Questionnaire Feedback

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I conducted a questionnaire to my target audience to see what they enjoyed when watching a horror/thriller genre. Even though we have changed our genre to Psychological Thriller some of the feedback given are still relevant and will still help us when shooting are film trailers.

I asked the audience when watching a thriller, would  they prefer to discover the whole story line. The majority of the people said no. This shows us that audiences enjoy a bit of mystery and a sense of surprise when watching a trailer. They prefer for there to be something to look forward to when watching going to watch a movie.

This is good information for us to have because now as a group we can deiced on how much we care willing to  reveal about our narrative.

I asked, 'what scares you the most about a horror/thriller film' and the most responses we got was from the music. Apparently what scares audiences the most is the music followed by the mise - en - scene. The music is something that we will take on board because we want for tension to build however, we still want the narrative to be heard. So we could lower the music to a slow piano have a non digectic soundtrack and it could peak as the trailer progresses.

However, the mise - en - scene I wouldn't say matters as much now that we are doing a psychological thriller. We are going to use local setting for example: Stratford Westfield, Park, Schools ext .,

Most of the feedback given was from a female respondents. Even though Psychological Thrillers are watched by both genders. However, basing this on our questionnaire we are going to have a male protagonist which will appeal to the female gaze and would want the female viewers to watch more.



'My Favorite Film is SAW' 

This is what most respondents said when asked what is your favourite horror/thriller movie. I think this is because of the narrative used in SAW it isn't just about a killer is has a storyline to why he is the way he is. And I think audiences enjoy that, So we will be taking some aspects from the SAW trailer (cinematography etc ..) and put that in to out trailer.

Roland Barthes

Semantic Code:

This code refers to parts within in the text that suggests or refers to additional meanings. This is very common with Psychological Thrillers usually they have multiple narratives that the audiences may not all understand by just viewing the trailer alone. For example 'The Butterfly Effect' This is movie have several narratives that audiences might not all understand in by just watching the trailer because he does have a troubled and difficult childhood.

This is something that I want to put into our trailer as our main protagonist does have a past and I want the trailer to not show all of our protagonist secrets but do hint at them.


Hermeneutic Code:

This code relates to a mystery within a text, clues are dropped but no clear answers are given. The Hermeneutic code is mainly to frustrate the audience making them what to know more. An example of this is 'I know what you did last summer too'. This teaser trailer bring the audience in with there fast cross cutting scenes to previous killings, we hear the protagonist talking about how she is scared that someone is wanting to kill her. Every cross cut that happens the non diegetic music changes to a loud screeching and bangs. This brings in the audiences making them want to watch the whole movie.
This code is something that we are going to put in to are movie because we want the audience to have the sense of fear and mystery when watching our trailer.

Film Trailer Analysis: Black Swan

Black Swan is the psychological thriller movie I have chosen to analysis. It came out in 2010 and it develops and challenges the conventions of the stereotypical thriller movie.

The first shot we see is a long shot of a ballerina dancing gracefully across the dance floor, she is dressed in white communicating pure and innocence to the audience. All that is is on her is a single strobe like from above. The atmosphere of the movie is confused at the moment because the audience doesn't know what to expect. However, the audience would get a feeling that the trailer is going to take a turn for the worse, in the voice over we her the ballerina say “I had the craziest dream last night. About a girl who was turned into a swan, but her prince falls for the wrong girl, then she kills herself.” 
This is an strange statement to make because audience don't put the words etc kill, love and prince in the same sentence. Those words are makes it a more thriller genre.

We then meet the character of Nina. We have a wide shot of a dance studio and we she the adult ballerina stretching out her feet and dancing we quickly discover that she is the main protagonist and that there is an heavy theme of dance that is going to be used through out the film. Halfway in to the trailer is where things begin to get dark and more into the thriller genre as before that we where just getting hints of thriller but around 52 seconds into the film is where things begin to start happening.

We start to have some close up of Lily dancing and this of Nina's face looking distressed telling the audience that there will be some rivalry between them. Mirrors where used a lot in this trailer the use of the mirrors where very effective because towards the end of the trailer the mirrors are smashed and is associated with Nina and her changing character However, the mirror was also used to broadcast the dancers beauty and almost as an envy to the other dances. The mirror has two meanings in this trailer it is the equilibrium and disequilibrium.

Towards the end of the trailer we begin to see a series of fast paced editing, montage shots, and an repeating non diegetic voice over of key words. 'Sweet Girl' and 'Please believe me'. This makes the audiences feel on edge where not aware of what is going to happen yet still wanting more. We are then showed an shocking image the final shots of Nina are truly horrifying we she her a long shot shows her blood shot eyes, blood red lips and pale skin and her black costume. This shows the audiences the transformation she went from good to bad, she is no longer the innocent ballerina in the beginning we almost saw her journey to the dark side.

Convention Of Posters

Image:

The common convention with Psychological Thrillers is to have the main protagonist in a close up shot which you can see is done with the two mainstream posters. 'Salt' and 'Stoker' both have the stars of the film staring directly in to the camera, this gives the audience a feeling of ambiguity and unknown. This helps the theme of the movies, However with the independent films 'Game' and 'The Unbidden' have the same effect which the eyes staring directly into the audience breaking the forth wall, but they do that in a unconventional way. For example 'The Unbidden' does the same effect but through a blurred wallpaper and 'Game' has three shadowed figures with weapons in there hands. This is done because independent films usually do focus on the narrative more then mainstream films do and with this added to the poster we can figure out what the film is about. 

