Evaluation 1: Media Conventions

In What Ways Do Yours Media Products Use, Develop or Challenge Conventions From Real Media Products?

Titles

Throughout creating our psychological thriller, we have tried to keep the classic conventions which we have found from researching already existing films and trailers.

For our title, we have used a handwriting font called 'Brio' which is similar to other fonts that can be commonly found in the thriller genre as it can have a chilling impact. We agreed on the title 'Left Behind' and we think this sounds more intriguing and thought-provoking than scary. We decided on a vague title name to get the audience asking questions like who’s left behind and why. This will get an audience interested and want to watch the film. We knew that our title and font would be used across multiple platforms like magazines and poster, so we chose to use a recognisable font.

We have kept our title short as titles usually only consist of one or two words like The Purge or Se7en. This is important as it makes the title rememberable for an audience as well as being vague enough that they will want to watch the film to find out what it means. Psychological thrillers commonly use white titles on black backgrounds so we kept to this convention to successfully convey the psychological genre.

‘Left Behind’ is a suited title to our film because the trailer we see that the main character’s best friend goes missing, leaving her behind. The title is said in the trailer, although it isn’t obvious if this is misleading to the audience as we have used non-continuity editing. Therefore, audiences will want to see the film and find out the true story.

Handwriting in thrillers is often used to be suggestive of communication from children, the terrified or the dead. Children are often used in psychological thrillers such as 'The Hand That Rocks the Cradle' because they are stereotypically very vulnerable.

The word ‘left’ suggest that this is a choice-less decision, the character has no choice but to be left behind. This word choice will leave audiences with a desire to know the situation in which they’ve had to be left behind. This adds another element of interest for an audience, enticing them to see the full film.  I think this title will appeal more to active audiences who will analyse and be interested in the details of our trailer.

Settings

The settings we have used at the beginning of the trailer are all homely and comforting like the kitchens and the bedrooms. We actively decided to use a house that we knew would create a sense of safety and establish equilibrium in the beginning. These settings are also very familiar to middle-class citizens and normal people, these people are also most likely to be regular cinema-goers which will create more of an impact on them as they may believe that the situations could happen to them in their own homes or to their families.

The settings change to more unfamiliar and harsh settings as the trailer moves on. For example outdoor locations, hostile and unwelcoming rooms. This has been done to make the audience feel uneasy and unsafe. E.g. Jenny's bed is not made in the last few scenes of our trailer which coveys an uncomforting and hostile environment. This element is also telling of how 'messed up' Jenny has gotten by this point of the film.

We avoided using country or rural settings as this is more representative of the horror genre.

Storyline

Rachael and I have tried to create a trailer that resembles a psychological thriller rather than a horror. As these two genres are very similar this was quite difficult. We tried to steer away from horror by not including jump scares in our trailer or lots of screaming. We left our trailer with on a cliff-hanger to entice the audience to watch the film in the cinema to find out what happens. We have created an ambiguous ending by showing a hand coming out from under the bed and then a voice-over of the main character saying ‘Sophie?’ This leaves the audience asking more questions than being scared or traumatised. Throughout the trailer, there is no obvious antagonist which leads the audience to imagine the worst thing they can. This can bring more fear and suspense to an audience than actually showing the face of the antagonist like they do in quite a few horror trailers.

Characters

Psychological thrillers often have many characters as some may go missing or there may be multiple storylines happening at once. We have only introduced four characters in our trailer. We think this makes the trailer and storyline easier to follow and understand. The antagonist is never fully revealed to the audience which keeps the audience in suspense and will mean they need to watch the film to see the reveal. This is conventional as antagonists are really identified in psychological thriller trailer and in the films they are either revealed at the end or not at all to increase the distress. For example, in ‘The Snowman’ we never see the killer. The outfits we chose for the characters to wear all came from our research into already existing psychological thrillers. It could be said that it isn’t obvious from our trailer which is the main character as they all have important roles in the synopsis. However, Jenny has the most screen time and helps the narrative develop the most, suggesting that she will be the main focus of the film.

We have portrayed Jenny and Sophie’s characters as best friends but as Sophie’s character goes missing in the first 10 seconds of the trailer, we never see them being best friends. There is evidence in the trailer that suggests we will be shown some of their friendship in the full film for example: when Jenny meets Sophie at her house before school and when they have been taking pictures together. This will be relatable to our target audience as most female teenagers have best friends who they do everything with. This will create sympathy from the audience as they will understand. We also have cast a mother character in our trailer. We think that this will provoke emotion in any older women who watch the film as they may have children of a similar age.

