Media report (old)

The media coursework prepared was created for a Thriller film intended for a Teenage audience, Thriller films and things in the genre in general tend to have very specific themes that revolve around them, the Thriller theme is typically very similar to the horror genre, but is still very unique. Typically the Thriller genre is in a much more down to earth setting than horror films, and has a very realistic situation and more believable circumstances that could happen in the real world, but are unlikely to occur. A theme most thriller films contain is the theme of mystery and the unknown world, in particular Thriller films look at the fear that this mystery brings. As such most Thriller films are about uncovering a mystery; this is why a lot of Thriller films are also ‘crime’ or ‘mystery’ genre too. Such as Gone girl and the girl with the dragon tattoo. To achieve the Teenage audience, the film has to have the main cast of characters be an age group that Teenagers can relate to, ranging from 16-20. Because this is a film, the coursework assets that would go with the Media product would have to be fit for a film, the assets that were chosen to fit with a Film were a Theatrical poster, a DVD cover, and a script. The idea of the Thriller film created to fit the conventions of the Thriller genre is called Black town, it was decided to be about a Teenage boy named Joe who wakes up in a mysterious house, who contains a killer inside who pretends to be his friend, his only connection to his past is another person on the other side of a phone who knows him, and tries to get him out of this mysterious town that is almost empty aside from a few more killers, and tries to discover why he is here. This film concept attempts to reach that theme of mystery and fear of the unknown by including a mystery to discover itself, but makes it seem dangerous and disturbed by including the danger of killers in this setting. ImageImageImageImageTo get information about Theatrical posters, more than fifteen different theatrical posters with a Thriller genre theme were looked at to get inspiration for the poster. For every poster, there are many typical conventions of a poster that were found that needed to be included in the Theatrical poster, One of the main things I noticed in each poster was that the title was very large and was in a noticeable or interesting font, the title had to obviously be big to catch the viewer’s eye and stick in their mind, but usually the title connoted the sort of genre the poster was for. For example Shutter Island has a Thriller poster with red text with black shadows covering some areas of it, While the red can connote murder and blood, that aspect of it makes it somewhat creepy and disturbing, while the black found on it can easily connote mystery, as the title is not completely covered, so is the film also shrouded in mystery, the font also is unifying and a bit creepy to look at. This tells me that the title is an important way to tell a viewer what kind of film this is. In Shutter Island’s poster again, we see that the actor name is a very large contrast to the Title in both font and colour, this tells me how the actor names should stand out, and also be the second or third largest font sizes on the poster. Something else seen in theatrical posters were the use of tag lines, Donnie Darko’s poster has a tagline too, the majority of the taglines found on each poster told you something about the film’s story. There are many typical things that every theatrical poster has. In particular the vast majority of film posters have a credit block that goes underneath the title at the bottom of the poster, what is important about the placement of the credit block is that it does not block anything important in the poster, and is out of the way of the main focus of the poster. Along with the credit block, logos such as universal included, these two would go to the bottom of the poster usually, and would be small and out of focus. Colours were also an important aspect of each Thriller, as colours can connote many things. Light blues were in particular a very common sight in Thriller posters, as seen in Donnie Darko, the blue colours are able to connote isolation, loneliness, and even death, all the things that blues can connote are important aspects for the themes that you find in Thriller genre, as fear is an important component, the things blue can connote can also invoke fear. Greys and whites was also a colour used for similar reasons, as you can see in Gone girl. Grey manages to connote a more serious tone for your film, as Thrillers would never be able to achieve a light hearted feeling, Grey and white colours manage to tell you the seriousness of the film. One final aspect of theatrical posters is the constant appearance of the main character or characters in the poster, as they are important, you see them in the foreground of your poster, and usually the exact main point of attention. In Donnie Darko’s poster, you see that the one light source comes from the centre of the main character, drawing your attention to him. This is the theatrical poster created for Black town, it attempts to use all the listed conventions of the theatrical poster listed above, I believe the areas I have succeeded on recreating are the colours used in the poster, the background of the town and trees was intentionally made to be incredibly dark with only suggestions of light sources in the back, this was to connote that theme of mystery, this dark setting also allowed me to easily blend into the parts of the poster that were not of focus, the credit block and the logos. At the top I focused on the use of colours, a greyish blue was used for the sky to have both of those colour’s connotations, but I also used a red around the area the phone lights up, this is important as it relates to the context of the Film’s narrative, where throughout the film, the phone and the person on the other end leads to the discovery of the main character’s past. The inclusion of the main character was intentionally made to be in a dark light to again fit with the Film’s story of him not knowing his memory, so he’s in darkness, however in doing this I missed one of the main points of showing the protagonist, in that I didn’t make him an as important aspect of the poster as he could have been, so the lighting should have been slightly altered, the actor names while may be too small, I believe fit the style of how other posters showcase their actors. Another thing I may have changed about this poster however it the amount of negative space I used, as the credit block and the logos have taken up maybe a bit much room, so I may have decreased their size, and moved the title and tagline downwards. The title and tagline were also successful I believe, as the font was strange enough to fit the genre, and also hit a certain theme they both shared. The colours too also were made to fit the black and grey motif, with red added in to highlight a keyword that is important to the film “Alone” ImageA DVD cover was also produced to go with the Poster. This means that many of the pre mentioned conventions of a theatrical poster such as the title, actor names, colour, main character, and credit block/logo can also be applied to the DVD cover, but there are some additions to a DVD cover. More commonly DVD covers have reviews of the film itself because they come out later, so that had to be included, but it’s important to note that the review text had to still fit with the look of the poster’s text. We see Age ratings on every DVD colour on either the front side or back, or usually all of them. Logos are also now seen on multiple sides of the cover. On the front as well we will see a typical DVD logo, this can also appear on other sides of the cover. On the back of the DV, key images of the film are seen to let the viewer know what they are getting into. There is also a small blurb about the film’s story that tells you what the film is about. Finally there are various setting options seen on the poster itself about the DVD such as sound settings and languages.