Analysis of Potential Poster

Our first potential poster follows the main thriller colours white, red, black and grey. The text is mainly in white to stand out against the black background and then certain words are in red to stand out further and hints the importance.

For example, the use of red here emphasises the word danger, as red is seen as a colour that symbolises danger.  The choice of text here is hinting at the fact the danger is infact the main character herself. It enables the audience to conjure up their own rhetorical questions and makes them want to find out what it is implying, in turn making them want to see the film.

The choice to have the picture in a night vision effect hints that there is darkness and secrets within the film. Although it is not as clear as if would have been in colour, the use of the red contacts is still affective as it gives the eyes an unnatural tint. The use of the faded edges also adds to the effect that there are hidden twists within the film. The dark smudged make up around the eyes add a dishevelled look to the character showing she is insane, this is emphasised further in the slight squint in the eyes. The fact that one eye is slightly more squinted than the other hints to the storyline of the character having to sides to her personality. Having the picture central of the poster, makes the poster more eye-catching, attracting more of an audience.

The choice of text works well with the rest of the poster, as with the picture, it does not give away too much but is still stern enough to attract attention.
Overall, I think our first potential poster is effective enough to attract audience and engage them enough to want to see the film. It is not exactly as we had first planned, but still think it works just as well as the first plan and was a little easier to achieve.

Possible Poster Idea

Promotional Photos

Makeup in our film

In our actual thriller, we are choosing to take makeup inspiration from Disney villains. Even though our target audience is older now and are no longer frightened by these characters, dramatising and adding a more realistic edge to their looks will build on a fear they had when they were very young. Furthering this idea, the cosmetics company MAC have brought out a makeup range dedicated to Disney Villains, so we will also analyse this with regard to the look we'd like in our film.

MAC Vemomous Villains

The Venemous Villains collection from MAC focuses on 4 villains who have featured in Disney cartoons throughout the years. These include The Evil Queen from Snow White (1937), Malificent from Sleeping Beauty (1959), Cruella De Vil from One Hundred And One Dalmatians (1961), and Dr Facilier from The Princess and the Frog (2009).



These Lipsticks are from the Evil Queen collection. Both are based on the colour red although one is bright and the other more of a burgundy. Red would be a good choice for lipstick for the main character in our film as there are so many different shades which give off different impressions. The Colour red also has connotations with danger, so when the audience sees the lipstick they will associate it with evil, either conciously or subconciously.

 The two 'Dr Facilier' eyeliners on the left are very dark, and would be useful to create a creepy 'tired' look. Inspiration for this would be The Joker from batman. The dark rings around his eyes have become a trademark since their appearance in The Dark Knight. If we did use this idea it would obviously be a more toned-down version, perhaps the main character could have mascara and eyeliner smudged round her eyes when she's in the bath.  

The black eyeshadow in the middle of this photo is from the Cruella De Vil section of the makeup collection. Black eyeshadow is incredibly versatile when creating a 'stage makeup' look. Coupled with purples, blues and yellows it can be used to create very convincing bruises on the skin. It can also obviously be used on the eyelids and under the eyes, this creates a look similar to the eyeliner above, and using them together will intensify the look further.

Lipgloss is really useful when trying to create the illusuion of tears, i know from experience that when taking photos it looks particularly realistic. Although the two 'Maleficent' lipglosses are a bit dark for use that way, lighter or clear gloss would be ideal around the eyes and nose for creating faux tears for a film.

Possible font choices for titles and poster

The font can be important in giving the effect of the film as it sometimes sets the tone of what is to come. Our film is a physcological thriller called Dissension so we wanted something that isnt tacky and looks quite classic.

We decided to try different fonts to be used in the poster and for the titles, This would be so people could recognise our font as something that relates with our film.
When we went through the fonts it was between Stencil and Reprise Title. Eventually we decided on Reprise title which is a stamp style font which looks quite bold and hints at the type of thriller it is.

Storyboard

Questionnaire Responses.

