Genre Selection

The selection of genre proved a tricky one to suggest as we wanted add comedy elements to the production but found it tricky to find places to add comedy. When we looked at horror/comedy successful film they were all our favourite films such as Shaun of the dead and Zombieland, so we wanted to create a trailer such as this. We sat down and decided that the funny parts of these films were the goriness, violence and the stupidity and casualness towards it. Examples would be in Shaun of the dead which is a spoof movie of dawn of the dead which has such a casual attitude and perverts the forms and conventions of the horror and replaces it with comedy. This example would be where a zombie fall onto a half-cut jagged, rusty swing ball pole which impales here, now in the context of the film it’s hilarious, through this reverse of conventions. Also in Zombieland which takes a comical approach to murdering zombies in which it’s the least funny thing in any horror film and portrayed in a disturbing way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ0gSbcG1FI – This clip shows the element of comedy of killing a zombie in Shaun of the dead, by dancing around and hitting him with snooker cues. It’s very light-hearted and along to the track of don’t stop me now by queen which is a generally cheerful song. This would be a very difficult technique to use as we couldn’t use the music due to copyright or hit a human being with snooker cues or use the talented camera angle or acting to make it funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0L6B6QESnU – This is a clip from dawn of the dead which is very disturbing and does not have any comedy elements to it. We believe this film genre would be easier to portray as we can scare people more easily then make them laugh.

When we took these points into place it was clear that it would be difficult to reverse these forms and conventions of a horror to make it funny, with no experience and a low budget. It is two opposite genres and it would be very difficult to make this funny with no gory kills or very good casual acting towards death, it takes a lot of skill to add comedy elements to horror and get it correct, and I believe with my group that we can create a better horror film, than a horror/comedy film.