AS Media Studies
MED3: Practical Production
Part 1: Brief
As a practical production I will be producing a movie trailer and I will be working in a pair. We will be producing multi-generic movie trailer which includes psychological suspense thriller and mystery and the trailer will be called “Slashed”. As a group we will be sharing the tasks equally so, each person in the group gets equal amount of tasks rather than just one person loaded with works.
A generic convention of psychological suspense thriller and mystery include ominous mise-en-scene, and narratives that move from equilibrium to disturbance and back to a new equilibrium. In terms of music silence can be used in this type of trailer to create tension in the audience; sudden and powerful music can be used to convey a great deal of information about the mood and the tone. Study of existing films shows the conventions used in this particular type of genre. An example of existing film includes, Scream which was directed by Wes Craven in 1996 and the plot line of this film was a psychopathic serial killer is stalking a group of teens. This film seems to be connected with the trailer as it’s about a group of friends and then they will be get eliminated by one by one by a mysterious killer. Secondly, A shot in the dark which was directed by Charles Lamont in 1935 and the plot line of this film was a college student is found murdered, his roommate and his father set out to investigate, when another student is murdered, suspicions begins to zero in on professor, but there is more murder in the future before the case is solved and this film seems to have a relation to our trailer as it seems plot the story about college students and each of them will get murdered by one by one and its aimed at similar type of target audience. Finally, The final destination which was directed by James Wong in 2000 and the plot line of the film was after having a vision of his friends crashing in a plane, he tells them not to get on only later his friends start getting killed one by one. This film also, seems to link with our movie trailer as the trailer contains story about students getting killed one by one by a killer, in this case the death itself. As a result of studying different types of films shows different types of conventions and the uses of iconography. In terms of iconography, Edward Buscombe said that “ it wasn’t terms of iconography rather than for example, narrative structure or rhythm that the dynamic of particular genres should be specified: ‘Since we are dealing with a visual medium we ought surely to look for our defining criteria at what we actually seen on the screen”. References of this quote can be found in the 2nd edition of the cinema book by Pam cook and Mieke Bernink which was published in 1999 by the British Film Institute. Iconography seems to include in films to demonstrate the recognition of narrative conventions of a film such as, mask, suburban, knives and other types of tool of the trade. This type of iconography will be used in our trailer to show the isolated quite college. Mask and a knife will be used show the narrative convention in the trailer and also, this type of iconography are used in the existing films which I have already mentioned.
