How can you avoid common mistakes when producing horror media?

1 Know your genre

Horror is not a monolithic genre, but a diverse and evolving one that encompasses many subgenres, styles, and tropes. Before you start producing horror media, you need to have a clear idea of what kind of horror you want to create and who your target audience is. Do you want to make a psychological thriller, a slasher, a zombie apocalypse, a cosmic horror, or something else? What are the expectations, conventions, and clichés of your chosen subgenre? How can you subvert or innovate them? How can you balance familiarity and novelty, horror and humor, gore and subtlety? Knowing your genre will help you craft a coherent and compelling horror media that respects and challenges your audience.

2 Set the mood

One of the most important aspects of producing horror media is creating a mood that immerses your audience in the atmosphere of fear and dread. This involves using various elements of media production, such as lighting, sound, music, color, camera angles, editing, voice acting, and more, to convey the tone and mood of your horror media. For example, you can use low-key lighting, dark colors, and shadows to create a sense of mystery and danger; you can use sound effects, music, and silence to build tension and anticipation; you can use shaky camera, quick cuts, and jump scares to surprise and shock your audience; you can use voice acting, dialogue, and narration to create a sense of realism and empathy. The key is to use these elements strategically and creatively, without overdoing or underdoing them, to create a mood that enhances your horror media.

3 Develop your characters

Another crucial aspect of producing horror media is developing your characters, especially the protagonist and the antagonist. Your characters are the ones who drive the plot, face the conflict, and elicit the emotional response from your audience. Therefore, you need to make sure that your characters are believable, relatable, and interesting. You need to give them personality, motivation, backstory, and development. You need to make your audience care about what happens to them, whether they root for them or hate them. You need to make your antagonist scary, menacing, and formidable, but also understandable and complex. You need to make your protagonist vulnerable, flawed, and resilient, but also likable and heroic. You need to make your characters human, not stereotypes or cardboard cutouts.

4 Craft your story

Of course, producing horror media also requires crafting a story that engages your audience and delivers the horror. Your story needs to have a clear structure, a coherent plot, a consistent logic, and a satisfying resolution. You need to have a hook that grabs your audience's attention, a rising action that escalates the conflict and the stakes, a climax that resolves the main problem, and a denouement that wraps up the loose ends. You need to have a theme that conveys your message and a moral that reflects your values. You need to have a twist that surprises your audience and a payoff that rewards them. You need to have a balance between showing and telling, between action and exposition, between mystery and revelation. You need to have a story that makes sense and makes an impact.

5 Test your media

Finally, producing horror media also involves testing your media before you release it to the public. Testing your media is a way to get feedback, evaluate your results, and improve your quality. You can test your media by showing it to a small group of people who represent your target audience, by asking them questions, by observing their reactions, and by analyzing their responses. You can test your media by using various tools and metrics, such as ratings, reviews, comments, views, downloads, shares, and more, to measure your performance, reach, and impact. You can test your media by comparing it to other horror media in your genre, by identifying your strengths and weaknesses, by learning from your successes and failures. Testing your media will help you refine your horror media and make it more effective and appealing.