Report

Report

I worked alone to create a script, poster and DVD cover for a thriller that was supposed to be aimed at a teen audience, which would be from the age of 15-20 as my movie is rated 15. I put a lot of thought into the age rating of my movie and conducted research to make sure I choose the appropriate rating. My movie is called “Love –M”, it’s a thriller with sub-genres of romance and friendship throughout. The romance included is likely to attract more females to watch it, which is specifically why I tried to make the poster and DVD cover appeal to both genders.

For my pre-production I carried out research and looked at many thriller posters and DVD covers to discover what the key codes and conventions are for the thriller genre, to help me with my production. It was immediately clear that the colour code for thrillers is black, white, red and hints of blue. For example, the “Shutter Island” poster has the conventions of a thriller as it includes a picture of the protagonist in low lighting, which creates a more mysterious atmosphere. The title of the movie is in red, and so is the month it is coming out, these are the only two things in red; this is purposely done as they are important pieces of information that need to be remembered by the audience. The image of the island, ties in with the movie title to give the audience a little bit more information about the storyline. On my poster, the title and “coming soon” are also the only images in red, as I thought this will catch the audience’s attention. I also used the idea of the protagonist being in low lighting, as I think this intrigues

the audience by making it more mysterious which should make them want to find out more. The poster of “Gone Girl” has a central image of the protagonist standing backwards, with his head turned toward the side so that you can’t see his full face. I liked the idea of this as it doesn’t reveal much to keep the audience curious; therefore I took a picture of the protagonist in my movie in the same position and put it as the central image of my poster. 

The image below is of my first attempt in creating the poster:

 I wanted the central image to be a silhouette because the audience isn’t supposed to know who the image is of, but once I created it and saw what it looked like I immediately realised that it needs to be a real photograph of someone as that would look much better. This is my final poster:

 The images on my poster and DVD cover were created to appeal to a teen audience of both genders, this was difficult as males and females often like different genres and have contrasting ideas and preferences. This is why I didn’t want my production to reveal too much about the movie, I want the audience to have the freedom to be curious as this should attract them to watch the movie. My central image is in very low lighting to create a sense of mystery and secrecy. The background is filled with notes to give the audience a further insight into the storyline, yet not revealing much at the same time. I think this will appeal to a teen audience as teens often do pass notes around to each other, but also some of the messages could be similar to ones that some teenagers might receive online as part of cyber-bullying or blackmail. This might make them feel relatable to the movie.

In comparison to other thriller movie posters and DVD covers, “Love –M” follows the typical colour scheme of black, white and red; with the red being specifically used to make all the important information stand out. However, the central image of most thriller posters and DVD covers is a picture of the protagonist; this is seen on the “Black Swan”, “The Guest” and “American Psycho” posters as well as many more.

In spite of this I decided to make my central image very dark with only a side view of the characters face, as this created a much more inexplicable style. Furthermore, the fonts used for the title of movies are usually bold to make it eye catching, as seen in the poster of “Hard Candy”. But I decided not to follow this feature as I thought it would be more suitable if my title looked informal and was in a handwriting style, since the title is what is written at the end of every note in the movie. However the title is a darker shade of red, which makes it stand out anyway.

The notes on the poster and DVD cover were created by me to make them appear more realistic. My DVD cover follows the same conventions as other DVD covers of thrillers; it has a dark colour scheme with just a few images at the back. When writing my blurb for the back cover of the DVD, I was trying to make it interesting to make it appeal to a wide audience. The image below is of my final DVD cover:

Overall my final production of my poster and DVD cover to “Love –M” had similar key codes and conventions to other thriller posters because it needs to be clear to the audience what the genre of the movie is. I think I’ve included all of the features that are needed on posters and DVD covers to make it look professional. Although, I think if I actually wrote out the notes in the background and took pictures of them, the poster and DVD cover would have looked better as they’d appear more realistic. Additionally, I could’ve taken more interesting images for the back of my DVD cover to attract people to watch it.