Director Research: John McTiernan

John McTiernan is best known for creating the modern action. He has created films that are listed under  the "Modern Great" genre, such as the "Die Hard" franchise, "The Hunt for Red October", and "Predator". He has worked with big action stars such as;

Piers Brosnan,  Sean Connery,  Alec Baldwin, Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

He is most known for the way he creates a tense atmosphere throughout his films and in the way he portrays his story lines. Die Hard has been said to not only be a Box Office Smash but a genuine game-changer for the landscape of cinema.

John Mctiernan's creations have been known to have an influence on a massive number of big hollywood films in the recent years, including; "Air Force One" with Harrison Ford, "Mission Impossible" and even modern films such as "White House Down" which was released in 2013.

The way in which McTiernan changed the action scene was by altering the face of it. Before "Die Hard, action films were associated with large, supernatural stars such as Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean Claude Van Damme. But enter Bruce Willis, who plays a normal, everyday police officer visiting his wife and ends up taking on a group of terrorists, single handedly. This was the beginning of underdog victory films and changed the action genre dramatically. 

Visible Conventions of an Action/Thriller Trailer

Stars
Action/Thriller trailers are all very similar in the way that they portray their story and the method of editing used to keep the audience enticed. It usually starts out by showing the main character of the film who is usually the biggest star and is likely to be a big cause for people going to see the film.

i.e.
Fans of Shia LeBeouf would instantly be attracted the the Eagle Eye trailer as he is in the very first shot of the trailer.

 

The "End of Watch" trailer would catch the eye of Jake Gyllenhaal fans

and Mark Wahlberg fans would be enticed to watch the trailer for "Contraband".

Pace

Eagle Eye

Some trailers try to portray the action in the way that they pace the editing. For example, "Eagle Eye" starts out quite slow (Picture 1) but builds up in the middle (Picture 2), to a faster paced scene. It then rapidly declines again to a slower pace. (Picture 3)

 Picture 1

Picture 2

Picture 3

Here is a chart of the change in pace within the trailer;

End of Watch

End of Watch starts out with an introduction to the main characters. The style of the film is half cinematic and half self-documented from the perspective of the characters. Therefore the opening scene is the characters talking to a video camera, introducing themselves. (Picture 1) It then picks up, informing the viewers of previous films that the writer has created, therefore if they are true fans of the genre and have seen these films, they are very likely to enjoy the one being advertised. We then get a real idea of the characters as we see them in police uniform and being briefed with other officers, as well as loading gun equipment, all in one montage (Picture 2). The pace then begins to pick up as the plot of the film begins to unravel as they find a load of gold plated weapons in a vehicle after being shot at. The up-beat music starts and the pace increases.(Picture 3) The pace is constantly growing throughout the trailer and the intensity keeps building up with the use of music and sound effects. The very last scene is the most intense as it leaves on a cliff hanger and the viewer is left unaware of what is going to happen. (Video 1)

Picture 1 

Picture 2

Picture 3

Video 1

Trailer Analysis | Eagle Eye

Sound FX

Below are a few, of the many, different sound effects I have downloaded which are Royalty Free. These sound effects will be incorporated in to our trailer. As we will will obviously be using prop guns, we won't have the legitimate effect of sound, therefore It is required we use third-party sound effects.

Narration Style
Being an action film, we have decided that we don't want a narration from a third-person perspective, as heard on comedy trailers, more frequently in older generations. However, from my research, I have picked up that the most common style is the use in-film dialogue in order to convey the plot of the film to the audience. I have re-edited a trailer for a tv show called "Strike Back" that has the exact style I have in mind for the trailer.

Production Logo

Every film trailer has the logo's of the Production company(s) that create the film. Therefore I feel to add the effect to our trailer, I have created a small intro myself with a fictional production company, shown below. The video won't be silent in our trailer as the intro music/narrative will play over.

Target Audience

After doing thorough research into target audiences and the series of different stereotypes of todays youth, It is apparent hat although some heavily rely on magazines, music, internet etc in order to stay entertained but none of these groups are reliant on cinema.

The target audiences for action films or films in general, are very different to the target audience of music genres.  You can usually associate a person with a specific stereotype by knowing what music they listen to, i.e. Fans of Metal are likely to be very Gothic and have a dark fashion sense, where as a fan of chart music is likely to be a trend follower and have a liking mainstream pop culture. But when it comes to films, it is very difficult to stereotype it’s audience and if so, it is very generalised, such as girls liking Romantic Comedies and boys liking Action Films. That appears to be as narrow as it can get due to the widespread variety of personalities and genres.

I asked a few peers why they thought this was the case and a couple of their responses were;

“People use music as an expression, and to communicate and interact with people of the same personality as them, whereas film doesn't have that same level of connectivity with it’s audience.”


“People go to see a film usually because of the person who is starring in it, or because of the person who has directed it, it’s less of an expression and more of a following, unlike music. Like, being a fan of Judd Appatow doesn't come with its own sense of fashion or physical appearance.” 

Below are some Audience Interviews for different genre's of film, and you can see the difference in appearance and age of the interviewee's, who give their feedback on the same films.

Below is a video I have put together, interviewing a few friends who agreed that action/thriller is their favourite genre of film. I asked them questions such as their favourite action/thriller film, their favourite actors who star in this specific genre and specifically why action/thriller films take their liking.