Layout: 

I have noticed that a lot of psychological thrillers include the title at the bottom of the poster.  The poster usually attempts to place its most famous cast members on the cover of the poster most of the time just above the title. This could be due to the characters mental health or the dangerous situation forced upon him. There is normally little content revealed in a psychological thriller poster as the genre revolves around enigma and mystery. Another key feature included in the poster is a small and brief tag line that adds to the mystery, 'Who is Salt.' is a perfect example of this and the fact it is written in small text adds to the suspense of the film asking the viewer many questions about the film.

Font:

They typically would use a bold text that is clear and easy to read for a psychological thriller film. Salt the and Stoker both have a bold thick font with the name of the film being positioned underneath the picture of protagonist. This is to attract the audiences attention and does give it a professional high standard look. However, the Game is slanted in bold colours but an unknown font and the unbidden is in a skinny writing to give the effect that it was written in blood and with someones finger.  Both are different but are equally effective and go with the genre.

Colour:

Both magazines used unsaturated colours for the poster the saturated colours that they did use made certain parts stand out. The colours predominantly used in Posters are white, black and red. They have connotations of violence, blood and danger. A colour scheme that all posters seem to have. Other then Stoker who defines the norm and uses green a saturated colour to bring across there message. 

Sell Lines; 

A sell line is mainly a phase that is repeated or relates to a film. Usually the conventions of sell lines come in the corner or underneath the title of the film. However in this case Salt and Game the mainstream and independent film went for the same common styles of this genre and Stoker went for the unconventional decision of putting it on the forehead of the protagonist making it clear and concise for the audience to see. Where as The Unbidden went for the choice of not having any sell lines.

Levi Strauss - Binary Opposition

Levi Strauss is an anthropologist who invented a theory called the Binary Opposition. The Binary opposition is where 2 opposites battles with each other such as good vs evil. The theory Binary Opposition is used by directors of movies a lot to create a storyline with in the movie for example in Dark Knight there was the hero which was the Batman and the Joker who was the villian. Furthermore in the perspective of a psychological thriller movie the binary opposition could be 'mind vs body' which like the psychological thriller movie Silence of the lamb which is illustrated this binary opposition with the antagonist thinking and believing he is a woman so he battles his body to force this female appearance and gets rid of the male appearance.

Levi Strauss's theory (Binary Opposition) can easily relate to our movie due to the fact that oppositons will be battling each other for example it's mind vs body, good vs evil, past vs future and Decisive vs indecisive.                                        

I agree with the fact that every movie or tv dramas consists with a binary opposite  such as downtown abbey is rich vs poor. In some films the binary opposition is not always easy to pick out due to the complexity of the narrative within the film.

Narrative development

This will be the full narrative for our film and will record the progression on this post.

Narrative:

3/11/2014

Our protagonist was captured as a child and went missing for a month. The child then appears at the parent’s doorstop not remembering the events that happened through then. During lessons he tends to see choices picking  A or B which can be irrelevant towards what he is doing, however he gets an extreme headache when he tries to refuse and will drop to the ground gasping to breath causing him near death, therefore he will choose out of fear to prevent death.  A day after his 18^th birthday on his way to work meets a mysterious person warning him to make the right choices from now. The choices get extreme and place our protagonist through harsh unexpected conditions leading he’s mentality to a very unstable path. With the trailer ending with he’s choice of A- Kill her or B- Kill her. An inevitable choice that he cannot get out of? What will happen?

19/11/2014
We went over certain aspects of narrative and to develop are narrative better we came up with better constructive ideas and plan to lay out are narrative better with a start, middle, and end.

Title: Choices (Working Title)
Actors: (not entirely sure but someone who can change their emotions easily and can be serious yet positive to watch)
Settings: East London environment such as Westfield, East Ham market, various parks, and the docks (only place where there's water around to symbolise the mind)

Structure
The structure of the film will be a 5 act structure because the narrative fits within it. We want an open narrative that'll leave questions for the audience and will be single stranded since were focusing on a single individual.

Levi Strauss - Binary opposition
In our film we discussed what binary opposition are included and we got:
Mind vs Body
Good vs Evil
Decisive vs Indecisive
Past vs Future

Ideas:
start  happy
We wanted the starting point to be the protagonist starting out happy during the 1st parts where things would gradually go wrong and thus this happy setting will become dark and could potentially make the audience relate more towards the protagonist if they had good things and lost them, maybe thats how they would also feel.

Messenger
We need something/someone to lead the protagonist on their journey. We thought if a person who meets the protagonist  in a normal situation somehow knows part of their past life and reveals something big (while holding the key information behind) we can make the protagonist make a start on their journey.

Roland Barthes
Hermeneutic - We don't reveal the protagonists past
Proairetic - the forced choices the protagonist must make
Semantic - The water from the river from royal docks (if filmed there)
Symbolic - (Still in discussion)
Cultural - (still in discussion)

Problems during Narrative
Within our small summary of the narrative we was not to sure on two parts about it and once stuck on these we found it hard to progress the story. We couldn't answer why the protagonist was special for him to be kidnapped in the first place and what was the main point of the film? We had the situation planned out but what is our protagonist actually pursuing in the end? And how did the protagonist obtain these forced choices within he's head?

