be better, as it's not clear exactly where the girl is or why she is in this situation. To improve this we could have included the stairs in the shot to show a more precise location, or used other props in he background to provide more information.