We asked 20 people between the ages of 15 and 30 to complete our questionnaire. Our target audience is 15-20, however we wanted to get a range of answers. When asking our applicants what their favourite type of thriller is, the majority the over 25's chose conspiracy. Whereas most applicants under the age of 25 chose psychological. As this is our target audience, this is our first choice of genre. We then went on to ask if they expect to see violence in a thriller, they all answered yes, so we have decided to include this when thinking about our thriller.
Next we asked what kind of characters they expect to see in a thriller. All 20 applicants said they would expect to see protagonistic and antagonistic characters and 5 mentioned having a woman in distress who is rescued by the protangonistic. We took this into account, however we decided to contrast the norms of a thriller by having the woman as the antagonist.
The next question we asked was whether the poster of a thriller influences their choice to watch it or not.  17/20 of the people answering the questionnaires agreed that if a poster was not sufficient they would not go see the thriller. Because of this, we will take the time to come up with an effective poster so that people will want to watch our thriller.
We then asked what they think makes an effective poster and the majority agreed a simple, shocking image makes the most effective poster. A couple used the example of the Black Knight poster, so we will use this as an influence when deciding on our poster desgin.
We then asked them to think about what would make a good setting for a thriller. We recieved a vary of answers to this question. About 10 people mentioned using an abandoned or rural place where as others suggested a place like a city as people can relate to it. We took all this into consideration, and think we will choose a setting in which the audience can relate to so that it seem more real and shocking for them.
The last question we asked was what film rating they expect a thriller to be. 15 out of 20 agreed on a 15, 2 agreed 12 and 3 agreed 18. From this, we have decided to create a 15.
Overall, by getting people to complete our questionnaire, it has helped us understand what our target audience looks for in a thriller and what we need to include to create the best project possible.

Film title

As our thriller is about someone with a split personality we wanted to show this within the title but not make it too obvious. We also decided to do a one word title as from the research on top thriller titles, the one worded ones stood out the most.
When brainstorming ideas for our thriller we just thought of words that we would associate with it as a starting point.
Split
Break
Crack
Riven
From this we went on to look at synonyms of the words. We went through a few until we decided on Dissension.Dissension means a disagreement among those expected to cooperate. We thought this fit well as inside the main characters head she has conflict with herself. But like Inception the title leaves the audience guessing and doesnt explain the title until watching the film.

Poster influences

When marketing our film we need to think about the poster that will advertise the film.As we want something eye-catching and a poster which relates to our film.
The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight released different posters of Batman and the Joker to raise interest in the film before it is released. The Joker images in particular have stuck in peoples minds. The poster on the left shows the Joker holding up one of his Joker cards so it is the main focus. This represents the importance of the cards in the film. However it doesnt give anything away.
The Joker behind the card has a very menacing look and this is added to by the costume and use of make-up. The gloves he is wearing have connotations that he doesnt leave any fingerprints, which implies that he can never be traced. The make-up adds to this as it is covering his face. It is also quite scary and menacing with the dark eyes and blood red lips. This can be seen as a sign of danger.

The lighting in the poster is also very important as it is focused only on the main parts. The effect of it fading into the darkness is one i think we could use as it shows that this is a thriller.
The Black Swan
For our poster our idea is to just focus on Jennys face so the Black Swan poster is a good one to refer to when positioning and capturing the picture.
One thing from the poster we are going to be taking influence from is the use of contact lenses. We think that his would give it a more scary effect as she wont look ordinary, which is part of our aim for the poster.
The image itself is quite simple and people remember it becayse of that. The colours in it as well adhere to the conventions on thriller colours.

Make-up plan for poster

For our thriller Jenny is playing the part of a normal person who has a split personality, we wanted to show this by the main focus of the poster being a picture of her face close-up and the split down the middle shows both her personalities.

Left side:
The main focus of this side is her eye to make her look something out of the ordinary we are going to use a lot of smudged black make-up to give the effect that shes not in control of whats going on. This will be added too with the use of zombie-like contact lenses to further show the audience that she isnt herself.
From our poster analysis lesson we found out about the main thriller colours; white, red and grey. So we have decided to do the lips red as it has connotations of danger. This will also be smudged to add to the overall effect.

Right side:

For the right side of the face we want Jenny to look completely normal, so for this we will just use basic make-up. Mascara, natural blusher and natural lips.

Possible Film Titles

On the left is a screen shot of the top ten thriller films according to the Internet Movie Database.

I will analyse a few of these film titles, as looking at them will be helpful when we come to choose an effective title for our own thriller.

Pulp Fiction ( 1994)

The term 'Pulp Fiction' derives from the paper (pulp) magazines of the 19th century, which showcased stories mostly about people struggling with dark and powerful forces beyond their control. By the early 20th century, Pulp Fiction had launched a new genre of fantasy movies, with compelling alternative of parallel realities.

At the start of the film Pulp Fiction, this definition is shown on the screen: “pulp:” 1 – A soft, moist, shapeless mass of matter; 2 – A magazine or book containing lurid subject matter and being characteristically printed on rough, unfinished paper.
When Quentin Tarantino named his film he was implying that the story was a piece of pulp fiction, and should not be taken too seriously.