Answers to problems
After a short discussion we passed these stumbling blocks and created answers to what was stopping us before.
Why is the protagonist special?
The main reason towards why the protagonist was special to be captured in their youth was because the parents created a powerful virus that corrupts the body leading them to do what you command, however the government had to shut down the parents who threat to use the incomplete virus and took their child away.
Forced choices? 
The top part also relates to how the protagonist gets these choices because they was a test subject for the parents experiment, however was an incomplete version thus giving choices rather than following a command.
What is the main goal?
The main goal towards the film is showing what forced upon things happen in life and that a single choice can change your life completely. Within narrative terms we want our protagonist to be chasing information to reveal the past of what happened. During this unravelling to the past we also thought we could include agents of some kind to give chase and place the protagonist in more extreme conditions.

UPDATE ON NARRATIVE
Start
The film starts with a child being forced into a chair and struggling to get out. Then two adults with faced blocked out seems prepared to inject a syringe into the child's arm. Just before the syringe touches the skin our protagonist wakes from the nightmare and after a call to their cell phone telling them to go school or be late we see our protagonist prepare for school. As the protagonist goes to school we see their friend, partner, and good grades showing our protagonist having a good life. Before heading home the protagonist is told to meet up with a few friends at the docks to celebrate he's birthday on a small scale with close friends. Once at the docks a person who they have never met before (messenger) arrives to tell the protagonist to talk privately. The messenger tell the protagonist that they will need to start by making the right choices and says certain things to question he's present and past. The messenger then passes the protagonist out with a jab and the protagonist awakes within their room like the day before was a dream.

Middle
The protagonist goes through a similar routine like the start but with major changes. When meeting friends they see to options of text saying to choose one of them. At first the protagonist thinks their mind is playing games and just goes with the flow until they realised that whatever choice was chosen, their body is forced to act it out. After realising this the protagonist then decides next time a choice pops up they will refuse it, however they then start to suffocate and in fear has no choice to choose an option. Once home the messenger is there to greet the protagonist and explains more about the forced choices made, after the talk the messenger warns the protagonist that "they" are now coming for them. During the next morning a choice immediately pops up giving them not much of a choice to choose the option to not go school and go to a certain location. After reaching the destination they hear a voice saying "behind you" "their coming for you" and "run". The protagonist is now being hunted by two suspicious individuals and during the time running through different parts of London must make a choice at certain times. Such as a scene in a store having the option to either rob the shop or trash it.

End
After two days or running and the choices getting more extreme the protagonist reaches back to the docks and sees the messenger in the distances as though waiting for them. The messenger then reveals a certain part of the past about the government taking him as a child and erasing he's memories to place them in a house where they can monitor them. The protagonist asked why them of all people and the messenger replies however cut off mid-sentence with a phone call. The messenger passes the phone towards the protagonist for the other caller to say a location and that the protagonists loved one is hostage. After the protagonist goes to the location they see their loved one in one chair and the messenger in the other with spotlights above them each. the mysterious person reveals all of the protagonist past and revealing that the parents was the one who created a virus that went wrong and used the protagonist as a test subject which is why they have forced choices. The protagonist understands why the loved one was a hostage but not the messenger who is then reviled to be the parent of the protagonist (mother). The mysterious individual then gives the option, A) kill her, b) kill her...

Poster/Magazine/Website Case Study: Interstellar

                      

Poster
Interstellar is a mainstream Sci-fi Thriller with psychology thriller traits. The protagonist is centrally framed and wears a space suit which seems to be the iconic look towards the movie. The backdrop is a snow plains which  seems to be the main iconic location of the movie. The colours are mainly white or a saturated blue colour palette to compliment the location and give the explorer mysterious feel. Further the colour can connote peace, mystery, and a beginning which all ties in within the movie. The title is serif to stylishly stand out and is present with half the title white and the other black as monochrome, which is binary opposition. This could signify a dark side within the movie. The director, production company, etc are placed underneath the title which most film posters do. The statement about the movie being theaters and IMAX are in bold to alert the audience and  underneath states the date with a bigger font size. The actors names are place above with the second name bold in black against the white background.

Magazine cover
Empire is a lead world-wide selling movie magazine that specialises in mainstream movies. The title/masthead has adapted to the films themes by using complimentary colours and a space backdrop within the bold sans-serif text which links towards the film, since its about space. Even the sell-lines has adapted to the house theme of blue and white. At the bottom right corner is a puff that contradicts the colour scheme pattern by being red which is binary opposition making the puff stand out and attracts the audiences attention. The protagonist is centrally framed for star marketing.

Website
The website starts with a transition of the stars and once complete shows there trailer

House Style

The masthead is the same between the poster and website, however not for the magazine due the magazine needing to keep a certain style of their own.

                 

Hannibal rising case study (Psychological thriller movie)

Poster
Hannibal Rising is a psychological thriller movie which is also a mainstream movie. Due to being a mainstream movie they would have no restriction to technology. The post shows the face of Hannibal lecter with his mask on. This relates to movie well because Hannibal Lecter is a cannibal in the movie and the mask he wears is what cannibals wear so it would make sense for the poster to show him wearing this. In addition they only show his red pupil eyes as well as the skin around it which is the only part of his body that is being shown. The colour red is suppose to represent danger, hate, blood. evil so showing his eyes will relate to the tone of the movie because it's showing evil behaviour, dangerous moments, blood and hate from a character. The post has the annual year which it will be released in which is 2007, this will help the audience be informed on when it's being released. The poster also feature a little line which is 'It started wit revenge'. This reflects the character on the poster because his murders started of as revenge acts because of what happened to his family in the war but ended becoming part of his character and his mind adapting this idea of killing people is normal which relates to psychological thrillers. Furthermore the poster uses the colour black as the background to show the audience that this movie has a dark atmosphere to it. The poster shows the company it's affiliated with.

