eval q 1

1. Evaluation Question 1
Liam Woodgate

3. Intro
During all stages of my coursework I had kept the conventions of both
Teaser Trailers and Thriller films in my mind during major stages of
production This knowledge came from extensive research undertaken
prior to the production stages the research was based on the
knowledge that teasers tend to have different conventions depending
on the style and genre of said trailer Throughout the research stages I
kept in mind the conventions of a thriller film the particular subgenre
that I had picked was crime thriller There is a set of conventions put to
this genre that I also identified however it came to my attention that
when combined with the restrictive nature of a teaser trailer these
conventions change for example it is unlikely that you would have a lot
of narrative within a teaser trailer as it is designed to give the audience
only a taste of what is to come as such I decided that I would only
challenge a few of the conventions of thriller teaser trailer while
keeping to the given format with others.

4. Narrative
In terms of narrative in teaser trailers I stuck with the
generic conventions of the genre. During the research
stage most of the teaser trailers that I watched were short
and to the point with no or very little narrative to go by" as
such I identified that a convention of thriller teaser trailers
was that there was a lack of narrative and they focused
mainly on visual elements in order to engage the
audiencefi I used this convention in my piece by not
revealing major story plot points and using imagery and
action so that the audience will raise their own questions
about the narrative I followed the convention because the
point of a thriller is to keep the audience on edge and fully
engaged with the piece that they are watching questions
should also be asked by the audience and not the creator
so that it is a more organic experience that stays with the
audience after watching one thing that I wanted my
audience to question was who the character with gas mask
was and through class and audience feedback I discovered
that it was one of the main questions that was asked. I feel
that the inclusion of this convention did not detract from
the overall product as it did have the desired effect on the
audience and they were able to recognise the genre and
the products status as a teaser trailer.

5. Genre conventions
another convention of teaser trailers is there focus on
action elements, this goes hand in hand with some of
the main conventions of the crime thriller genre like
elements of crime such as weapons, violence, fights
kidnapping etc. In my teaser trailer I included some of
these conventions while focussing mainly on the action
without compromising the narrative in any way I did
this by planning the shots to include one of the four
conventions that I have outlined, for example of the
ways in which I incorporated these conventions was by
having the gasmask character attacks and kidnaps a
victim type character, effectively including two of the
conventions I outlined for crime thrillers, while this
could be a major narrative plot point, it isn’t obvious
because so little of the narrative has been seen so far I
think that including these conventions for both thriller
films and teaser trailers would help appeal to the
target audience and to make a compelling piece that
would actually be interesting to watch and understand.

6. Genre conventions cont.
Another convention that I found for the crime
thriller genre was in theming" they tend to be very
dark and hit cues to make the audience
sympathise certain characters - usually the victims
that are presented. This focus on the darker
elements of crime in fiction is a part that often
goes in tandem with the focus on extreme action
or violence as it highlights the darker and scarier
aspects of crime thriller, an example of this in my
production would be the part at the end when the
gas mask character shoots a man in cold blood
despite the fact that he was begging for his life,
this highlights the darker tone that I was aiming to
create in the teaser trailer. I think that I have been
mainly successful in recreating this tradition of
dark themes in a serious crime thriller and this is
conventional of the genre in retrospect as in my
research I found that a lot of crime thrillers
feature these dark themes.

7. Impact of audience feedback
My audience feedback confirmed that I had created a
successful teaser trailer as the codes and conventions
that I used were recognised and read by the viewers, the
audience were able to identify that the video itself was a
teaser trailer. The audience feedback proved, however,
that it was difficult to see what kind of genre the teaser
was and there was some mere speculation about it. One
of my interviewees simply stated that they thought it was
horror which is a fair assumption as there is a blurry line
about the two these days. However, the audience
feedback helped to solidify that I had succeeded in the
areas that I had mentioned, they managed to identify the
conventions and the narrative style that I was aiming for.