Coursework Report:

The topic of the coursework i have been set is Teen Thriller films, the 'teen' being the audience, the 'Thriller' being the genre and Film being the type of media. For my production i had choices to choose from including print based or visual/audio production, In the end i decided to go for print based which is a DVD cover front and back and also a film poster, both being on the topic set.


The Research i have been doing on Thriller film posters and DVD covers  have given me a greater understanding of what to do for  my production, an example i have looked at when getting ideas for my Poster was Inceptions poster. This poster has dark and dull colours mainly consisting of black and blue and grey, however the title which is in red is made to stand out, so when i create my poster i could use dull colours and a title which stands out to add an affect, and another thing that poster and DVD covers do is put names of the character running along the top of the cover, this is done to take up less space on the cover whilst standing out. to sum up briefly Thriller posters are meant to create suspicion and mystery to lure in people to watch the film, so the poster i create must be exciting and create suspense.


When researching the target audience this was fairly easy as i am the target audience and i already know what teenagers are into when it comes to thriller films. When it comes to thriller films for teenagers, it will normally be a sub genre of a thriller, and a sub genre is almost a split between two or more genres, and in this case for teens it is usually a horror thriller or and action thriller. The research that i did was for a horror thriller. Silence of the lambs is an old thriller/horror film that could be aimed at teenagers as the horror gives teenagers a sense of thrill and this horror comes with gore and most teenagers think of gore to be in most thriller films to date. The difference between a thriller and horror can be very easily mistaken, however from the two poster 'Inception' and 'Silence of the lambs' you can tell that a thriller isn't as dark and uses more than three or four colours, and horrors stick to a simple yet effective two colours one for the background and one for the main image as shown in the poster above, however both thriller and horror posters have an effective title this is that when the targeted audience see the poster they can remember the films name from its effective colour scheme. To briefly sum up the teen target audience for a thriller it is usually gore and jump scares that intrigue teenagers to watching horror thrillers, or lots of action, guns and crime that attract action thrillers. There are obviously other different types of sub-genres but these are the main to that teenagers are into.

To conclude, i think that when creating my print based spread i will need to take into mind the research that i have undertaken and also need to bear in mind my target audience and how my production should mainly be aimed at teenagers, and also what teenagers like to see in a thriller DVD cover or poster and how it lures them into watching the film other movie posters do. The definition of a thriller is 'extraordinary things happening to ordinary people'.