Thriller conventions

Title

Most of the film trailers that I have looked at show darkness in the text, they are either a black background with a red or a black theme running throughout. They all also have diegetic sound playing behind it to help create tension and set the required mood, this mood is normally an eary feel that created a lot of enigma to make the audience sit on the edge of their seats.  Most film titles for a trailer are also played at the very end of the trailer in order to make the audience remember the name of the film as this is the last thing they see.

Camera movement

The camera movements are not always fluid, as a lot of thriller films have used the self recording method such as ‘Paranormal Activity’ and I feel this is really effective in making the audience feel as if they can relate to the characters.

Editing

A lot of the shots that I have seen been used are fast quick jump shots that enable to show the audience what is going on as well as building the enigma found in thrillers. Jump shots can become quite confusing sometimes so I have studied carefully and seen that a lot of trailers also like to use establishing shots I order to calm to audience and let them understand where the feature is taking place.

Enigma codes

Enigma code are used to create suspense in the audience many of the techniques use to create enigma may include; fast paced music, loud booms, quick jump shots, also as well as fast paced editing we can use slow paced editing in order to make the audience fear what is coming next.

Characters

The main characters in a thriller piece are often male leads as they are seen at the stronger sex. Although I have watched ‘Gone’ which has a main female lead which although is going against the norms of a thriller convention I liked the idea that is more relatable for me where as if the lead was a man I don’t think I would have been as relatable.

A lot of thriller trailers also showed kids as there is a stereotype of kids/teens being very vulnerable ands this could help when trying to create the tension of the typical ‘don’t open the closet’ moment.

Sound

A lot of the trailers I have looked at use a lot of diegetic music to help create suspense. Often to create this type of suspense they speed up the diegetic music as this helps to increase the heart rate of the audience, meaning that they will experience feelings of anxiety, which is what is aimed for when creating a thriller trailer. As well as using a lot of music to create moods, I have also found that they tend to use a lot of voice-overs as this helps to portray another power as in that of the supernatural, which might be helpful when we come to planning our film trailer.

Theories

Todorov feels that it is important for a thriller trailer to have a beginning middle and an end. Where the beginning starts off at equilibrium the middle has a sort of disruption and the end the equilibrium is reordered. 

Audience Research Questionnaire Results- Graphs and Analysis

  

We have used preformed a questionnaire on an equal number of females and males and decided to put them into graphs to clearly show what audiences of today would like to see a film based upon. By putting it into graphs we are clearly showing the audience feedback and therefore it’s easier for us to take into account what we should do to make the best possible film trailer for our media coursework. I have also been through and analyzed the results to help me understand to the fullest extent of how to manipulate our film to give the audience what they would like.

Question 1

Gender

We asked a multiple amount of people, making sure the genders where both equal. By making the genders equal we are able to clearly get an opinion over both genders, which is going to help us widen our target audience.

Question 2

Age

This graph was purely to show that we have asked a range of different ages to get an overview on peoples preferences of all ages. We know that we would be unable to please all age’s ranges but at least by having different opinions we are, yet again, able to create a bigger target audience then what we would have been able to if we have only asked one age range. Based on whom we have asked we found that 45% of our participants were aged between the ages of 16-25, which makes sense when coming down to the fact that we fit into this age

range- meaning that we can relate to what this age range would like.

Question 3

Do you enjoy watching films?

Based on the results for this we can see that 19/20 people that we asked do in fact enjoy watching film and a measly one did not. This helps to see that a wider range of people enjoy watching films and therefore this will help when gaining the niche audience of people that we would not normally expect to watch our film.

Question 4

Where do you tend to watch films?

This question has enabled us to come to the conclusion that most people have a tendency to go to the cinema to watch films rather then the comfort of their own home. So from this we understand that our film trailer needs to be made clear enough from the big screen as well as dramatic enough to produce a deep enough feeling of them wanting to watch more. We need to make sure that the colours we use are suitable and set the right mood as well as carefully selected shots to shot just the right amount of the film that wants then spend their money to go and watch it.

Questions 5

Which genre of film would you choose to see? 

This result has allowed us to get general idea on what genre film people mostly enjoy. The most popular is the thriller genre. Maybe this is what you would expect to see when almost 50% of the people asked were ages 16-25. This was an extremely good result for us as this is the genre we were most edging towards as it’s an easy way to entice people in with the suspense and drama that comes from a thriller movie.  It was interesting to me how a lot of people like comedy’s because comedy’s aren’t my preferred film and I feel this would be hard to get a wide 

target audience on because different ages and genders have different senses of humors.

Question 6

Why is this your preferred genre?

We then gave people a chance as to why they chose this as their preferred genre, and we had some useful comebacks and some not so useful. Here is a mixture;

“As I enjoy the adrenaline and excitement you get from being scared” -thriller

“Makes me happy”-comedy

“Allows me to forget about my worries, as it creates a whole new fantasy world which is great for helping me escape”-romance

as you can see from these they weren’t so helpful except from the last one that was able to give us an idea of why they enjoy watching films and this is what we would like to give our audience the experience of.