Inception (2010)

"inception" - an event that is a beginning; a first part or stage of subsequent events.
The whole story of the film Inception is about where ideas come from, and the name relates to this. For instance, the main storyline is about entering people's subconcious minds to extract ideas. Two of the main characters are asked to perform an 'Inception'; planting an idea in somebody's mind.

The meaning of the film (in particular right at the end when the audience doesn't know whether the spinning top falls over or not) is that life is a dream. You can control it most of the time but you can never really 'wake up'. I think the title is very appropriate for the film as a lot of the audience will not know the meaning of the word 'inception' (like me) and this will entice them into going to the cinema to find out. The film raises questions in the audience's mind right from the off, which is a good technique to use when marketing a film.

The Dark Knight(2008)

"The Dark Knight" - a common nickname for the DC comics superhero Batman.

The Dark Knight is the second Batman film directed by Christopher Nolan. Rather than follow in suit of other sequels (Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets, etc.) and use the word 'Batman' in every film title, Nolan instead chose to go in a different when choosing the name. Using 'The Dark Knight' was a good move by Nolan as fans of the comics were mostly the only ones who knew Batman by this name, so the fans will have felt that the film's producer's were thinking of them when making the film.

Initial Ideas

Props

These are the props that we are planning to use. The first prop we thought about was the waitress uniform. We wanted to create a uniform that the audience would recognise and relate to the character through. By using a mix of black and white it portrays that this characters has two sides to her, a light and a dark, a good and a bad side. We then thought about the car this character would drive. We chose a small, middle value car so that the audience could relate to her situatuon and it also is a believable car for a waitress to be able to afford. In one scene, we will be using a bed in which our antagonist will be seen waking up in. By doing this, the audience will again relate to this simple action, making it feel more believable to them. As our piece includes a murder, it was important to think of what weapon to use. We decided on a knife as we did not think a gun would be a believable weapon for our antagonist to use. We are are planning on using a lot of fake blood to emphasise the thriller factor of our peice and so show the violence. It will also hopefully make the audience feel uncomfortable and unnerved.

Another important prop within our play is the use of red contact lenses. We will use them to show the switch of personality within our main character. We decided on red as it hints danger and will make it obvious to the audience this character is not to be trusted.

Location

 For our opening we decided to use a beach as our main location of the thriller. It will be used when we film the antogonist washing the blood off of themselves. The idea was inspired by Cape fear by using the idea of the waves at the start as the audience doesnt know what is underneath. We also thought that it would be a good setting as the audience can relate to a beach and the area itself is quite eerie and secluded.
The beach itself is in Aldbrough in Suffolk as we wanted a quiet beach so that we wouldnt be interuppted while filming.

Some things we need to think about while filming here are the lighting, the weather and also the tide.

We also need to get confirmation on the restaurant we will be filming in as we would need it when it is quiet as we dont want to disrupt the restaurants customers.

Character Influences

Looking at antagonistic characters from Thriller and Horror films allows us to assess which kind of antagonist would be most affective in our own Psychological Thriller opening.

Damien is the main antagonist in 'The Omen'. He is the son of Satan, but is adopted by an American Ambassador to Britain and his wife. Strange and sinister things begin to happen to the family when Damien turns five, as his Nanny hangs herself at his birthday party. A series of events such as this happen throughout the film which leads Damien's father to believe he is the Antichrist, but before he can kill Damien, his father is caught by the police and killed. 

 Richard Donner who directed The Omen thought very carefully before choosing the antagonist for the film. Using children as antagonists is usually very effective, as seeing something which is supposed to be good and pure representing evil is very unsettling and scary. Damien's complexion is pasty white, in stark contrast with his jet black hair. This creates a sinister look and adds to the creepy  'knowing' expression which is always on his face.

 Damien is a successful antagonist as he succeeds in shocking and scaring the audience, his age being one of his most unsettling characteristics.

The Joker is the antagonist in 2008's 'The Dark Knight', and he was portrayed by Heath Ledger.

 The joker is a primary example of how makeup can be used to create identity within a character. The Joker's look is based on clown makeup with a sinister twist. Blacked out eyes and scars on either side of the mouth accentuate the evil nature of the character. The joker's costume is also used to shape the character. He wears a Purple suit with a green waistcoat on blue shirt, adding to the 'clown' connotations.

