Explore the genre and conventions of your chosen media text. How do you plan to adhere to or develop these conventions?

After analysing several movie trailers in my choses genre - Action Thriller -  I have noticed recurring themes in different trailers which are used to cause suspense and interest in the viewer. I have analysed trailers of large budget movies in order to grasp concepts of how experienced film makers advertise their film to the public as well as lower budget movies to see how suspense and interest can be spawned from viewing a production with a minimum budget. The difference between the levels of funding are noticeable, however they still share ideas and concepts in which I will hope to mimic in my trailer.


My research has led me to understand the essentials of what is required in a film trailer. An indication of the plot must be given, less the movie be entirely action packed madness (Mad Max: Fury Road), as well as indication as to what the characters are like, and which characters are involved in the production. When looking at the Suicide Squad trailer, we see shots of each individual character accompanied by clips of action and guns, telling us these characters will be involved in such violence. When indicating towards violence in my trailer, a similar technique will be used in order to demonstrate there being violence amongst my proposed characters.


Recurring techniques such as the fade to black occurs in most trailers of my proposed genre. When building suspense, these trailers begin slowly, with slow establishing shots for our viewers to understand the tone of the production and the general settings. The trailers then gradually increase in pace as the edits fade the shots directly into each other as opposed to black, this is generally accompanied by increasingly dramatic music as well as more frequent clips of violence. This technique will be copied in my trailer which I plan to do similarly - begin slow with slow music and shots - by the end - fast shots with louder music.


Audio is vital in making a trailer successful. A beginning narrative of a character discussing topics related to the film immediately tells the viewers information in which the director wants the audience to know about the movie, making the context of the trailer relevant. I plan to open my trailer with a conversation similar to that in the intro of American Gangster in order to immediately make my audience aware of the context of the film without having to do so visually. This will also allow for the audience to have a concept of my main character, which will attract them into finding out more.


Music is important to build tensions and suspense. Music which works parallel to the visual images such as in the trailer of Deadpool gives the trailer a generally more professional feeling. In my production, I will consider the music to be one of the most important factors and word hard on fitting the audio to the images.