Website
The website of Hannibal Rising shows the main character (Hannibal Lecter) without the mask and has a quote in a big font saying 'the most terrifying chapter in the series of the silence of the lamb'. Hannibal Rising is a psycholigcal thriller with elements from horrror and is part of a series that is known as horror as well so they did it to relate it to the horror fans so they don't lost of their part fans. It can be also be argued that, that line was used to give chills to the audience and make it more appealing to the customers. Hannibal Rising shows a trailer of the movie which will allow the target audience to see what film is about and what it's going to be like plus to make it easier for the audience to watch the trailer and make the website more interesting. They have photos of some violent scenes such as the murder scenes that Hannibal Lecter commits which gives a dark atmosphere between the audience and the movie. In addition gives a preview of what Hannibal was capable of at that young age. The background of the website is black to support the dark atmosphere as well as a gold colour in the middle which blends in with Hannibal's jacket. They are promoting a DVD and book so they can get the target audience to buy it and inform them that it's ready to be bought.
http://www.hannibalrising.com/


House Style:
The font of Hannibal Rising is the same across the websites, posters are the same and the font being used on the trailers are similar. In addition this creates an organised house style because of another trailer or advert pops up with the same font then people would assume that it is Hannibal Rising plus it makes it easier for the audience to identify the film. In addition the colours that mainly affiliate with Hannibal Rising when it comes to trailers, websites and posters is black, gold, red and white. The reason black and gold is used is because of the colours that are used on Hannibal Lecter's clothing which are also black and gold plus the tone of colours that are featuring on the Hannibal Rising poster can easily relate to black and gold. Plus Hannibal Rising is part of the Silence of The Lamb series and the movie 'Hannibal' has the DVD as well as the video cover showing the first version of Hannibal having the colours gold and black revolving around his image which is his older, original version of him. Red is used a lot because the theme of this film is violence, psychopathic killing and that relates to blood which is what red also symbolises blood as well as danger. White was just used for the small quotes within the trailer.

Independent magazine (Annotations)

Font 

The font that is used on the magazine front cover which is BFI sight and sound is serif font, the sell lines on the font are not that big and predominately small. However the main film being featured is big and bold so it can catch the eye of the audience easily. Furthermore the font size on the masthead is big and bold which is also done to catch the eyes of the audience. Furthermore normally on the font size for sell lines are predominately small on the predominate amount of magazines which makes the rule a hegemony which is a concept used by Gramsci so when my group and I come to making our poster we should take the rule of these conventions into account and apply it or make a counter hegemony which means we will challenge it. The volume issue is small but the date on this magazine is medium size, probably because they want the audience to automatically see the date but the issue number is small.

Colour

The magazine front cover uses 4 colours within the colour scheme so it can keep an organised, neat and tidy house style if there was more than four then it can look unorganised. In addition BFI sight and sound magazines use yellow, red and white as their main colour scheme.

Sell lines

The sell lines on this independent magazine featuring on this magazine are independent films because they are featuring these independent films so they can maintain there independent structure and appearance, if they were to feature mainstream movies such as amazing spiderman 2 then it will become more mainstream. Furthermore the sell lines are at the bottom of the magazine, probably because of the image, they want the image to be fully visible and big so they place the sell lines at the bottom so the audience cannot be distracted away from the image. In addition the main sell line which is 'Michael Haneke' is big and supporting the image of the magazine so that sell line has to be big due to it's important role for this magazine volume issue.

House style

This magazine has a organised house style starting with the conventions such as the fonts, they are small and at the bottom of the magazine so that they don't block the main image of the magazine. Plus the use serif fonts. Furthermore the date, issue number, price and barcode are all together which gives an organised house style however barcodes are normally at the bottom of the magazine which then makes this magazine cover seem like that they are challenging the hegemony of an independent magazine house style structure by playing the barcode on the top of the magazine cover.

Mainstream magazine comparison with independent film magazine

Background/Foreground:
The background for a mainstream film magazine evidently shows that it has been made with better technology compared to a independent film magazine. The reason is that they can afford it unlike a independent film magazine maker. Furthermore The background uses de saturated colours such as blue which is also a cold colour. The reason they use a cold colour pallet because the movie is suppose to set a cold, mysterious atmosphere for the audience, in addition it easily watches the target audience eyes out. In addition they have buildings in he background which relates to the film because they are part of one the scenes, second of all it makes it more interesting and exciting rather then having  plain de saturated blue background. The fore ground is showing one of the characters in a suit holding a rifle.
BFI Sight and Sound is an independent film magazine that is presenting individuals called Ewan Mcgregor and Hitchcock. The magazine shows that is hasn't got the luxurious amount of technology. For example the  background colour has no special effects like total film, the Ewan Mcgregor magazine has a gradient silver/white colour. The magazine didn't use the same skills for the background for example using a location of a scene as part of the background like what Inception did or making the background intriguing like the hunger games feature. This does make it less attractive because with the background like Inceptions' it makes it stand out more. But with the BFI Sight and Sound magazine background it could force the magazine to blend in with other magazines or just be ignored completely by audiences. A foreground shows a man called Ewan Mcgregor however it doesn't really look impressive compare to the 'Total Film Magazine'. The BFI Sight and Sound makes the image look like that the designer just took a picture of the individual than just stuck it on the front of the magazine. Their are no special effects to the character to give him an edgy appearance like the Inception character being presented. However Little White Lies tend to have an artistic background for the magazine for the 'Road issue' one has made the colours more artistic. This does make the magazine more intriguing and eye catching. The foreground shows the main people faturing in the magazine with an artistic look such as Natalie Portman from the Black Swan is cover with artistic colours that cover the whole of her face.

