What are the conventions of your chosen film genre and which aspects of trailers in this genre influence you?

The genre I have chosen for my trailer work is psychological thriller – a genre generally associated with directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and Christopher Nolan that has been very prominent in the 21^st century with films like Memento, Moon and The Prestige. These kinds of films generally rely on mystery and suspense rather than action set pieces, and I have found that as a result, the trailers are generally more taut than exhilarating and are often story/character based.

A common convention of psychological thrillers is mentally unstable characters, who provide the ‘psychological’ aspects of the genre. Sometimes, these characters are villains who are insane or sociopathic, for example in No Country For Old Men, though many psychological thrillers also feature mentally troubled main characters who can range from characters with mental conditions such as amnesia and anterograde amnesia (The Bourne films and Memento respectively) to straight out psychopaths (American Psycho). Most thriller trailers of this genre go a long way to demonstrate the psychological themes and psychologically troubled characters – for example, the first thing the trailer for No Country For Old Men does is establish the character of psychopathic killer Anton Chigurgh in one of his iconic moments, when he tosses a coin to determine whether or not he will kill someone. Memento particularly cleverly demonstrates the psychological condition of the main character, which is anterograde amnesia meaning that he cannot make new memories: the main character is seen having a conversation with someone about his condition, and at the end of the trailer he is seen having the same conversation with the same person before saying ‘I’ve told you this before, haven’t I?’ This is the kind of psychological trickery I would like to include in my trailer, as it adds depth to the story and makes you think, as well as being a slightly comedic beat.

The way most psychological thrillers build suspense is by introducing characters and ideas that are not to be trusted. Inception, an action thriller with strong psychological elements, lets the audience decide for themselves which parts of the film were actually ‘real’. Other thrillers in this style often have morally dubious, untrustworthy or unstable characters, for example the character of Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver – this character is an iconic example of an anti-hero in cinema. Zodiac, based on a true story, also introduces several different characters in the hunt to catch a killer though they are consumed by their obsessions and fail to catch the zodiac killer as a result.

Most psychological thrillers also have male protagonists and explore the minds of men, and in the vein of these films I would make my main character male. Drive, for example, is based around a fairly understated crime story though it can be said to have psychological aspects as the second half of the film begins to explore the psychotically violent nature of a seemingly mild-mannered protagonist. The trailer as a result accentuates the different and often dangerous aspects of the male protagonist’s mind: he is shown violently assaulting and beating a man in an elevator while the music that plays is calm and classical, which draws attention to the shocking violence portrayed. At the end of the trailer, he is shown in one shot walking a woman and child to their apartment out of compassion set to the same classical music, though in the next shot the music cuts out abruptly as the character suddenly shoots a man down. In this way, the trailer juxtaposes the different aspects of the main character that are introduced at different points in the film in no more than five seconds and I take the view that my trailer would benefit from this shock factor and the demonstration of the character’s psyche.

The style of many psychological thrillers is often understated – most of them do not have particularly dramatic music or visuals (though that is not to say that these two components of filmmaking are unimportant to thrillers of this style). In comparison to trailers for more action and horror based thrillers such as Prometheus, which has an intense combination of dramatic visuals and ominous music, psychological thriller trailers are fairly quiet – for example, the trailer for No Country For Old Men has little to no music and is mainly based around dialogue and presenting scenes of tension. The trailer for A History of Violence, another highly psychological thriller, uses sound effects to accentuate the tension and drama. Moon, meanwhile, uses calm piano music from the film’s score to present the daily life of the main character, while the most dramatic parts of the trailer are notable for an absence of music – at one point, when the main character comes across a clone of himself, the music abruptly and dramatically cuts out. Some psychological thrillers, and in particular the trailers for them, are highly stylized.  The trailer for The Master, for example, uses percussive and unconventional music, as well as having drawn out, slow paced camera shots such as one of Joaquin Phoenix following a car by a river and one of him walking across a street in a suit. This style creates tension simply because it is unexpected for a film trailer – most modern trailers are fast paced and build up to a finish by using increasingly dramatic music and visuals – this, however, layers lines of dialogue on top of one another which is a more unconventional way of adding drama to the story and is far more psychological, given that the dialogue itself relates to the psychological condition of the main character who is seen walking down the street while all of this is happening.

Most psychological thrillers I have seen often have complex and intricate plot lines – some feature plot twists (e.g. Fight Club) while others will have nonlinear plotlines: the main story of Memento, for example, is told in reverse chronology, while The Prestige unfolds in random order. As a result, trailers for psychological thrillers have quite a lot of storytelling to do in order to give the audience an idea of what the film will be like. Many trailers I have viewed can be split in to segments which are distinguished from one another by, for example, the use of music cues and fades to black. The trailer for Fight Club, for example, uses five or six different bits of music to describe the different plot ideas that come in to play. The voiceovers of Edward Norton’s character also mean exposition can be given to the story within the 2 minute trailer – he introduces different characters, often at the end and beginning of one of the ‘segments’ of the trailer – for example, the character of Tyler Durden is introduced when the narrator states ‘I longed for a different life… and this is how I met Tyler Durden’. This is when the music changes to become more dramatic. In this way, the film manages to emphasize certain plot points through stylistics rather than telling too much of the story, which is a highly effective method of putting together a trailer for a psychological thriller.

The structure of the trailer for Memento is also particularly clever, as it introduces the concept that the film is based on by using the different characters that the main character, Leonard Shelby, comes in to contact with throughout the course of the film. For example, he meets a character named Teddy who is first through a title card that states ‘friend’, though another appearance of him in a trailer is preceded by a title card stating ‘liar’, demonstrating the dubious nature of Leonard’s memories of the people he has met and the things he has done, a theme that is important later on in the film. Unlike the trailer for Fight Club, this trailer uses similar music cues and never modulates in tone: the distinction between these two trailers is, as a result, that Fight Club develops the themes and characters by suggesting different aspects of the story, while Memento does the same by introducing the basic plot concept. 

A graphic from the Memento trailer 

The psychological thriller genre is often based on complexity and intricate storylines – both the characters and plot present within them are often multi-layered and particularly dark. As a result, these types of films are often thought provoking and stylized in ways that make the audience ask questions as well as draw out both emotive responses from them.