Max Cady is the antagonist in Cape Fear (1991) who is played by Robert De Niro. Cady is a criminal who was sent to prison for fourteen years for the rape of a teenage girl. He finds out while in prison that his lawyer for the case witheld important information from the judge which may have prevented him going in to prison. Cady then decides to go after the lawyer and his family for revenge.
One of the most imortant factors in Cady's appearance are his tattoos, of which he has many. Most of them are to do with religion, with many bible quotes written all over his body. At various points in the film certain characers remark on his tattoos, for example one character says "I don't know whether to look at him or read him!" To some people, tattoos have negative connotations to do with crime, so these along with his evil character gives people the impression that Max Cady is not a good person.

The characters in Black Swan (2010) are interesting because both the protagonist and antagonist are played by Natalie Portman. She is a ballerina who starts out being like Odette, the pure and good White Swan from Swan Lake, but through the course of the film loses her mind and becomes like Odette, the evil Black Swan. I like the idea of using contact lenses and makeup (left) to differenciate between one side of a character and another. This is something we will definitely think about using in our thriller.

Pitch/Brief

Textual Analysis of Cape Fear

The first thing we see is calm water. Although the water seems calming, the music creates a sinister feel to the opening. We are then shown the reflection of an eagle in the water along with the credits of Robert De Niro, this could be interpreted as the eagle representing the fact his character is a predator in the film. The font used for the credits is in an italic, jagged font, which relates to the harsh tones of the soundtrack. We are then shown two different eyes. The first eye looking straight into the camera with a calmness, which we assume is the antagonist. It then switches to a flickering eye which appears nervous, making the audience assume it is the victim. An unclear dark figure then appears in the water. We interpreted the use of the unclarity of this shadow resembles the way in which De Niro's character sees the world, he sees it in a different way to the rest of the world. We then linked this with the use of the calm water to represent the fact although he sees the world in a unconventional way, he believed how he sees it, is the correct way. Text reading "Cape Fear" then appears on the screen asif appearing from beneath the water. This could show the storyline of film includes water and secrets emerging from unexpected places.

Research on Psychological Thrillers

Pyschological thrillers have been said to be one of the most consistent genres for those looking for entertaining films with a twist. In pyschological thrillers, the characters do not rely on physical strength to overcome their enemies, unlike in a typical action thriller. The characters rely more on their minds. The suspense in the films often comes from two or more characters messing with one another's minds, either by playing deceptive games with the other or by trying to demolish the other's mental well being.
For the audience to completely understand the character, they are given an insight into the history behind the start of the main story plot. By doing this, it allows the audience to empathise with the character's motivations and how their past has shaped how they are now.

They are a few key themes used throughout psychological thrillers. The first being reality, characters have to often try to determine the line between reality and fantasy. An example of a film which uses this theme is The Matrix. Another theme which is often used is perception. For example, a person's own interpretation of the world around them through their senses, characters often misperceive the world around them.

Questionnaire

BBFC Research

We are thinking of aiming our thriller towards the teenage/student audience as they statistically go to the cinema more. To help us with the rating we have looked into the rating process of the BBFC.
BBFC stands for The British Board of Film Classification. The British Board of Film Classification is an independent, non-governmental body which has
exercised responsibilities over cinema for more than ninety years, and over video since 1985. They use 7 ratings to catergorise films into audience type. Below are brief outlines of each rating. We will analyse the 15 rating in more detail as this is our target rating.

The first is U, meaning 'universal', and suitable for all. Usually aimed at children and should include a positive message.

A prime example of U rated films would be Disney and Pixar, such as...
- Up
- Princess & the Frog
- Nanny McPhee
- Toy Story
- Alvin and the Chipmunks

PG stands for Parental Guidance meaning general viewing but some scenes may be unsuitable for young children. PG films are suitable for children around 8 years or over.
Parents should consider whether the film may contain scenes that may upset younger children. Examples of PG rated films are...
- Aliens in the Attic
- Leap Year
- Madagascar

The next rating is 12/12A.
12: The material is suitable only for those aged 12 and over. Works classified at these categories may upset children under 12 or contain material which many parents will find unsuitable for them.
12A: Children under 12 may go to see this film at the cinema, but only when accompanied by an adult.
Examples of 12/12A...
- Avatar
- Forrest Gump
- G.I Joe

No-one younger than 15 may see a ‘15’ film in a cinema or buy/rent a film of this rating. A 15 usually contains some strong language, violence and sexual references which are more explicit than what would be seen in a 12.
Examples of 15s:
-The Shawshank Redemption
-The Godfather
-Black swan

No-one younger than 18 may see an ‘18’ film in a cinema or buy/rent a film of this rating. An 18 contains images which viewers may find offensive or scenes which are too graphic. Most films in this category contain strong language and violence.

