From our film we want a combination of an american and english film studios and production companies- to provide our film with and anglo- american feel. We have decided this because we believe our film does not suit the British Independent Arthouse bracket. This is mainly due to the budgeting of these films such as 'Skeletons', 'Shifty' and 'Disappearance of alice creed' do not provide the aesthetics of what we want our film to look like.
With an anglo-american production there be a significant amount of money pumped into our project, this will give it a stylish and high class feel and look to our film. Our audience will be broader as we can have a small american marketing project along side a European release. This will help of Psychological thriller to be successful and to hopefully receive international acclaim. W want the high aesthetic nature that an anglo-american production provides an example of this is 'American Werewolf in London', a classic example of British and American
talent combining. The film used a half and half combination of studio's; Polygram, Hearst Entertainment and the Guber-Peters company. This film had a good budget and made a nice profit in the US and the UK.
An American Werewolf in London
Another film that we are influenced by in its production and distribution is 'Big Nothing', Simon Pegg and David Schimmer both directed this- a fantastic example of successful of an English and American collaboration. They produced a great comedy-thriller that got noticed all over Europe and America with the studio 'Pathe', as a result was incredibly popular and well received and both nations. Whilst being set in Oregan still had a british vibe, so this proves that a combination can still stay true to both English people and Americans.
Big Nothing Poster
20th Century Fox logo
A film that really inspires our film is '28 days later' a cult Thriller-Horror set in a dystopian England. The film is pretty much entirely British from the locations to actors, but the film couldn't have been made with out the input of an American distributor. 20th century fox combined with Fox searchlight pictures to create this outstanding film and the British film council and DNA joined studios. Thanks to the help of the collaboration '28 days later' managed to pick up 'Best Horror Film' in the US,UK and Europe- not to mention a vast array of other awards. This is what we hope our film to achieve if released. With the backing of anglo-american money, the film managed to pull off great effects, actor and locations we would want this to be true of our film as well. The film production crew then managed to make '28 weeks later' and even a possible '28 months later'.
Shots of studio idents both english and american, winner of film festivals (Anglo-American)
Establishing/Master shot of main location which is London
Shot of main character in location
Introduction to main character by sound bites to confirm narrative
Antagonist introduced after main character to show importance in the film
Capture her isolation, lo-fi vibe
Slow paced editing to fit conventions of a standard film trailer
Use of fade in/out editing also
ACT 2
The problem introduced/ Good vs. Evil standard convention
Increase speed of editing between shots
Dialogue between antagonist and protagonist to help introduce problem to audience
Audience becomes more emotive towards protagonist
Mystery introduced, psychological element
Introduction of alter ego character, ends ACT 2 and increase editing to montage speed
ACT 3
Montage introduced
Action scenes used with fast paced editing to increase suspense and sell the film
Sound Effects used to increase action theme
Problem is intensified with the antagonist, more shots of both antagonist and protagonist to show conflict
Dramatic change of location to show the change of tone in the narrative of the fill
Finale Introduction more alter ego character, long end shot to show all alter ego characters to increase curiosity of the audience and make them want to see the film more
The large male dominant result shows that we should aim our trailer at a male audience. However, our results could be shown to biased as it can be shown that the psychological thriller sub-genre is shown to be unisex
What is your age?
The main target audience within the film industry is the 15-24 year old age group. Our results show a large dominant percentage our within this age range therefore we would want to aim our thriller to appeal to this particular audience. This audience age range is shown to be more active rather than passive which will mean our trailer would have to appeal in different forms of media
What particular genre would you be inclined to see?
The thriller and horror genre both were shown to be reasonably popular within the survey so this is a positive result. The high comedy result maybe due to it having a tension release audience, which means they would view a particular film (comedy) for tension release.
Do you purposefully watch film trailers?
We asked this question on our survey as it important to know whether there is a potential audience would view our trailer when we created when. The large percentage of people (67%) said they would purposefully watch a trailer and a smaller percentage (33%) said they would not purposefully watch a film trailer.
If so what form of media do you use to view the trailers?
The use of YouTube was clearly the most obvious way to view a trailer for our potential audience (82%) therefore we would want to upload our trailer on to YouTube when the product is finished and therefore perhaps gain a viral following. Other answers included watching TV advert trailers, so it would be useful to potentially gain TV advertising.
How often do you watch a feature film?
We asked this question it would be useful to know who often our audience view films per year, the most popular answer was once a month at a cinema. Therefore we would want one of these films to be a psychological thriller, due to the other answers given related to psychological thrillers I believe this would be likely.
How likely is it that you will purposefully watch a psychological thriller?
This result was very positive as nearly all of the audience survey results showed that the audience would purposefully watch a psychological thriller trailer, which is what our trailer genre is aiming to be.
