Rick Altman Genre Theory (1999)

Genre offers audiences 'a set of pleasures'

Emotional Pleasures - The emotional pleasures offered to audiences of genre films are particulary significant when they genreate a strong audience response.

Visceral Pleasures - Visceral pleasures are 'gut' responses and are defined by how the film's stylistic construction elicits a physical effect upon its audience. This can be a feeling of revulsion, kinetic speed or a 'roller coaster ride'.

Intellectual Puzzles - Certain film genres such as the thriller offer the pleasure in trying to unravel a mystery or a puzzle. Pleasure is derived from deciphering the plot and forecasting the end or being surprised by the unexpected.

Our Teaser Trailer relates to the 'Intellectual Puzzles'. One of the conventions of a teaser trailer is the 'mystery' that it holds for the viewer. The purpose of the film is to help the viewer 'unravel a mystery or puzzle', and so throughout the whole film the viewer will understand and establish the majority of our plot.

Final Poster Design

After deconstructing existing posters, designing our own posters and developing our draft, this is our final design of our poster.

We have changed various aspects of our draft in order to develop and finalize our poster design: 

- We have changed the tagline, 'Innocence is no excuse', to Italics. This represents and reflects the characters' movement and action 

- We have lowered the title 'Arcane', as we could not find any existing action thriller posters that did this 

- Audience feedback suggested that the target was too faint, and so we increased the intensity and thickness of the line

- We also enclosed the target more so it appears more focused on the main character i.e the protagonist

- We altered the tagline font, and made it to plain white Arial in capitals 

Current Action-Thriller Film Research

In order to understand the modern market for action-thriller style films, we have researched any new releases of this genre.  By analysing the main themes in these films, we have established a trending concept that we can subsequently integrate into our own teaser trailer.

Here are a number of the films we have researched, and a small break down of their key themes next to each:

‘Resident Evil: Retribution’ (2012) - Action, Adventure, Horror, Thriller – virus attacks Earth’s population/ heroine is the human race's last and only hope/ hunts for those responsible for the outbreak/ must fight to survive.

‘The Bourne Legacy’ (2012) - Action, Adventure, Thriller – top secret government program/ intends to wipe out all the genetically modified killers it created/ protagonist must flee in order to save his life.

‘Haywire’ (2012) – Action, Thriller - female covert ops specialist/ hunted down/ discovers she has been double-crossed by someone close to her in the agency/ strikes back.

‘Safe House’ (2012) - Thriller, Action, Adventure - young CIA agent/ tasked with looking after a fugitive in a safe house/ safe house is attacked/ forced to go on the run with his charge.

‘Act of Valor’ (2012) - War, Action, Adventure, Thriller - mission to recover a kidnapped CIA operative/ unexpectedly discovers imminent global threat/ elite team of Navy SEALs must embark on a secret operation.

‘Premium Rush’ (2012) – Action, Thriller - bike messenger picks up an envelope/ attracts the interest of a dirty cop/ pursues the cyclist through Manhattan.

‘Jack Reacher’ (2012) – Action, Thriller – gunman takes five lives/ evidence points to the suspect in custody/ suspect blames the man Jack Reacher/ Jack Reacher investigates the case himself.

‘Contraband’ (2012) – Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller – former drug smuggler/ needs to protect his brother-in-law from a drug lord/ sets out to bring back some counterfeit currency.

‘Man on a Ledge’ (2012) – Action, Crime, Thriller - police psychologist/ tries to talk down an ex-con who is threatening to jump from a Manhattan hotel rooftop/ the biggest diamond heist ever committed is in motion.

‘Now You See Me’ (2013) – Action, Thriller - FBI agents/ track a team of illusionists who pull off bank heists during their performances/ reward their audiences with the money.

‘Alex Cross’ (2012) – Action, Crime, Mystery, Thriller - homicide detective/ pushed to the brink of his moral and physical limits/ attempting to track down a serial killer who specializes in torture and pain.

‘Taken 2’ (2012) – Action, Thriller - retired CIA operative Mills/ he and his ex-wife taken hostage/ culprit is the father of a kidnapper Mills killed while rescuing his daughter.

‘The Company You Keep’ (2012) – Political, Action, Thriller - former Weather Underground activist/ journalist discovers his identity/ forced to go on the run.

‘Assassin’s Bullet' (2012) – Action, Drama, Thriller - unknown vigilante/ begins killing high-priority terrorists/ former FBI field agent brought in/ ordered to discover the identity of the assassin.

‘Cleanskin’ (2012) – Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller - British secret service agent/ ordered to kill a British-born suicide bomber and his terrorist cell.