Question 7

When watching a film trailer what conventions make you want to see the final film product?

This was definitely the most important question in our questionnaire as from this we are able to see what the participants would really like to see in the final piece. We are now able to mainly focus on the storyline more then the colours and the sounds- although I know that these all help to produce a successful film. If we ignored the other little things that our participants have marked as not so important then the story line would be no good if the sounds and the colours were not thought through clearly. As all of these help to produce the intensity of the thriller genre and the on edge feel that you get when you watch one. I do feel that the sound in the movie is a helpful part in setting a mood and the audience have agreed with me in this case. By using the right music you are able to invite an niche audience to watch the film as if they are interested in the genre of music that’s played in the trailer they may come to watch it. As you can see a lot of people base whether they watch a film on the actors and the film company that have created it. This is understandable as good actors can make a film that you wouldn’t normally tend to go watch good. If you have followed an actor through their acting career then you are more likely to go and see a film they have made even if its target audience isn’t based around you. As for the film company that had made the film this is purely based on the fact if you’ve watch an amazing film that a film company has made before this gives to the reassurance that the film is going to be up to the same standard as the film you have previously watched.  

Question 8

Do you like being scared in a film?

We chose to include this question as we wanted to edge toward the thriller genre and as you can see we got a positive result as 80% of people did in fact like to be scared whilst watching a film. We know that a thriller is not meant to be scary it is meant to set suspense to a certain degree but we also have know a lot of thrillers to show some extracts from a horror film as well.

Question 9

Do the actors of a film influence your decision on whether you watch a film or not?

This result in what I expected to happen as there was a mixture of different genre preferences answering this questionnaire. Although I feel that if it was just people who liked the thriller and horror genre it wouldn’t matter about the actors in it as its easier to relate to the actors if they haven’t previously acted in a well known film. Meaning that we are able to relate to them more then we would if they were a well-known actor because it makes us think these are ordinary people that these events are happening to.

Question 10

Does the sound track of a film influence your decision on watching a film?

As I said before the people that listen to the soundtrack would be the niche audience that we are trying to attract as this means that we gain more watching our film.

Question 11

Which film company’s films do you prefer to see?

The results suggest that it doesn’t really matter who our film is produced by as long as the film trailer is made to be interesting and helps show what the film is about and the suspense of the film people will go to watch it. As you can see Disney was the highest picked category and this is probably because it is the most well known producers of films. Because we are media students we are more able to recognize a mass film company as apposed to people who don’t study the media subject. 

Question 12

Do you watch film trailers?

Our results show that 90% of people we asked to participate in our questionnaire do in fact watch film trailers. This is probable predictable as most of our participants go to the cinema to watch films and this is where most film trailers are shown. We need our film trailer to stand out as this number of people watching film trailers means that ours could easily not make that much of an effect on people.

Question 13

Does a Film trailer help influence your decision on whether you watch a film or not?

As both the numbers are pretty close on this it’s a hard one to analyse. I would have thought that a film trailer would have been the most influential thing to make a person go and see a film, as personally this is what makes me watch a film. Although as people have said no it doesn’t I would like to know what does make them go and see a particular film.

This questionnaire has been extremely useful, as it has helped us to pick our genre and our mass target audience as well as depict our niche target audience. This is going to help a lot now as it has narrowed our choice down for us and now, as we understand from question 7, we need to make an interesting story line that’s going to capture our audience. 

film poster- mood board

conventions of a poster

Actor’s names

On a film poster the main actors name will be in a medium font. Often if the actor is very well know it may show it bigger and the other actors names will be around it in a smaller font. This helps to promote that if the audience likes this actor then they may indeed enjoy the film. If the actors have never been heard of it may say something like “from the upcoming actor…” this manipulates the audience to believe that they have good actors as it says upcoming it tricks the audience to believe that the film is worth watching as it has a new actor in.

Picture (iconography)

Often on a thriller poster we can see that the colours are dulled down to create a dampened mysterious mood. The pictures tend to hold the main actor and/or the place that the film is set.

Billing block

The billing block is always located at the bottom portion of the poster. The font that is used is called a highly condensed typeface and this is where the height of the text is often 3 times bigger than the width and is normally 25 or 35 the percentage of the height of the title of the film. It generally contains the credits that you would normally get at the end of the film so things like the producers, directors and people like the makeup artists etc. generally the information that is needed in the billing block is a lot and this is why a condensed typefaces because it allows all the information to be added.

Audience suitability

The audience suitability is often found in the billing block and this is just the age restrictions that have been put on the film, so this is PG, 12a, 15 or 18. Most thrillers are of 12a or over but normally fall into the 15/18 bracket.

Promotion

This is often is the director of the producers have done a previous success film they will claim off the fame of that that film had produced and hope that the target audience will fall for the fact that if they enjoyed that previous film they may enjoy this film. The poster would say something like “from the makers of…” or “from the producer of…” this helps to get the word out to a greater target audience.

The poster could also have references to a big selling book or novel. For example the twilight series is a bestselling book that was made into a film, therefor the posters had “from the bestselling book series by Stephenie Meyer”.

film magazine- mood board