Why Serial Killers??

    So for our movie opening, we chose to use a serial killer. And we chose the serial killer for a few reasons. The first reason being that we just wanted to... The second being that they are relatively easy to produce with a low budget and have potential for a high profit  margin if executed correctly. According to Forbes, highly rated serial killer movies such as "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" cost only $110,000 to make. Although we may not have $110,000, the fact that highly regarded serial killer movies can use budgets significantly lower than those of many other movies gives us hope that we will be able to pull through with our huge budget of almost $0. We can apply certain strategies to our film opening as well in order to avoid difficulties in our production process as well, adding to the limited budget appeal of serial killer horror movies. For example, this scene from the movie "Psycho" is a prime example of a way to show what we want to show and avoiding difficulties of production such as special effects.

(Scene from "Psycho" from YouTube)

    So another debate that we had regarding our movie as a whole would be whether or not we should reveal who exactly our serial killer is at the beginning, during the clip that we make, or whether it should be revealed later in the movie. According to whatculture.com, a standard feature of slashers such as the one we will be portraying is that they wear a mask in order to hide their identity. This is intended to create suspense for the viewer and create the mystery about who the killer is. Other features of standard slasher movies can be found here. Our other option was to reveal the killer early on. We felt that this would be something a little different from the standard genre tradition, and also would create some suspense and dramatic irony, seeing as though the viewer will know that the killer is present in the scene but the people in the movie will not know throughout the movie. A movie that does something similar to this is "American Psycho," in which people know who the killer is the entire movie and the movie is centered around that character and his life. This may be something that we can look at to model our film intro after, seeing as though it has already been done and will provide some sort of base for us to work from.

(This is an example of how the audience can easily see who the killer is throughout the movie from "American Psycho" from YouTube)



Hughes, M. (2013, October 31). The Top Ten Best Low-Budget Horror Movies Of All Time. Retrieved March 03, 2018, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/markhughes/2013/10/30/the-top-ten-best-low-budget-horror-movies-of-all-time/#173d9c4046e1

McNaughton, J. (Director). (n.d.). Henry - portrait of a serial killer [Motion picture].

Hitchcock, A. (Director). (1960). Psycho (Motion picture: 1960) [Motion picture].

Haigh, C. (2013, May 29). 10 Slasher Movie Clichés And What They Mean. Retrieved March 03, 2018, from http://whatculture.com/film/10-slasher-movie-cliches-and-what-they-mean

Harron, M. (Director). (2000). American psycho [Motion picture].