Font: 
Total Film magazine has more of a graphical title that increases the aesthetics of the magazine by making it more appealing and unique in a positive way. They use a font on the masthead to make it more bold and attractive as well as using a bird eye view of buildings in heir masthead to make it relate more the movie and blend with the magazine. They also put the first part of the masthead 'total' in the first letter of the second part. For their sell lines they use more of a geeky font probably because the target audience also consist of people who would be considered geeks/nerds.
BFI Sight and Sound masthead compared to Total film looks average. It's bold and black which may catch the eyes of their target audience but it looks boring due to no special effects like 'Total Film' Probably because of the restriction of technology they have. Once again it's probably because of their budget, not being able to get high technology/computer software as well as high standard skill people to manufacture the magazine. The magazine does have sell lines but not ones that relate to other movies like Inception. But they use a basic font for the sell lines with a different font for the sub headings that seem similar to the ones on Adobe Photoshop. However the magazine Little White Lines tend to have more of an artistic font which is used to support the theme of their from cover.

Sell lines
On mainstream film magazines the sell lines on the front cover makes it look more busy and fills up the space on the cover for example total film spiderman edition has sell lines as well as an advert of posters coming across the magazines. Plus all three of the magazines have puffs covering the left side of the magazine.
Independent film magazines such as BFI Sight and sound have sell lines covering the left side of the page but look boring compared to a mainstream film magazines. In addition the magazines with the independent industries tend to not advertise films in their sell lines like the way total film does, for example BFI Sight and Sound have Charles Dickens and Total film for Inception is featuring the movie called Predators. Little White Lies don't have sell lines, probably because they do not have the right to speak about films or because they want to make their covers more graphical and artistic than placing a bunch of sell lines all over the cover. In addition the sell lines uses serif fonts and are predominately small on the page where as the font size on the mainstream magazines are more big and bold.

Colours
Total film magazine uses a de saturated blue as the background which makes it more appealing and exciting. They also had the technology to establish this. The colour blue is also part of the cold colour pallet which was probably used to represent the tone of this film which is suppose to be cold because of the atmosphere that revolves around this film. They use the colour red for part of the sell lines as well as white which goes well with the background and eachother.
Little White lies use more of a artistic approach to their magazines. But the colours that feature on the magazines I find are either cold colours such as blue, purple and that is the one for the 'Black Swan'. The reason they may of use those colours is to give the audience a cold tone due to the cold atmosphere revolving around this movie. Just like the one with the quote' Road issue'. The other Little White lies magazine is using the colour black which is probably to give a dark atmosphere amongst the magazine. The other independent film magazines such as BFI Sight and Sound tend to use basic colours. Probably because of the restriction they have to technology that mainstream film magazines have no problem getting. The magazines look like that they have been manufactured on computer software such as Adobe Phtotshop due to gradient background that one the magazines use and the lack of special effects that the magazine have.

Website analysis: Shutter Island

Website analysis

The website starts by playing a trailer on the top right to promote their movie and show multi-media convergence by following to promote their DVD underneath and the synergy of having special content on the DVD. Furthermore there is a Facebook link at the bottom center of the page. Also several social media bottom left.

They use a misty blue around the island which can connote to a mysterious, isolated location to give that sacred haunted feeling. The mist is animated with the lighthouse going round to heighten the effects of the spooky island.

The lead actor is centrally framed with only a face shot and a pulse effect.

The release date below the masthead is red which is a strong colour and draws the audience in. The colour could also signify danger.

The copyright information is in the bottom right.

In our film if we were making a website I think the use of colour would be a good format to include. The deep saturated colours and a red text to highlight and catch the audience’s attention of whatever they really want to promote. Adding some sort of effect would be a good choice and having the main soundtrack on the page would synergise with an album. Furthermore showing the trailer on the website will promote our film even more and would deliver a sense of information on the movie before even clicking on any other subject matters. The only problem I see is that I feel that the actor’s names should at least be more advertised. I know they promote there star market but this could have been a debut for a new star or the co-star.

Genre Theorist Analysis - Daniel Chandler

Daniel Chandler
"Conventional theories of genre tend to be based on notion that they constitute particular conventions of content"

The quote that Daniel Chandler is saying is that the conventions within a genre are to be believed that they are the content such as the narrative retentively being the same for each genre. For example within most psychological thrillers the narrative will mostly be the characters battling their own minds attempting to determine what is real, who they are, and what life's purpose is or the characters may be threatened with death, be forced to deal with the deaths of other, or fake their own deaths.

Film examples are:
Black Swan
Shutter Islands
Gothika
The butterfly effect

These films narratives all have a protagonist that has some sort of lost control and is going through a life journey to solve their problem.
With our film narrative we will go along with Daniel Chandler's statement by also containing conventions related towards thriller such as the own narrative being about a protagonist whose mind is not stable also going through a life journey.

David Buckingham Theory

"Genre is not simply given by the culture; rather it is in a constant process of negotiation and and change" 

-David Buckingham 


Psychological Thriller is a sub genre of Thriller. They usually have a 'dissolving sense of reality', and they incorporate elements of mystery, drama, action and horror. Psychological Thriller are based on books and other movies of the Horror genre.




What David Buckingham is saying is that Psychological Thrillers don't exist as an genre. It changes because of the views of society because genre have to stay relevant, if they don't they wont relate to an audience and the audiences take to certain movies. I do agree with this statement because over time the production of Psychological Thriller movies has changed, as the audiences have become more liberal. I think that they are getting away with more narratives.

