Codes and conventions in our film

In our film we adhere to some of the codes and conventions of the horror genre. However, we have not conformed to all of the possible codes and conventions.
Some of the codes and conventions we adhered to are the use of young/teenage characters. Our two main characters are teenagers which would portray them as even more weak in our film because they are young and will come across as very unaware of the situation about to unfold. Also we have conformed to the use of dark lighting. We originally filmed in the dark but we decided to re-film because it was too dark so we were unable to clearly see the characters. To deal with this problem we re-filmed in the light and decided to edit the film in a way that would make the lighting darker. This therefore means that we will be conforming to the convention of dark lighting in horror films. One of the main conventions of a horror film is a murder. We do not actually have our victim murdered in our film but we do introduce what might be a potential murderer. We decided not to have an actual murder scene because we wanted to leave our film on a cliff hanger and we believed that having a murder take place would not allow us to have the cliff hanger we wanted. Other associations with the horror genre are; an isolated location, dark lighting, murder, gore, scary music and villains and victims. We have conformed to most of these. We are using woods as the setting for our film. This is an isolated location as not many people walk through those woods so it seems as though the victims are isolated from the rest of the world. We are going to have non -diegetic music throughout our film. This music will be sinister which will put the audience on edge and also create more tension. We will also have victims and a villain in our film. There will be two female victims. This is also conforming to the usual convention of the victims being female in horror films. The villains gender will not be revealed as they will be dressed all in black with their face covered with a hood. This means we cannot conform to the convention of a male villain. We have not conformed to the use of gore and a murder. Originally there was gore included in our film but after cutting our film short we no longer have any scenes of gore. This leaves us with a dilemma. After doing our certificate research we realised that to make sure our film has an age rating of 15 we would need to include scenes of gore. However, now that we have cut out the gory scenes it means our film cannot be a 15. This doesn't necessarily mean that our film will not be scary, it just means that we have not included enough to make it a 15 which is the age rating most teenagers, who are our target audience, would consider the lowest age for a horror film rating.
Despite this, we have conformed to a variety of different codes and conventions. As we have done this it means that the genre of our film will be clearly identifiable and our target audience will hopefully enjoy watching our horror film because it has adhered to quite a few of the conventions shown in the most popular horror films.