The task
that I had been set with was to ensure I had made a DVD cover, script and one
film poster for a thriller film. As for the creation of these production
artifacts, I had to firstly research various posters and DVD covers pertaining
to the thriller genre whilst also engaging in research of thriller genre codes
and conventions. Before the production process began, I had researched various
film posters and DVD covers since they included different layouts and various
aspects of design that I wanted to include into my own design. For this I had created a blog post on blogger
which from there I had added various film posters and DVD covers where I had
analyzed them in an attempt to understand what kind of techniques I can use in
the creation of my own media texts.
For the
pre-production part of my coursework I had taken a huge amount of influences
from film director John Woo’s Face Off film, in which the film poster had
incorporated mysterious conventions surrounding the two figures, just as on my
poster and DVD cover, such as the use of smoke on my poster compared to the
mist effect that had been used on Face Off. This film was the most significant
film poster I had researched. I had
taken the elements used here and simply manipulated them to suit the theme,
genre and narrative of my poster and DVD cover’s film. From seeing how the poster of Face Off
utilizes the use of black and white colour codes that pertains to mystery,
death and suspense, this influenced my decision to use them as my main colours
for the design process of the poster and DVD cover. As
I had looked at most of the film posters I researched which were Face/Off,
Eagle Eye, The Roommate and The Woman In Black, all these media texts utilized
both the colours white and black as their primary colours. Since white and
black offer symbolization of mystery, darkness and suspense, I knew that these
colours were the primary colours that I was going to use for my film.
There were
some anomalies that I had to work around, which in particular was to do with
the lighting on the protagonist and antagonist’s faces for the front cover of
the DVD cover and film poster. I had the aim of them both appearing to be
sinister with dark lighting on half of their face to shroud mystery and dark
intentions shared between the two, however as I did not have the correct
technical lighting equipment to create this effect, I effectively used the
tools on Photoshop to try and replicate this effect, which I had done
successfully.
As part of
the production process, I adapted these conventions and tried to keep my poster
and DVD cover with a simplistic design, as having two faces glaring at the
consumer, these production pieces inhabit a direct mode of address which makes
the audience feel like the consumer cannot take their eyes off them if they
went on display, as this is from the eye contact made from both the protagonist
and antagonist which is there to create a relationship with the potential
consumer in order to draw them in and persuade them to go and watch the film. On the back page of the DVD cover, I added two
images of a scene in the film where the protagonist proceeds to engage with the
antagonist, as both images of them are displayed. The contrast between the placements
of these images suggests that these two are against each other and underlines the
conflict between the two, such as is the same with the image on the front of
the DVD cover and poster. The facial expression between both the antagonist and
protagonists displays the anguish that they feel between each other, which
When
deciding what style of font to use for the both of my media text artefacts, I
wanted to decide on a font that would have a sinister effect to it, but also
leave a mysterious effect. Hence why I used the white colour codes for the font
to add to the conventions of the thriller genre so the audience understands
what genre this film belongs to from an initial glance at the poster and DVD
cover. However on the contrary, initially I wanted most of the colour of the
film title font to be red, though when I had edited the font to be of a red
colour, the DVD cover and poster appeared to belong to a horror genre since the
heavy use of the red colour codes resembled blood and gore while also
symbolizing danger, violence and disembodiment; which my film tended to not
utilize those conventions. As for the font on the poster, as the main focus
when it came to the design process, simplicity was a key factor. I decided to
place font which says “He’s closer than you think” down through the middle. I
enlarged the word “closer” to generate an effect that the audience is involved
and from this phrase alone the audience is questioned as to who is “closer” to
each other (the antagonist or the protagonist).
On all of
the DVD covers and film posters that I did research, all those media texts included
star power on them in order to attract the audience.
The process
of the script creation was to outline the genre of the film through the
creation of the narrative. I had researched the script of the film Pulp Fiction
which was written by Quentin Tarantino. From my research of this script, this
gave me the guidance on how to professionally write a script including the
correct layout and the right inputs that account for example, actions or
dialogue within a script. Since I also had previous experience using the script
writing program, ‘celtx’, I knew how to input these selections to write the
script. However since I had to keep the script to a minimum at least eight
pages, it was particularly difficult to structure out the chronological order
of the linear narrative to the film when writing the script, so deciding when
to end the script, even along with the synopsis of the film’s narrative at
hand, was difficult in doing so.
In summary,
I have used most of the key conventions of a thriller to produce a poster and
DVD cover at a professional standard. One weakness that I believe I could have
improved on was using a different image for my DVD cover as it’s the same image
used on the film poster, however I think the way I manipulated them to appear
in a different way was a good option. Overall I am pleased with the outcome of
my project.