'The Most Dangerous Game' - Directed by Irving Pichel

This movie was released in 1932 in black and white. It was a short film being only 78 minutes long. Keywords to describe it were, madmen, escape, psychopath and slaughter. These are stereotypical conventions of a psychological thriller, however the certificate rating of 12 shoes that only frequent violent scene were shown. Therefore, they were not allowed to empathize on murder scenes. You can see with this movie that the audience would have been shocked to see these type of films on screens. In comparison to what is being done today in present day.



Brimstone and Treacle - Directed by Richard Loncraine

This movie was released in 1982. This movie was made in colour and it received an certificate rating 18, which means that violence was shown, including blood and gore also bad language and sexual scenes such as rape. This shows that the audiences where becoming more used to the idea of 'thriller' and being scared.

Now in present with everything being exposed online, and web 2.0. Audiences are pretty much desensitized when it comes to movies. We also are using more technology and cgi to film something that they didnt have before.

Steve Neale & Henry Jenkins theory

'Genre are instances of  repetition and difference' .
This quote made by Steve Neale means that the accustoms that occur in genres normally repeat itself in every movie within that genre. For example Psychological thriller movies normally consist with characters that have relationship problems, problems with their identity such as the movie 'The Silence of the lamb' with the villain battling his gender identity wanting to see himself being a woman rather than a man. It also consist of characters having an issue with their mental state or having psychological problems such as the movie the ' Black Swan' where the protagonist auditioned for two roles which was the white swan and the black swan. They told her she suited the role for the white swan but not the black swan because her personality didn't fit well with the role so she try to become more like the black swan but ended up messing up her state of mind causing her to mix her imagination with reality.

Psychological thrillers repeat the themes of reality, identity, perception, mind, death, existence/purpose.
The differences within these psychological thriller movies are the narrative. Some movies within this genre have different elements to other genre as well such as Horror, drama, mystery, action or psychological horror. This also gives characters a different tone for example a character within a psychological thriller movie that has elements from a horror drama will have a dark, psychological problem to a character within a psychological thriller with elements from the genre of drama which will give soft dark tone. Plus the mise en scene will be different for instance the narratives within a psychological thriller with elements of drama will consist of more action, tension and problem solving such as Hannibal which the narrative consist of more suspense, detective problem solving and a character being resistant to good nature and the props that will be used will not be as violent as psychological thriller with horror elements. Psychological thriller with horror elements would consist of a psychopathic killer with a dark tone and the props that would be used would be a violent object such as a knife or blood.

Furthermore this genre theorist can relate to out narrative because of the fact that we've repeated elements of a psychological thriller movie for example scientific elements such as experiments, laboratory clothing and equipment which was also done in Hannibal Rising movie which was also shown in the trailer where Hannibal was wearing a laboratory jacket in a laboratory room. Another repetitive element is that our main character has psychological problems and is mentally unstable which is shown in many movies within this genre such as The silence of the lambs, Hannibal Rising, and Black Swan where the main character of the movie had psychological problems which made her mentally unstable.

A difference for us is that he is able to get justice in the narrative in a peaceful way which challenges the hegemony of this genre because of the time the character ends up getting revenge for example in Hannibal Rising, the main character get's his justice by violent acts used in revenge. So our narrative playing out in this way shows how we made a difference and became a counter hegemony.

'Genres should not be understood as rules or restrictions'
This quote made by Henry Jenkins means that a movie representing a genre can fulfill it's full representation when being undermined by rules and restrictions. If a psychological thriller had to restrict what to put that is part of the norms and values of the genre then it will be hard for the movie normally to represent it's genre through it's narrative.

Trailer analysis : Hannibal rising

Title of Film: Hannibal Rising

Genre - Psychological thriller


Narrative - The trailer clearly shows the narrative which is Hannibal Lecter wants revenge for the kill of his family. The trailer also shows how he turns psychopathic and how he started killing them savagely for example the wood scene.

Soundtrack - There are different soundtracks for part of the trailer. The reason is because the soundtrack relates to the tone of that specific trailer part. The first soundtrack started with Hannibal Lecters family which was at a quite volume. Eventually it rose up to cause a suspense atmosphere amongst the film trailer which creates a suspense atmosphere due to the fact that we don't know whats going to happen to the family and that the music supports the scene with the volume changing every second. The second soundtrack starts where Hannibal is grown up and the trailer shows him holding a pointy object to a mans neck. The soundtrack gives the trailer more a flow because the trailer shows him starting his killing spree and his psychopathic personality. This then brings an attraction from the audience to character itself because they would want to know what is going to happen to him and what he's capable of doing next to his victim. The trailer stops with the soundtrack and at the part where Hannibal is being questioned and questions the inspector the music starts again. The music rises it's volume at the start and increases more tension. Then continues with the soundtrack having a consistent volume pitch to represent Hannibal psychopathic actions and killing spree.

Scenes  - The trailer gives a glimpse of why Hannibal Lecter became who he is later in the film. This was his family being killed at a war. This part of the trailer showed him having flashbacks of his family being killed which shows he's still being troubled. In addition it gives the audience that it's a big part of the reason why he's a psychopathic serial killer. The trailer uses titles in the small gaps having a red background to describe his emotions which backs him up. The red backround also represents blood, danger and evil which is what relates to Hannibal. The trailer shows a few of his killings such as the wood scene. This gives the audience a glimpse of what he's capable of and how far will he go to get his revenge.

