10/31/16 Sarah Ramos

Since today is Halloween, our class focused on horror films. Specifically, we answered the question "How do the films create a sense of terror?" As someone who hates scary movies this class was probably less fun for me than it was for some of my horror loving classmates. Nonetheless, it was still a pretty cool topic. We discussed how horror films use long drawn out scenes and slow pacing to build suspense (usually leading up to a jump scare). We also talked about how this can be done with audio. Many of the films we watched used silence as a way of building suspense. Another way horror films create a sense of terror is by obscuring what the viewer can see in each shot. This is usually done with different camera angles which only provide a limited view. Many of the films also used darkness and dim lighting to create a similar effect. Noticing things like this gave me a new respect for scary movies.