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[MrNeedles]

What Makes Something Creepy?

[Dominic1978]

I honestly think there is no real answer to this question as what is creepy for you might not be creepy for me, and vice versa.

So, first you have to define creepiness.

For me personally, it's Lynchian, where things are just a slightly bit different from the standard and where characters behave in odd, almost 2-d ways, and seem to be controlled by just specific emotions instead of the full range that we as humans have.

For example, while discussing nightmares with a colleague recently, she said that her scariest nightmare was about a giant pickle.




However, to not leave you without any advice on the matter.
A certain dose of vagueness, or mystery, when applied in the right way, can cause a creepy effect.

Do a search for "slender man" to find a post on (I think it was SomethingAwful) the creation of a faux paranormal event with fake photos. Somebody came up with the legend of the Slender Man and it's quite creepy (even when you know it's fake) - at least in my opinion.

Ask yourself what you think is creepy and apply that to your videos/images etc. then show them to your friends/family and see if it's creepy for them too. If so, then continue on that route.

Hope it helped a bit.

Dominic

[M13A77]

I think that Dominic hit it on the head. Vagueness, things being odd, slightly different.

When I see a face I say ok thats a face. When I see a face with with the mouth photoshoped out I say wow thats creepy.

grainy pictures with half hidden things in them=creepy

pictures of children just standing there staring at me=creepy

you get the idea.

Creepy is an ambiguous term. It needs to be defined individually I think.

[Dray]

Go back and study the source for what people have done in the past in horror movies and literature, and you will find a gold mine.

Avoiding showing the source of the terror head on makes it more frightening (the dramatic shadows falling across protagonists, protagonist reactions to the monster without us seeing it, and seeing the aftermath of the monster's attack are some examples of what can pump up the creepy factor.)

It all depends on what kind of creepy you're going for; straight up scares accompanied by audio stings, gross-out creepy, psychological creepy that lingers long after the viewing/reading...

Creating nested stories is a classic tool for creepiness: the protagonist encounters a character who tells the tale of the monster; maybe there is a story within THAT story, maybe there are more than one tales within the main frame of the overarching story. Fuck with our heads, where we are, who we're sympathizing with... who is the protagonist and who is the antagonist, who is secretly the Cylon -- or at least infiltrated monster within humanity. Metamorphoses are creepy. Uncanny Valley (as alluded to by Dominic) is a great font of creepy. Uncanny Valley being when something is not quite human, but not obviously monstrous... Slender Man having no face but looking otherwise human, for example.

Working from what you find creepy personally works the best; working all from formula can be yawn worthy... but if you haven't yet, researching what has worked well in the past can be a major aid when setting up your own tale!

[DLT]

Well, just going on personal opinion and not based on anything that necessarily makes for a good game, or movie, or whatever, but the two main things that make something creepy or scary for me are:

1) The Unknown. Knowing that the evil guy/monsters/whatever are dangerous but not knowing why. Take the current Marble Hornets ARG based around Slenderman, I mean, this is just a sort of 7 or 8 foot faceless guy in a suit who never does anything but stare at you, and yet you just know you're in trouble even though you have no idea what he's capable of.
Similarly, if you can't see the thing thats bad only what they have done to things/people's reaction to them, but not knowing what horrific thing is doing all of this, can be really creepy and/or scary.

2) Could it happen to me? The movie The Ring really spooked me, even though as horror movies go it was pretty critisized by most people, just because I have a TV and I could imagine it happening to me, whereas I dont', say, live in the woods in the middle of nowhere where vampires might be or something.
Not being able to escape is a bit part of this, too. I mean, if your TV is going all staticy and you think some long haired girl is going to come and kill you out of it, you could just get rid of the TV. Having something you can't escape from, but hopefully not so cliche as an item that just keeps reappearing when you throw it away, then it can be pretty terrifying.

Add to these two things some kind of warning sign, but in a way that makes it inevitable rather than a warning so you think "Well why didn't they just run" can give you plenty of "Oh shit" moments. Jeepers Creepers was a movie that did this, with a song that would come on on the radio just before the monster attacked, made you think like "Oh crap he's here can't run oh god" etc.

[Dray]