Film trailer analysis: Final Girl (2014)

Final Girl

The scene starts with a fade to black from the production company logo to a young girl having a conversation. The music played in the background are bell like chimes that is usually played during story telling to alert the audience that this is a talk from the past. The bland colour of the walls, single placed table in the middle of the room and the pen and paper suggest they seem to be a police conference room where its known to interrogate the others for information. This notifies that this man seems to have a high job profession in law and that there conversation is important and will draw the audience to find out more.
After the first scene it dips to black and fades the music away to introduce a new soundtrack that is funk which could signify the time setting was in the late 60s-80s.


The reason i done an analysis on this movie was because within our ideas we was thinking of doing a chase or battle between the binary opposition between man vs woman as this movie portrays. I personally feel that this trailer is not that great and that they do some good things yet bad things as well meaning we could learn from what works and does not work. The end pretty much gives away what will happen with the girl showing up with blood and dirt all relaxed and okay in the dinning cafe signifying the battle was won. I could be wrong where theres a big twist at the end, however after reading comments from the trailer itself also mentions this.
Besides the end the suspense they give through the trailer is great and I like the idea showing a past story of the protagonist at the start to show character development and the montage they do in the forest with them also showing parts of her training was nice to see and engaging. I also liked the set in the 60s style with the suits and unique theatre atmosphere at some parts such as 1:01 where the spotlight hits only the victim to make the standout and the villains blacked out to signify her fears of not seeing whats coming next.
Common themes of thriller they displayed through the trailer was the plot is the iconic gifted one from young age made to stop a threat after there training. Character d development is popular in thrillers where the protagonist has to grow to the environment they are placed in such as Hunger Games, Matrix and another new thriller film Predestination. They make good use of the soundtrack to signify the mood and situation along with the SXF such as low bass sound that drops in 1:04 to the next scene to signify that dead was over or even the sound they used for 1:09 using an angelic like sound with a sped up film rewind type of sound in time with the camera speeding up towards her that also uses a spotlight highlight her importance.

Psychological thriller movie moodboard

We've made a decision and decided to change to psychological thriller. So I made a mood board with pictures from psychological thriller which shows different actors, scenes, props, and costumes. One thing I picked up from this moodboard is that the actors are predominantly white ethnic background which is a hegemony for the movie industry. However Seven used Morgan Freeman who is not from this ethnic background so that makes a counter hegemony. There are a mixture of females and males. Psychological thrillers use a variety of props such as sharp objects like the one hannibal holding, to face masks and fire matches. The costumes use dark to plain colours, none of the colours scenes are bright. I've seen a variety of locations such as prisons, dark rooms and isolated areas. I should take all this information into account and use it to formulate ideas for my group and I's movie trailer.

I should also analyse the mood board and use this to formulate ideas for the trailer so they can easily conform to the hegemony of a psychological thriller narrative and trailer and I should develop conventions and ideas that challenge the hegemony of psychological thriller for example making the protagonist from a different ethnic background rather than a white ethnic background.

From researching and articulating this mood board, I realised that the predominate locations for scenes have to be in a dark place because psychological thriller movies always have this darkness to it and looking at Shutter Island, Black Swan, Seven and The Sixth Sense. You can see the darkness that revolves around these films.

Mood board: Location

These images are based on the locations or a various of different Horror Thriller movies. I felt that these locations are conventionally the typical locations for this genre. As you can see we have lakes, forests, houses, and warehouses, these are the locations where we were thinking about filming our trailer. The location give the audience the feel of the movie, which creates the tension so it is very important what we end up choosing. For example: Audiences are usually scared in places they don't know so forests and isolated houses/areas, which are the main images shown in the mood board. Also these locations in particular probably would  match the stereotypical iconography of the trailer being used.The mise - en - scene with each location matches each other also. For example: The de saturated colour Platte, brings an atmosphere to each sill, Hopefully, we will decided as a group to go forward with one of these locations for the trailer because I think that it will add the horror and thriller element of the film.

Horror timeline

1968 - Night of the living dead directed by George A. Romero.        

1973 - The Exorcist directed by William Friedkin

1976 - The OMEN directed by Richard Donner

1978 - Halloween directed by John Carpenter.

1979 - Dawn of the Dead directed by George A. Romero.

1979 - The Amityville Horror directed by Stuart Rosenburg.

1980 - The shining directed by Stanley Kubrick.

1980 - Friday the 13th directed by Sean S. Cunningham.

1981 - Halloween 2 directed by Rick Rosenthal.

1982 - Halloween 3 directed by Tommy Lee Wallace.

1988 - Halloween 4 the return of Michael Myers directed by Dwight H. Little.

1989 - Halloween 5 the revenge of Michael Myers directed by Dominique Othenin-Girard.

1990 - Child's Play 2 directed by John Lafia.

1991 - Child's Play 3 directed by Jack Bender.

1995 - Halloween: the curse of Michael Myers directed by Joe Chapelle.

1998 - Halloween H20: 20 Years later directed by Steve Miner.

1999 - Bride of Chucky directed by Ronny Hu.

2000 - Final Destination directed by James Wong.

2003- Final Destination directed by David R. Ellis.

2004 - Seed of Chucky directed by Don Mancini.

2004 - The Grudge directed by Takashi Shimizu.

2006 - The Grudge 2 directed by Takashi Shimizu.

2006 - Final Destination 3 directed by James Wong.

2007 - Paranormal Activity directed by Oren Peli

2008 - Mirror directed by Alexandre Aja.

2009 - The Grudge 3 directed by Toby Wilkins.

2013 - Curse of Chucky directed by Don Mancini.

