By Matt Everatt

For my main production I had to do research into trailers as well as teaser trailers to gain more knowledge related to the thriller genre.

For this I used the internet through various websites such as YouTube and IMDB (Internet Movie Database), I had to look at different styles of thrillers to find conventions I could incorporate into my main production.

I have found that my main production did use some of the different types of conventions.

The types of convention my production does include are:

Linear motive of start, middle and end, I think my trailer does follow this type of convention however in most thriller trailers today consist of multiple scenes that bounce from one thing to the other my main production could also be seen as challenging this type of convention, because my product does a hold a linear sense of start and middle but it doesn’t actually reveal an ending the audience could go on.

Another convention thrillers usually have is the build up too a dramatic ending which ends on a cliff-hanger which keeps the audience guessing what will happen next eventually drawing them more and more into wanting to watch the film. I used this convention towards the ending of my teaser trailer and to some aspects i do challenge this by adding a text transition of ‘ but will his secret come to light?’ this could actually work on my target audience wanting to know more about my main character which will in time draw them in more and more.

A final convention I challenged on my media production was the sense of realism because some thrillers today have something to do with supernatural life with films such as ‘Freddy vs. Jason’ however there is one film trailer I did find what showed realism which was ‘Obsessed’ which is based upon a woman who gets so infatuated by this man she ultimately becomes a stalker to him and threatens him when he tells her to stop. I challenged this realism shown because my production followed a love theme but of the couple splitting because of no apparent reason shown to my target audience which again draws them in to want to see my film.

For my movie poster I first had to do some research over posters related to the thriller genre my poster overall I found was my most effective piece, because I wanted to try to create a movie poster that would draw on my target audience so after researching I found that most posters of the thriller genre had a dark background, I used this type of convention but with a pure black background.

Because I wanted to portray a poster that showed secrecy and insecurity I used a dark red text colour which done correctly appeared to my target audience at one angle as just a plain black screen but when seen from a different angle they were easily capable of reading it which added to the secrecy.

Another concept I challenged was with most poster was a sinister character in the background of the photo, I challenged this by using a photograph of the main characters cuddling each other which could show a romance genre as well as the thriller genre in a kind of hybrid also I didn’t show any sinister character at all in the main photo.

Overall I find that I have included quite a few conventions and challenged them in some way, also with my media texts I used products which are real life products used which shows if they were ever properly distributed and released I could follow a genre given to a certain extent.

If I were to do more media products in the future I would do more research to gain more knowledge and understanding thereby increasing the quality of my products and adding/challenging more conventions.