What films have you heard the most 'hype' about over the past year?
The choices for this question were all purposefully psychological thrillers, the most popular answer was inception. Therefore it would be a good idea to take influence from this film and trailer to attract a larger audience.
Emma Jennings. Main Protagonist and Central Character. Aged between 18-21. Innocence and naivety portrayed. New to the city. Unique style. AttractiveThe powerpoint below shows what different actresses we would want to use if we had the correct budget for our film.(Please click in the bottom right hand corner to view the presentation full screen)
We conducted a personal interview along side our audience survey's to find more out about our audience. I asked a number of questions to draw to qualative data aswell as our previous quantative data. He answered in that 'Shutter Island' was one of the Psychological thrillers he mostly enjoyed recently, and he saw this because of the trailer that he saw. This tells us with a good enough trailer marketed in the right way, we could gather a strong audience to come and see our film.
In the interview he was impressed from the trailer of 'Shutter Island' and talked about how the high action scenes and locations most of all made him go to see the film. We learnt that people like to be 'thriller by mystery' in the genre we have targeted, we should remember this quote as it is useful and vital to the making of our film. Also we were told that the audience like to 'not be able to trust what they are seeing'- we need to to promote this concept in our short trailer.
The film 'Black Swan' came into conversation and although our interview guest didn't enjoy the film that much, he liked the way in which it was marketed and produced. He remarked on the fact that the film was a bit 'weird' and 'strange' sometimes the audience prefer in this genre to not go over board with an elaborate concept. He also spoke about how in almost all Psychological thrillers that there was a central character that events happened to, he pointed out that they should be 'interesting' and 'convincing'.
Overall we learnt from this interview that our audience have specific tastes in our genre and that we should meet the guidelines that people expect from a Psychological Thriller.
Our audience's age would be core, 15-24- so it ranges from teenagers to young adults. From our survey we have concluded that Psychological thriller as genre is neither male or female orientated, this is due to that fact that pretty much all films in the genre have a central character that the world seems to distortedly revolve around. Although our age seems to stop at 24, we believe our genre would also reach an older niche audience of educated 24- 32 year olds, past those ages there is a decline of 32+ people going to the cinema. This niche audience is because in Psychological thrillers, you have be slightly more intellectually gifted to grasp some of the ideas and concept as they tend to be rather philosophical.
Certification, Marketing and Distribution
We would want our film certification for a 15, the violence included would not be too strong but more towards the torture element. Our horror element would also add to this due to our choice of genre- this would not be constant but would be shown quite a lot in our final scene. The language would also be of a 15 certification, strong but not using words that would raise it to an 18. 15 attracts the core audience because of the certification, we don't believe that it would be an 18 as our content would not be explicit enough. We aim to have our trailer certified as 12A, so it can be shown on TV from 7.30 in the evening onwards and can be shown in most cinema screenings.
Audience Pleasures and Intertextuality
Our audience would be a cognitive one- they have a desire learn and think through problems. This explores other sub genres within our film such existentialism, where you are made to this about the deeper things in life, this again links to hyper reality. Hyper reality is prominent topic and technique applied to our genre this is shown in films such as 'The matrix' and 'Shutter Island'. Our audience would not be entirely cognitive though our audience also are slightly affective- they want to explore emotion and sympathize. This is not completely true of all Psychological thrillers but has been used to create effect in many films, but has been in 'Donnie darko'- a film which influences us greatly.
Psychological thrillers are globally incredibly popular, 'Shutter Island' was the top of European and Asian DVD and Blu Ray sales- this shows the global influence of the chosen genre.
Our film would have to have appropriate and interesting themes to catch this global cognitive audience. From our survey the themes people like to see are:
. Horror Element
. Warped Perception
. Confusion
. Central Character
. Intensity
. Darkness
. Twisted Behavior
. Believable Dialogue
Quantitive Analysis
For a successful film we need to listen to what our audience want and say- we should look into these theme and how in incorporate them into our trailer. In one of our interviews some said in question to 'what catches your attention in trailers', they answer ' I am most interested by the overall locations and action that happens in the film, this because I can get an idea of the vibe of the film'- this tells us the audience like to see a range in trailers, so they can distinguish what they will get from seeing the film.
60 % of people we surveyed said they actively made an effort to watch trailers, this tells us trailers are vital to the success of films, in our trailer we have to make sure we include all aspects of a Psychological thriller- to promote our film. Web 2.0 has proved ever dominant as 91% of people watched their trailers on youtube, so releasing a trailer on the internet proves to be the most popular way of watching a trailer.
