Critical Investigation tutorial 09/12/15

Essay plan

Intro: Needs a little more – discuss some of the pleasures and perhaps include some stats to back up what a successful genre it is? Also consider that idea of a killer quote to open the investigation (before the title). 250 words.

Section 1: Pleasure of horror – media theory and research. This is a perfect opening section and contextualises all the analysis to come later. This will be an extensive section – loads of research and quotes here please! 600 words.

Section 2: The horror audience – bringing in gender and audience statistics. This could include more theory – but don’t drift off your question. Keep focused on horror genre and audience pleasure. 400 words.

Section 3: Primary texts – Insidious and Paranormal Activity. Link the first two sections to your primary text and have a strong section of textual analysis of key scenes. Link and refer back to theories you have already discussed. 750 words.

Section 4: Historical texts and criticism of the horror genre – particularly in terms of recent films not living up horror classics like Scream. 500 words.

Section 5: Institution context – is horror important for the film industry? Is new technology changing the genre? More people watch films on PC/tablet than in cinema now (recent change) – how does this impact on horror? This could bring in the future of the genre. You may need a little more research on this or bring in some stats from the earlier section. 300 words.

Conclusion: summing up argument and returning to the core pleasures of horror. 150 words.

Next steps… update/finish your plan based on this tutorial. You don’t need to stick to the above by any means but hopefully it has at least clarified your thinking and provided a potential structure that will be easy to follow.

Work on your intro paragraph and I’ll have a quick read next week.

This essay has great potential – it could be SERIOUSLY good! But always keep it focused on the question – horror and audience pleasure. Good topic sentences and using the wording from the question is crucial.