The Psychology of the Poster.

The main features of psychological thrillers are: character fears, guilt, beliefs, eerie sound effects, relevant music and emotional instability to build tension and further the plot. Another aspect of psychological horror is its use of body horror. The purpose is to develop a feeling of unease by playing on human fears of the abnormal, human experimentation, disease and suffering.

These are a few posters of psychological thrillers:

Paranormal Activity has a black and white image of a couple in bed huddled together pointing towards a shadow on the open bedroom door. The image has a time on the bottom right which is portraying that the couple are being watched. It has a quote from the premiere of the film from a newspaper or critic saying its "one of the scariest films of all time." The title of the film is in red which stands out against the black on white writing surrounding it, it is a larger font and the letters are well spaced making it easy to read. The font of the white writing looks like a typewriter and at the bottom is in capitals portraying that it is an important statement for the film and is meant to make the audience think before and after the film.

The Ring poster has a white glowing ring of light surrounding the white child like handwriting title the lower case lettering with large spaces between the letters. The white on black is a well known convention of psychological thriller films. "BEFORE YOU DIE, YOU SEE" is in capitals to create suspense they have offset the writing to make it more scary and to look like a reflection. The shape of the ring is the shape of the moon and by having it still glowing looks like an offset ofan eclipse which would lead to complete darkness which plays on peoples fears of anything coming out of the darkness.

The Butterfly Effect poster has the protagonist male and his love interest taking up the alloted space. The lighting is blue tinted with more emphasis on the male as the female is facing sideways of the camera. There is a reflection in the males left eye making it stand out and it contrasts the light pale colours of the faces.  The names of the actors on the poster are written in white across the top in capital letters. The title is in red signifying blood, lust and romance. The letters vary in size which is effective because it is confusing hence following the ideas from the film.

Dial Hitchcock for Thriller.

"Unquestionably the greatest filmmaker to emerge from these islands, Hitchcock did more than any director to shape modern cinema, which would be utterly different without him. His flair was for narrative, cruelly withholding crucial information (from his characters and from us) and engaging the emotions of the audience like no one else." - Daily Telegraph, 2007

Alfred Hitchcock was an English filmmaker who produced some of the most suspenseful and intense psychological thrillers in all cinema, also dabbling in silent films establishing himself as a truly great director through the early stages of talkies. He became an American citizen in 1956 when he moved to Hollywood and produced his vast back catalogue of films through 1921 - 1976, an inspiring and prolific career.

He described his childhood as sheltered, plagued by his obesity and loneliness and inspiring many of his films. After caught misbehaving by his father, he was sent to the local police station with a note to lock him up for 10 minutes. He was treated with distance and a strictness by his parents - made to address his mother from the foot of her bed, and sometimes forced to stood for hours and his father tragically died at the age of 14 - a memory amongst others which inspired the character of Norman Bates in his magnus opus, Psycho.

His films always included unexpected twists and thrilling plots, laced with violence, murder and sex and he became notorious for pushing the conventions of every genre he dabbled in. Hitchcock also liked to make cameos in his films in all his films, for example trying to get a double bass onto a train.

“Psycho” Produced in 1960 on a controlled budget of $800,000, shot in black-and-white and considered his greatest masterpieces. The exceptional violence of the infamous shower scene, the early downfall of the heroine, the innocent lives ended by a disturbed murderer were copied in many subsequent horror films.

“The Birds” Inspired by a Daphne Du Maurier short story combined with an actual news story about a mysterious infestation of birds in California, this was Hitchcock's 49th film, released in 1963. The scenes of the birds attacking included hundreds of shots mixing actual and animated sequences. Therefore some of the conventions we follow today come from Hitchcock and the 60+ films which he directed.

TRAILER:The Killer Inside Me

Code breaking.

Dealving further into our genre, I found this article on the Guardian film blog about a new psychological trailer by Darren Aronofsky, called the Black Swan, starring Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis as two rival ballet dancers. I love the fact that simply by having it set in the decadent world of ballet and performing, it is already breaking the conventions of it's genre - ballet being an unusually glamourous and stereotypically feminine backdrop in comparison to the generally more male and urbanized settings of psychological thrillers e.g. derelict buildings, busy cities etc. - though when considered the world of dance and ballet is just as pyschologically intense, if not more so, than many others. Perhaps having their psychological thriller in such an unconventional setting will have changed their whole handling of the genre itself - instead of a faster and more abrasive thriller, maybe they will have handled in a more fragile and tender way, more gracefully to be fitting to grace of the ballet itself? I'm in love with this idea of setting our own thriller - something we'd originally foreseen as very gritty and underground, to somewhere completely uncharacteristic and innovative, glamourizing our thriller as it were. The trailer isn't a teaser and elements of the narrative are revealed, but I'm still finding the narrative hard to decipher - which the article discusses, could it be mental illness it's toying with or are there elements of the supernatural, as some scenes suggest? There doesn't seem to be too much of a buzz around it and I can't seem to find any sort of promotional website for it but I will be interested to see the teaser trailer, and the actual film, when it's released.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/aug/18/black-swan-natalie-portman-trailer

NOT QUITE A TRAILER: Alexander Wang

This is the new Alexander Wang Fall Winter Ad Campaign, created with British fashion photographer Craig McDean - though of course not a trailer, I've been something of inspired by it, the composition of the high fashion against dilapidation, the glossy and new, against the old and dirty and aswell, the complete abandonment incorporated through the whole thing, that the whole thing is on the edge and at an end - I think it's very eerie and slightly pscychological to watch. I love the rough handheld camerawork and the lighting too - having it focussed centre screen almost unnaturally bright and the edges being dimmed, the fast and pacy, but altogether messy and erratic editing and I particularly love the paper being strewn about in the wind - it reminds me of natural disasters - tornados and twisters with everything recklessly flying about, and I imagined the complete vanity - or apathy - of the model to keep desperately clinging to her own beauty and fashion and to keep posing amid catastrophe and potentially the end of her world.

TRAILER: The Strangers

Trailer Deconstruction

Within this trailer, I really liked the way they conveyed the idea of being watched through the use of the non diegetic camera clicks and the use of a projector show reel. It gave it an interesting old fashioned feel through the jitteriness of the picture. This intensified the tension within the trailer through the quick editing.

I feel it is a good trailer to take influence from as it shows that just through special effects and editing, we can easily make simple camera shots seem effective in creating a type of mood to scare the audience.

The use of whispering combined with an eerie airy sound within the trailer works extremely well at intensifying the mounting tension within the film. It makes it creepier than simple silence, as it is more foreboding and realistic to real life.

There is also an interesting shot that would be good to take influence from where the word 'killer' is written in blood on glass. I like the way the glass is made to look realistically scratched and the positioning of the word on screen means that through the quick editing, the audience is able to see a flash of it, just enough to leave them intrigued.

TRAILER: Number 23

Media Meeting Number 1

Today we got together for a meeting to discuss our storyline and important things we felt needed to be considered. 


We created a spider diagram of proposed storylines, general ideas of what we would like to see within our teaser trailer and what we felt was important to include. We looked at things such as:

• storylines and overall themes
• location (including some set ideas)
• interesting editing we wished to include
• important codes and conventions
• films that follow the same idea and capture the idea and type of storyline
• Interesting scenes we would like to include
• Sound and the importance of it within our trailer

The general conclusion to our meeting today is that we would like to look further into the concept of obsession, surveillance and the idea of being watched or stalked. 

We also discussed research that we could do to further this proposal, such as looking at related teaser trailers and finding any related articles.

Overall it was a very successful meeting and we hope to have another soon to discuss our findings.