‘Zero Dark Thirty’ (2012) – Action, Drama, History, Thriller - female CIA operative/ pursues leads to uncover the whereabouts of Al Qaeda's leader/ in 2011 U.S. Navy SEAL team is sent to kill or capture Bin Laden.

‘Riddick’ (2013) - Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi, Thriller – Riddick betrayed and left for dead/ fights for survival against alien predators/ bounty hunters try to find him/ Riddick unleashes an attack of vengeance.

‘Welcome to the Punch’ (2013) – Action, Adventure, Crime, Thriller - former criminal/ forced to return to London/ gives detective one last chance to catch him/ uncover a deeper conspiracy they both need to solve in order to survive.

‘Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters’ (2013) - Action, Comedy, Horror, Thriller - Hansel and Gretel/ vigilantes/ hell bent on retribution/ unknowingly become the hunted.

‘The Hunger Games: Catching Fire’ (2013) - Action, Adventure, Thriller - Katniss Everdeen/ returns home after winning the 74th Annual Hunger Games/ must embark on a Victor's Tour/ senses that a rebellion is simmering/ the 75th Annual Hunger Games is about to begin.

‘Safe’ (2012) - Action, Adventure, Crime, Thriller – former elite agent/ Russian Mafia murders his family/ he rescues a Chinese girl/ they are pursued by the same gangsters, corrupt New York Police and the Triads.

The main concept that we wish to adopt from these current action-thrillers, is the idea that our protagonist has to fight to survive.  Just like in the films ‘Premium Rush’ and ‘Safe’, our main character is forced to go on the run, when he is pursued for something in his possession.  Then similarly to films such as ‘Haywire’ and ‘The Bourne Legacy’, our protagonist’s adversary is the government itself.  This consequently sparks debate in the audience about the morality of the authority's actions.

Storyboard: Version 1

Below is an image of our completed storyboard (first version), a clear guide as to how we should go about shooting our desired trailer.

Questionnaire Results

We collaborated all of our research up to now to compose a questionnaire.

We conducted a questionnaire and received feedback from 30 of our target audience. We then put these results into a video which can be seen below.

More Genre Research

After looking at Conspiracy Thrillers, we searched YouTube for influence.
Whilst scouring YouTube, we have found a rather amusing clip that links into our genre of "Conspiracy Thriller" and have uploaded it below for future reference..

We also found this video concerning Wikileaks and Australian protestors which was uploaded in 2010, and just shows the continuing influence of Wikileaks and the issues concerning freedom of speech.

Conspiracy Thriller

We were originally planning on doing an Action Thriller, as shown in our research with Film Examples, we mostly looked at Codes and Conventions of an Action Thriller (here), but after rethinking our plot, we realised it contained more conventions of a Conspiracy Thriller. A Conspiracy Thriller generally has a protagonist unravelling a conspiracy, having a character in danger, and there are many different themes that build up tension to unveil the conspiracy. Examples of Conspiracy Thrillers include The Bourne Identity and Enemy of the State.
The Bourne Identity trailer can be seen here and Enemy of the State here.

Examples of Films

We looked into existing Thrillers which can act as inspiration for our Teaser Trailer. We found the need for this after looking at Codes and Conventions of a Thriller and Timeline of Thriller Genre.

Timeline of Thriller genre

The image below shows a timeline of key events and films within the Thriller Genre. This helps us narrow down what we need to focus on and gain inspiration from the greatest films. This links with our research on Codes and Conventions of a Thriller post.

Timeline of Thriller Genre

Codes and Conventions of a Thriller

After looking at Codes and Conventions of a Teaser Trailer and deciding upon a Genre, we found the need to research the codes and conventions within this. We used both the internet and watched some of the thrillers ourselves to find some patterns and made a poster (below) to show what we found out.

Codes and Conventions of the Thriller Genre

SoundCloud

We are currently considering using a soundtrack to overlay our teaser trailer, as this seems to be a common trend in current film marketing.  After researching music sharing sites such as ‘MySpace’, ‘Last.fm’ and ‘8tracks’, we have recently discovered the website ‘SoundCloud’. 

As mentioned in our ‘Problems and Solutions’ post, SoundCloud is an online audio distribution platform which allows the ‘collaboration promotion and distribution of audio recordings by users’.  It was founded in 2007 by sound designer Alex Ljung and artist Eric Wahlforss, and has since accumulated over 20 million users (growing by 1.5 million every month).  On SoundCloud we have found a number of potentially useable soundtracks available for free download, with permission from the creator to adapt and publish them.  This tool may save considerable time during our project, as our group does not have the ability to compose and create our own professional sounding music.