If you want to get into the genre of horror you need to pick either for it to be a television show or a movie, either one. Doing a television series is a lot less likely to get noticed among the several other shows, but if someone made a horror movie it would be in theaters and people would get a lot more exposure to the movie than a television series.
Examples
A good example of this topic is how the Scream movies really took off and they are extremely popular, however when they released a Scream television series it ended up somewhat failing. According to cinemablend “Though Scream: The TV Series aired for three seasons, they were tumultuous. There was shock and confusion out of the gate when the decision was made for the show not to use the iconic Ghostface mask, and with each new episode run there were major creative shake-ups behind the scenes.” This quote is one of the many good examples of how this show was a somewhat failure, there was too many ideas at play and they just wanted to release something because of the initial failure of Scream 4 which was quite a anticlimactic failure at the box office which gave motivation for the Weinstein Company to make something to bring back the success of Scream and help recover the initial failure of Scream4. This project was later picked up by MTV.
Horror Television Series
If you are choosing to make a horror television series you want to make sure that it is able to stretch out the story across multiple episodes and still stay entertaining without all the episodes just being filler episodes. Here is some things that could make a horror television series work.
1. Some exciting and thrilling events to keep the viewer on the edge of their seat.
2. Make sure there is room for character development to take place throughout the season to keep the characters involved in the episodes.
3. A thrilling and “scary” villain for the series. Like Michael Myers in Halloween or Freddy Krueger in Nightmare On Elm Street.
4. Give the villain of the series a rememberable design like Michael Myers mask of the Ghost Face mask.
5. It doesn’t have to be a stereotypical horror series.
Horror Movie
Horror is a very classic genre in the film industry. There have been so many spectacular and classic different ones that are amazing classics to this day. These include ones like Halloween, Nightmare On Elm Street, Jaws, a older one is the original Dracula, and so many more. All these horror movies did so many things right. All of these absolute classics had a rememberable story, as well as characters. One of the most important characters in horror movies are the main antagonist of the film. They always have to have a signature design that will pretty much stand for that film. For example if you think of Halloween one of the first things that you might think of is Michael Myers and his iconic mask or maybe even Laurie Strode. Not only are the main antagonists important but so are the other characters especially the ones that survive the first film. This character will be the main character of the franchise basically. Just how Sydney from the Scream movies is a massive part of the franchise. So here are a few different things:
1. Don’t be afraid to try something new with it.
2. Make sure the characters that survive the first film are always the really good ones that will eventually become fan favorites.
3. The main antagonists design must be a rememberable one that will be well known for years to come.
4. You don’t need to be meta
5. Don’t ripoff other franchises!
Trying something new?
In the 80s and 90s horror movies where starting to get really repetitive and sort of boring, the horror genre was dying out. That would be until 1996 when the movie Scream released, directed by Wes Craven. This movie was a game changer for the horror film genre because it broke the formula by it being ORIGINAL. Instead of it being one killer there was two killers and two different killers every movie. This was a different kind of horror movie on so many levels, but Scream deserves its own.
Cinema Rules 