Ben's Blog: Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products : trailer pt. 1

Certain conventions and clichés embed themselves in the collective mind of the audience, and in the following piece of writing, I will explain how my trailer strives to become reminiscent of, whilst not mimicking, trailers of the same genre.

Beyond the mere genre of the trailer, my trailer keeps to many of the key structural points of a trailer. Throughout the trailer, certain important aspects are established. In general, a trailer must simply outline the location, in my trailer, the location is established through the clearly British accents and the recognisable London suburbs. I chose not to really turn the fact that it is based in London, due to the fact that the plot is not really affected by the fact that it is set in London, in my trailer the location is apparent and not actively demonstrated. To be honest, whilst it is Film Convention to establish setting, in Thrillers, the concept behind them often needs to be strong enough that you could set the film anywhere. Due to the fact that Thrillers, Horrors and Action Movies are in their nature, High Concept e.g. The U.S. Remake of British TV Show, ‘State of Play’ as a Political Thriller movie and the (often line-for-line) remaking of Asian thrillers such as Korean romantic Thriller ‘Siworae’ as ‘the Lakehouse’ and Chinese Crime Thriller ‘Infernal Affairs’ as the ‘the Departed’. These are all examples of a plot transcending cultural barriers, and proof that the plot of a thriller far exceeds the necessity to associate a particular culture to it. Very often in thrillers, there is some form of criticism of certain social status, for example there is often criticism of Bourgeois culture which is an area of society that appears internationally and thus the criticism retains its strength worldwide. However in certain films, such as ‘127 Hours’, the setting does essentially define the film, it provides the real centre-point of the plot. There are also films that are specifically made to portray or critique a particular culture e.g. ‘City of God’, ‘Kidulthood’ and so-called American ‘Hood Films’. My product is aimed not to be specific to British culture, it is meant to create a plot that is recognisable to a multi-national audience.