2013 - Carrie directed by Kimberly Peirce.

2015 - Child's play 7 directed by Don Mancini.

Throughout the timeline I discovered that films in 20th century relied on their story lines to make an effect rather than technology it self due to the lack of technology they had. However films in the 20th century created moral panics for example the Exorcist gave a moral panic which was girls believing they were possessed or going to be possessed. Films within 20th century also created stories that had debates on if this is based on a true story or if it's a myth for instance Amitville Horror which was based on a murder in a house called Amityville house.The murder was connected to the father hearing voices in his head so then he killed himself and his family then a new family moved in and the family said they heard voices and saw mysterious things within the house. People have been so obssess with this house and the film has influenced people to make documentaries and more films about this house.
Comparing films beyond 1990 to films before 1990, films before 1990 use a lot religion in them or dark magic for example the OMEN is about the anti christ and the Priest trying to stop the anti Christ boy, then there's Child's Play where Charles Lee Ray uses voodoo dark magic to place his soul in the good guy's doll. Films within the 21st century don't really use religion for example the final destination series had no religion in it as well as The Grudge just being a supernatural curse caused by a Woman and her children being killed by her mad husband and anyone that encounters with this supernatural curse dies. However films within the 21st century still use religion such as the film 'The devil inside me' using exorcisms to save the possessed person.

Horror movies within the 20th century particularly before 1990 used dark pallet colours most of the time to make it more creepy and scary where as horror movies within 21 century after 2000 have scenes between the bright or dark colours.

Trailers before 1990 used narratives to explain the story but faded away after 1990 where they don't really rely on it for example child's play used a narrative to explain the story and make it more scary and intriguing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2ienmZuReo&safe=active
Both the trailer and movies before 1990 relied on music to make it more creepy and scary like the halloween trailer using creepy music to give it a dark tone. This trailer uses dark pallet colours to give of a dark tone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5ke9IPTIJQ

Contemporary movies like the grudge 2 use music but it's not like the music that was used in films like Halloween, it makes more of a tense atmosphere rather than a dark, creepy atmosphere. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foZ6aKuf4gU

Updated Horror/Thriller Questionnaire

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BXZ7JWY

After much discussion as a group we deciced to go with a Horror Thriller theme. Which means that We had to create an updated Questionnaire, about both of the genres not just one, and we sent it to twenty participants to give us there view. You click on the link above to view our questionnaire. Which will hopefully give us a better idea of what an audience would like to see in a movie trailer.

Horror Questionnaire

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Genre Research: Psychological Thriller

Psychological thriller involves a character which has a psychological aspect of their identity. The pyschological thriller normally mixes in with elements of drama, horror, mystery, and action.
Many themes of psychological thriller are reality, perception, mind, existence/purpose, identity, and death,
Within the movie that uses the genre, the character battles their mind and have complications on what they believe is real, right or wrong, what is their purpose in life and who they are. Example of psychological thriller is  Black Swan which is about a girl called Nina who plays a swan in a play. Before the play the girl has hallucinations of events and imaginations such as her female who is called lily and a man having sex. She also has an imagination of her having a fight with her friend, the aftermath was her stabbing herself with a piece of sharp glass.

Initial Ideas For Our Film

Within our groups we discussed various ideas that could be in our film. We discussed Narrative, Characters, Mise-en-scene, and location.

Narrative:
We cam up with a large results of ideas where we explored different type of story's that fit with a genre. In the end we came up with a idea about something predicting the future and our protagonist journey and evolution obeying these, however in the end this was told by a few students this is overly done and so we changed our point to the slightest making it forced choices.

Our protagonist was captured as a child and went missing for a month. The child then appears at the parent’s doorstop not remembering the events that happened through then. During lessons he tends to see choices picking  A or B which can be irrelevant towards what he is doing, however he gets an extreme headache when he tries to refuse and will drop to the ground gasping to breath causing him near death he will choose out of fear not to die.  A day after he’s 18^th birthday and starts he’s way to work to meet a mysterious person warning him to make the right choices from now. The choices get extreme and place our protagonist through harsh unexpected conditions leading he’s mentality to a very unstable path. With the trailer ending with he’s choice of A. Kill her or B. Kill her towards his loved one.

Characters:
We was thinking of Propp's character theory about the hero, villain, helper, princess, false hero, and the dispatcher. This is mainly for action type of films and we thought of other types of characters for specific purposes such as the police officer which could be a person who is the initiator or even a plot twist to be a false hero.

Mise-en-scene:
We had to think about sets, props, actors, costume and lighting which all falls on Mise-en-scene. We thought about what other films include and realised for costumes its mainly casual cloths during majority of the film unless there's iconic villains and superheroes in an action movie. We also included iconic props seen in various films such as with action there's a gun and within horror there's a mask or a knife foe slashers.

Location:
We went through the possible locations in our area that was available to film and would be an ideal place for our narrative. Since we was not entirely sure what the narrative genre would be leading towards we kept in mind. isolated locations was the main focus was parks, woods, the school at late night, and a warehouse which could be great for a horror or thriller. We also needed a public area such as Stratford centre, Westfield and East Ham market.

Protagonist:
We needed our protagonist to be unique because they will be the centre of attraction and could make a film good or not. We did not want to restrict our options by selecting race or gender so we cam up with how they will effect the narrative and there main personality. We thought a damaged hero would be a good addition to the narrative and could gain a more action packed film. We also included that we make a progression for the protagonist to learn and make the audience feel apart of that journey to sympathise with any mistakes that could happen to the character n the narrative.