Generic Conventions of the Film Poster

Having looked at several film posters, there are several conventions particular to the thriller/horror genre.

• Colour Scheme - Predominantly red, white, and black, because of the connotations of danger, blood, passion, violence, purity, etc.
• Title - Usually in the bottom third, uses a very large font to draw attention to it. Often in red, although sometimes white on a black background to make it stand out.
• Key Actors - In larger films, these are a way of guaranteeing an audience for the film, so you want to sell this to the viewer. As such these are usually at the top of the screen. This can also include famous directors or other creative crew members, e.g. "from the director of..." or even sometimes "from the producer of..."
• Images - usually one image taking up the whole background, almost always of one of the stars of the film. There will often also be one or more smaller photos in the frame, such as the silhouetted figure in front of Cameron Diaz above.

• Slogan - This varies, but usually in the top two thirds of the poster will be a 3 or 4 word slogan to sum up the film. 
• Release Date - Often placed right at the bottom of the poster, the release date will often be highlighted in some way, either being slightly bigger, bolder, or in a different colour to the surrounding billing block.

Shot List

Here is the first draft of our shot list - we used Celtx's script tagging feature to start and then filled in more shots as and when we needed them. This is of course a working document and the copy below is not final.

Script, First Draft

Here is the first draft of our script. We use Celtx, an online script writing and production management software, to make our script look like the real thing. We will also be using this to create our shot list.

Questionnaire Results

Below you can see the results from our questionnaire

1. A large majority of the people who answered were in the 15 - 24 age range, which suggests that this will be the most common age range in the audience of our film. This means we should attempt to target it to this age group
2. We managed to get a very even split between women and men which is very helpful as it gives a blackened perspective and me hope to target or film to both females and males
3. The most popular genre of film was thriller, followed by drama. This works well for us as we plan for our film to begin off as a drama but over time progress into the thriller genre
4. The most popular aspect of a trailer was the cinematography followed by the music choice so we will attempt to put most emphasis on these features of our trailer when in production 
5. Here we have all variety of different aspects that we could get inspiration from to use in our film, such as
• Music choice
• Not revealing too much of the film
• Using colour to represent the mood
• Mixture of longer shorts and high editing speed
• Cinematic locations

Recce

We went on a recce and made a short film of our location shots to give some more depth to the location on screen and see if they worked out. This helped us to find locations for most of act one of our trailer as well as a bus stop and an alleyway.

Generic Conventions of the Trailer

Production Information

• Trailers regardless of genre show the production companies' logos, for a higher budget or mosaic-funded film there can be more than one. This is usually fairly early on in the trailer. This is done because audiences for production companies will be similar across films. For example Pixar released Cars 3 earlier this year - next year their tentpole production is The Incredibles 2, a much-awaited sequel to the 2004 family hit. Audiences for the Cars film will likely want to see the Incredibles 2 so displaying the Pixar logo during both the Cars film and the Incredibles trailer will show the audience that this is a similar film and that they will likely enjoy it.

Film Title

• Almost always appears at the end of the film, in large, distinct font. This tells the viewer a lot about the film genre - A thriller title will follow the general thriller convention of white, red, and black, while an action title will likely be accompanied onto the screen with some form of explosion or special effect, with a dramatically large title and an overly dramatic voice announcing the text as it appears.

Plot

• Trailers try to give the audience an indication of the plot without giving too much away. This is a fine line however, as too little plot will be seen as boring and too much plot will reveal too much of the story. Good trailers usually contain the funniest, most visually stunning, and scary parts of a film without giving the whole thing away.

Famous Actors

• Much like the poster, trailers will place their most famous stars at the top, in the first scene. This can be seen in almost every trailer. Their names will be displayed in large font across the trailer as well, to bring more attention to it.

Character and Costume

Above you can see a powerpoint I have made to plan the characters and costume that will be involved in my film.
I have decided since making it to replace the Aunt character to with the father of the girl but have chosen to leave the Aunt in here to display the development and changes made to my initial idea during the planning process.