We have used teenagers as this is the demographic of people who are most likely to go to the cinema meaning they will be able to relate the most to the content. Teenagers are often seen as children by adults as they can be vulnerable and irresponsible. This could bring more fear to the adults watching as they are worried about the youths.

Props

The props we have used within our trailer are commonly used within the psychological thriller genre. For example the alcohol and the pills. This is because they have a psychological effect on your mental stability. The main character is seen drinking outside in the rain to create a pathetic fallacy and she is seen with pill packets in the kitchen. These props connote the desperation and despair of the character once her friend goes missing.  However, these props are more commonly linked to the antagonist as they are usually represented as unstable. This means that our representation of the protagonist in our trailer could be counter-typical. Additionally, the representation could be misleading; audiences would need to watch the full film to know if Jenny's character is really the protagonist.

We have used mobile phones in some of the scenes of the trailer as iconography. The use of phones shows the age of Jenny's character as it is stereotypical for teens to use their phones a lot. The phones also create verisimilitude within the trailer and make the situation feel more real to audiences.

Camera and Editing

For the shots that we wanted to be really steady like the bed shots and establishing shots of settings, we used a camera stabiliser, Dji OSMO. We kept some shaky hand help shots in the trailer to create an uneasy atmosphere and make the footage feel more real and gritty. Unlike successful production companies who have budgets for technical hardware, we have had to use our phones to film our trailer. We felt that the unsteady shots represented Jenny’s character and her journey from being normal and happy through to in despair.

We tried to show a variety of different shots as this is very important at keeping an audience interested and actively watching the material. We have used a variety of short and long clips throughout, gradually building to all short clips, creating a climax. We have used rhythmic editing in our trailer where the cuts are in sync with the music. The music we have used, we edited so that it gradually built up to a climax to match the visuals. This is very conventional in the majority of trailers throughout most genres. This technique can be found in ‘The Snowman’ which shows that we have linked to our research and have used technical conventions found in real media products.

We have used non-continuity editing which is heavily used in trailers. We have created non-chronological editing by including lots of clips that would make sense once you’ve seen the film in between key narrative points of the trailer. This is a stereotypical convention of the structure of trailers in general.

Special Effects

For special effects, we used filters over some of the shots to make them appear more visually grungy and dark as when we filmed it was full daylight and we thought this would ruin emersion of the trailer. To create the news report I used lots of effects when editing. I used a static overlay and cut to black transitions to make the footage appear corrupted. We avoided distorting the footage too far that it became unrecognisable because we didn’t want to disorientate the viewers or ruin the verisimilitude, decreasing the suspense and anxiety. When doing research into existing trailers, we did not find many special effects such as colour overlays or distortion. For the flashback moments of the two girls being best friends, I used the romance overlay filter on iMovie that blurred the edges of the footage, suggesting Jenny is drunk and this is that her vision looks like. This element also exaggerates that these images are from the past as they are fading memories.

Magazine Cover

I have created an unconventional magazine cover. Film magazine covers typically have a main image of the character from the feature film they are promoting. As we don't believe that our film would be recognisable from a face we have chosen to use a scene from the trailer that could be identifiable as Left Behind. I have created synergetic links between the trailer and the magazine by using the same font that we used for the title and release date at end of our trailer. I have tried to create a magazine cover that conveys the psychological thriller genre by using dark colours, white and some elements of red. I tried to avoid using too much red as it would become a horror magazine. I have used classic conventions of real film magazines such as; cover lines, pugs and gratifications.

Film Poster

From researching already existing film poster or psychological films we found that the posters commonly feature an image of the main characters face. I chose to focus on the key part of our trailer as I felt this was more significant and recognisable. I used the main image of some feet hanging off the edge of a bad with the person holding a bottle of vodka. I have edited a hand coming out from under the bed to create a direct link to our trailer. I started with the main image in Photoshop and blocked out under the bed with a black gradient. I selected the vodka bottle and copied it onto the layer above so it was unaffected by this. To make the hand come out from under the bed, I took close-ups of someone’s hand and cut it out. I pasted it onto a layer behind the girl's legs as if they’re about to be grabbed.