We asked 'What trailer of the past year has caught your attention the most and why?' The most answered trailer was Harry Potter Deathly Hallows and the reasons were
. ' Because it was constantly shown on the internet and put in my face'
. ' Exciting and fast paced'
. 'The CGI was amazing'
This gives us an outline to what our audience enjoy from trailers. Many people answer Black Swan and talked about it being, 'weird' and 'very twisted' these are themes we need to have and promote in our trailers. 46% of people in our survey said they were very likely to see Phycological thrillers and 38.5% of people said maybe- this shows we have a popular genre and we have to create something unique and innovative to attract our active audience.
'Inception' was the most heard about film with 79% saying so. This shows that Physiological thriller can dominate the mainstream film audience and with an interesting and unique concept our film can succeed. Doing the surveys were incredibly useful and an effective way of finding more about our audience.
What are the conventions of your chosen film genre and which aspects of trailers in the genre influence you?
I have chosen to use the hybrid genre of psychological thriller, famous films that represent this genre are ‘Donnie Darko’, ‘Black Swan’ and ‘Shutter Island’ recently. The classic and original psychological thrillers pioneered the genre, this films being ‘Mulholland drive’, ‘A clockwork orange’ ‘Physco’ and ‘American Physco’. The director that mostly inspires me is David Lynch, films such as ‘Eraser Head’ and ‘The elephant man’ especially grabs my attention because they have an element of completely absurdity.
This simple yet very effective trailer, has a bold image and only really contains shock factor and complete mystery, I would hope to include the idea of shock into my teaser trailer. I think only going down this route would be a mistake as a trailer like ‘Black swan’ give more of an eerie essence and promotes the vibe to the film. In the trailer you are made to feel uncomfortable and feel like you are sat in the wrong chair- I like this feel that the genre has and I want to pick up on this.
The idea of isolated perplexed central character is used in every psychological thriller, Natalie Portmans’ character in ‘Black swan’ is similar to many- they start out seemingly human and as the course of the film continues the spiral of mental decline is inevitable. The audience are made to sympathise with this character and are made to be in their shoes, this makes you as a viewer almost undertake the Psychological part of the thriller.
‘Shutter Island’ really portrays this ‘solo’ mental quest in the thriller, you are made to toy between the opinions and powers of others in the film, this make it entirely thrilling, with a good strong concept behind your film it can really involve your audience. ‘Shutter island’ has a hyper reality inbuilt into it, I would love to try and tackle this idea and involve into my film trailer. This concept has proved to be very successful with films such as ‘inception’ and ‘The Matrix’- two huge block buster films of our lives. Again this central character is completely vital in ‘shutter island’ played by ‘Leonardo di Caprio’.
‘Psychological thriller is a specific sub-genre of the broad ranged thriller and Horror genres. However, it often incorporates elements from the mystery and drama genre, in addition to the typical traits of the thriller genre’-definition-Wikifilm
The genre includes many elements this means you can have a strong influence of one genre over another to create an individual feel and concept. An example of the dominance of another genre is drama in ‘Mulholland Drive’ which although is a Psychological thriller, has a very raw and dramatic feel as opposed to a film like ‘Scanners’ which has more of a futuristic vibe to it.
I would like to inject my film trailer with a horror aspect to it, as I have done previous research about horror I understand how I could interlink both drama and horror together. In psychological thrillers the horror is more from the mind rather than reality- this allows creativity to a concept. One of my favourite examples of this is Kubricks classic ‘The Shinning’.
The trailer in my eyes is very effective, the story line is simply explained and gives a real feeling of panic and horror with the added Psychological breakdown thrown in amongst it, the idea of a character alone in their own mental world is again shown here. The music is far less background in this trailer compared to the others as clearly ‘The shinning’ is more Horror based as we here the classic screech sounds. A great deal of the trailers use similar effects to establish the genre, one of the key ones is flashing images, this give off a feeling of confusion and lack of control- everything that a Psychological thriller should be about.
Although now it seems very dated ‘Rosemary’s baby’ was once incredibly disturbing for a modern audience, the idea that in our normal world a paranormal event can overwhelm our lives is common in many of these films. I am really attracted to the religious twist some films use, especially in this as a woman is impregnated by the devil- it adds controversy and the core audience it really excites them. Also ‘the wicker man’ has a similar vibe I would love to try and re create something modern, that has the same aesthetics of these films.
The Main themes I have come across whilst researching the genre are:
Reality
Perception
Existance
Identity (often confusion with identity)
Life and Death
These are constant themes that can be applied to all Psychological thrillers, one film that explicitly shows these films is 'The Machinist' featuring Christian Bale- the story of insomniac, who ploughs throgh a banal life but in his own sense of reality.
This fantastic film particularly cares for the identity theme as he doesnt know himself or can trust himself I would like to apply this to my film, as it adds a create deal of drama to the genre.
