My Chosen Genre

After carrying out research into sub genres within the thriller genre and the Film Noir and Neo Noir styles I have decided on a genre for my teaser trailer. I have decided to combine the psychological thriller genre with aspects of Film Noir as I feel I will be able to create an effective trailer considering the resources I have. I have chosen to combine the psychological thriller genre with some elements of the Film Noir style as there seem to be links between the two. For example in my research on the Film Noir style I recognised themes of suspicion, disillusionment, paranoia that would also appear in a psychological thriller.

In Film Noir films there is often some sort of mystery and ambiguity which is also often the case in psychological thrillers. As psychological thrillers are often based on mental and emotional conflict and ambiguity I thought it would be interesting to use this with a Film Noir style as Film Noirs are usually based more on literal conflict eg. a death or crime. By combining Film Noir elements with the psychological genre I feel that a more modern edgy trailer would be the result.

Although I found similarities between the themes of Film Noirs and psychological thrillers I think it would be difficult to incorporate the two. Therefore I have decided to mainly use the themes and content of a psychological thriller such as deception, the mind, identity, death (though some of these themes overlap with those of Film Noirs) . However I like the idea of using a femme fatale character in my trailer, so I will use some Film Noir content here. I will then use the Film Noir style when it comes to the technical part of my trailer. This means that I will use things such as disorientating camera shots, a contrast between dark and light, and dark mysterious settings.

As mentioned before, I feel that the psychological thriller genre combined with Film Noir aspects would best suit the resources I have. For example, psychological thrillers don't often include many characters which means I wouldn't need many people to use as actors/actresses for my teaser trailer. Also, I would be able to go to an urban setting such as London. However if i wasn't able to then I could always use rooms in houses or dark alleyways which would give a more mysterious feel to my teaser trailer. The dark lighting and the chiaroscuro effect would also be easy to achieve as well as skewed camera shots to create the feeling of disorientation.

I think that the target audience for this genre would be large because it would appeal to males and females. I think the age group could range from about 15-30 as teenagers would be attracted by fear and tension of the psychological thriller genre whilst the older side to the audience may be attracted more to the Film Noir elements as they may be able to relate it to Film Noirs they've seen previously. The fact that my teaser trailer may appeal to a wide audience in terms of age and gender means that it could be easier to include elements in the trailer that relate to the whole audience. However a poster and film magazine front cover including my film may be harder to create in order to appeal to the whole audience. Therefore I shall carry out research on thriller posters and film magazine covers to try and investigate how they appeal to a wide audience.