How to Make Horror Films
If you're an imaginative writer and have a fondness for scary movies, why not try your hand at making one of your own? Many aspiring screenwriters have gotten their start by writing horror films because this is sometimes considered the easiest and least expensive genre for newcomers to break into.
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Things You'll Need
- Computer
- Printer
- Paper
- Script
- Cast
- Location
- Budget
- Props
- Filming/editing equipment
- Sound effects/music
- DVD player
- Horror movies
- Screenplay software (optional)
Instructions
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Familiarize yourself with as many horror movies as you can, and study the techniques they use to scare their audiences. Many of them, for example, use fairly ordinary items like dolls, cars, dogs, houses and other everyday things, and imbue them with extraordinary and malevolent powers. They also escalate the suspense and terror by systematically isolating the potential victims, utilizing gruesome visuals and scary sound effects, and playing on the apprehensions that many of us had as children (e.g. monsters living under the bed).
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Make a list of the top 10 things you are most afraid of. Chances are that other people are afraid of these things, too. Pick the one that absolutely terrifies you the most. This will form the basis of your plot.
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Outline your scary story before you start to write it. The first act sets up the conflict that something is spooky and amiss (e.g. the family dog has been disappearing for long stretches of time and always returns home with blood on its mouth). The second act raises the stakes and puts the lead players in jeopardy. The third act resolves the problem by either having the good guys vanquish the evil forces or the evil forces actually winning (which, of course, opens the door to a sequel).
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Give the villain (human, mummy, monster, rabid animal) in your story a plausible motive for what it does. In many horror films, for example, the villain is (1) seeking revenge against the descendants of the person who killed him, (2) seeking to avenge the honor of a deceased sweetheart, (3) responding to an ancient curse that forces her to do evil things or (4) reacting to the effects of a bad lab experiment. (And there are considerably more.)
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Give your good guys some solid motivations, too. Otherwise, they will simply be reacting to everything that the monsters do. For instance, whatever it is your hero needs to accomplish needs to be thwarted in some way by the presence of the evil forces. He can't simply walk away from this scary conflict because, if he does, something even worse could happen as a result.
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Identify the inciting incident that caused the evil to occur. Perhaps an incantation was accidentally recited, a grave was robbed or a spaceship crashed in a field and contaminated all of the nearest vegetation to the point that it became carnivorous. A good horror film is about cause and effect: something has to happen that unleashes the resident mayhem.
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Decide how many people you need in the storyline and what kinds of locations will be required. If this is your first film, keep it as simple as possible (e.g. a house, a forest, a park, a playground). Keep in mind that the more ordinary and seemingly harmless the setting, the scarier you can make it.
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Identify what kind of sound effects and props you are going to need. If you're keeping things simple, many of the items you'll use can be found around the house. Buckets of brains, for instance, can be fashioned quite convincingly with cooked pasta and food coloring.
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Write your script, and recruit friends to read it out loud for you. While the dialogue should always sound natural, horror films tend to have less dialogue in them than other genres because their strength is derived from the scary visuals and action sequences.
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Hold auditions, cast the roles and start filming!
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Enter your finished product in film festivals or contests. There's just no telling who is going to see your work and really like the way you tell a scary story.
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Tips & Warnings
If you're a first-timer at this, start by making a film short. It's not only less expensive to shoot a 15- to 20-minute film than a full-length feature, but it is also much more challenging and will help you hone the craft of making every scene and every line of dialogue count.
One typed page of script equals one minute of screen time.
Each of your acts should be roughly the same length. An easy way to handle this is to decide on the length of the script (e.g. 15 minutes) and divide it by three; this will give you the number of pages to devote to the beginning, middle and end.
Always use a relatively calm or even humorous scene just before a really terrifying one. This works because you lull the audience into a false sense of security that everything is finally going to be all right.
Unless you've got access to costumes and locations, it's probably better for your budget to stick with contemporary plots.
Black-and-white photography can often be more frightening than color. Take advantage of light and shadow to create ominous scenes.
The uneven jiggles of a hand-held camera (such as those used in "The Blair Witch Project") have been proven to agitate audiences more than those where everything flows smoothly.
Give your hero a flaw he needs to overcome--a flaw that coincidentally ties into his fight with the villain. For example, if he has a fear of drowning, the final scene should take place in or near a deep body of water.
Gore and guts are not a guarantee of success. In fact, the opposite is more likely true. Play on psychological fears as much as possible, and let your audience's own imagination fill in the blanks.
Don't plagiarize the work of existing films. Be an original!
Don't confuse your audience by adding too many subplots or character back stories that take the film in multiple directions.
Always shoot more material than you think you're going to need.
Always make back-up copies of your work.
Never endanger your actors by forcing them to do stunts or act in settings where there's a high degree of risk.
Resources
- Photo Credit Photo by Christina Hamlett
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