Examples of 18s:

-Fight club
-Pulp fiction
-The Silence of the Lambs

Importance of Title Sequences

The specifications of this course require that we include titles in our project. It is important to have titles as they speak about the movie itself before it even begins. They can range from plain backgrounds to creative animations and effects. Since the beginning of film making, text has been used to show information to the audience in silent films. Since then, they have evolved to add effect to the opening sequences. One way in which this is achieved is through the font. The choice of font can decipher what genre the film is.
One film in which uses the opening title sequence effectively to show the genre of the film is Mission Impossible 2. The opening scene is of Tom Cruise climbing a mountain. The text can be viewed as clinacalm, reflecting the fact Tom Cruise's character is seen as the perfect spy, creating an enigma. The first bit of imformation given is the "Paramount Pictures presents..", informing the audience it is a high budget film. It then goes on to list the actors in the film, emphasising the high budget of the film.

Demographic and Psychographic profiling

When starting our thriller we need to think about our target audience. This can be done by using demographic and psychographic
Demographic profiling is a method of audience research that puts people into six groups based on their job status. Producers used this to gain an insight into the type of people they can persuade them to see. However this method doesnt show much else except their job. For example a show like Skins would be placed in the E category which includes students.

Pyschographic profiling goes into more depth as it looks at the behaviour and personality triats of people. It helps when thinking about a person's viewing and spending habits.The picture below shows what we think our target group would be as we are aiming for it to be shown to teenagers.

Poster Evaluation: Inception

Analysing promotional posters from successful thriller films allows us to gain an insight into what a good poster will entail. Posters play a key role in the decision cinemagoers make with regards to going to see the film or not. They allow us, along with trailers, to paint a picture of what we expect the film to be like, (for instance, if you didn't like the poster and trailer of a film, you are unlikely to want to go and see it) so it's important to get the advertising aspect right.

The poster for Inception paints a successful pictue of what cinemagoers would expect of a psychological thriller such as this.

The photographic aspect of the poster is the most important component, and this is made clear by the man standing in the water being positioned directly in the center. The audience instantly know that this man is an important main character. In the background, there is imagery of a big city which is completely flooded with water. This makes the sub-genre of 'psychological thriller' clear to the audience along with the name of the film and the tagline.

At the top of the poster, movie star Leonardo Di Caprio's name is written in large, upper case lettering. By doing this the producers have another selling point, giving audiences another reason to go and see the film, as fans of Leonardo's will want to make the effort to go and see his latest project. Below this, there is a tagline of 'Your mind is the scene of the crime', further cementing the idea of a psychological theme to the audience. Taglines are designed to be slightly cryptic and create an enigma in peoples' minds about a film, causing people to go to the cinema to have their questions answered. The name of the film which is below the main part of the photo is red, in contrast with the blue-tint of the rest of the photo, which ensures it jumps out at the audience. Towards the bottom of the poster just under the title, there is text which reads 'from the director of The Dark Knight'. This is yet another selling point for the film as people who enjoyed The Dark Knight might want to go to see it because they liked the way he or she directed it.

All in all, this poster for Inception successfully portrays the basic structure of the film, leaving the audience with unanswered questions and an interest in the story, as well as many other selling points. When we design our film poster we will have this in mind and try to deliver our ideas in an interesting and creative way.

Learning from other openings

As part of our preparation we were shown a few of the thriller openings from other years, from these we picked up on how to make our thriller seem more realistic and what to look out for.

One main thing we learned from watching them was in terms of mise-en-scene we need to think about continuity and props. For example if we are filming over a couple of days we need to use the same costumes and props. Also in a few of the thrillers the props that were used were not realistic so it lost the effect of the thriller.This was shown by one group using a butter knife and another using a water pistol as a gun.

Another thing we realised was that a few of the ideas have been done before, like the pictures of the victim on the wall or the use of masks. In one the victim was being followed  in the forest and realistically, they would have heard the antagonist behind them (leaves crunching etc.), but in the film they didn't hear, which made everything seem quite unrealistic amd unbelievable.

Codes and Conventions

Moodboard

The images I have chosen for the moodboard are from mostly physcological and action thrillers. For our own thriller opening we are planning to do a physcological one.
The main image on the moodboard is a black and white picture of a screaming girl from the film Physco by Alfred Hitchcock. I chose this image as it shows her quite vulnerable, this was added to by Hitchcock by his idea of putting her in the shower. The image above this is from 1408, a movie based inside a hotel room. The man is pictured with very stressful body language as in the film things are happening inside the room to stop him from leaving.
The two pictures on the right using guns are from Taken and Reservoir Dogs, I think these images represent action thrillers as they show violence which could represent revenge.