making scary movies

Shining named perfect scary movie

The Shining is the perfect scary film, the formula found
Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, starring Jack Nicholson, has been named the perfect scary film, according to a new mathematical formula.
The secret of making a scary movie has been calculated by university experts.

Scientists have worked out an equation to prove why thrillers like Psycho and the Blair Witch Project are so successful at terrifying audiences.

The formula combines elements of suspense, realism and gore, plus shock value, to measure how scary a film is.

Researchers spent two weeks watching horror films like The Exorcist, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs in pursuit of the formula.

The model focuses on three major areas: suspense, realism and gore.

Shock impact

Factors considered include the use of escalating music, the balance between true life and fantasy, and how much blood and guts are involved.

As suspense plays such a pivotal role in the success of a scary film, its elements - escalating music, the unknown, chase scenes and a sense of being trapped - are brought together and then squared. Shock value is then added.

n addition, the experts say a film needs to be realistic to be truly frightening. Accordingly, they tried to balance out the parts which made a film either too unrealistic or too close to life.

They then looked at how many characters were in the movie, assuming audiences empathise with a smaller number of people.

The team at King's College, London also took into account the darkness of the film's setting.

The Shining's isolated setting, with the family living in a huge hotel closed down for the winter, and the shower scene in Psycho, were perfect examples of the winning formula, experts said.

The formula also looks at the levels of gore and offset this against the number of stereotypes present in the film.

Jaws was the perfect example of appropriate levels of gore in a film, researchers found.

"Steven Spielberg reached the optimum level perfectly allowing the viewer to see just enough blood to be scared of the Great White Shark, but not so much that it repulsed us," experts agreed.

The research was commissioned by Sky Movies, to launch a season of scary films.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/3537938.stm