The main forms and conventions of horror movies are blood/gore, Death, Being scared, Tension, Zombies, Monsters, Killers, Vampires and Werewolves. To make a developed link to the Forms and conventions I watched a couple of real film openings and noted how they used the forms and conventions. The films we looked at were The Ring and Scream.
In the Ring opening scene, they built tension by following the character when she is wondering what caused the TV to turn on and the sounds upstairs. Because the camera is following her, so is the audience shares her emotions. We did the same thing in our scene, when the character is walking home when he hears a footstep sound behind him, a reaction shot is used to show the character’s reaction and to make the audience react the same way.
We also used an editing technique called quick cuts, it is not a usual technique for horror movies however in Edgar Wright’s zombie film, Shawn of the Dead, Quick cuts are used and for that reason we put them in since Zombie is a convention of Horror.