Here is my research on crime-documentaries thumbnails which includes the development process of our documentary project's thumbnail. This blogpost is written by Rara, Audrey. However, we all discussed this together as a team.
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Here is the research for crime documentary thumbnails conducted and reported by Rara.
Starting off with an overall overview of what crime documentary thumbnails look like on Netflix
Crime documentary thumbnails stick to several conventions. As it helps show what kind of audiences it's trying to target and is the key to pulling in viewers and letting them know what to expect from the documentary's theme and style. First of all we can see that most thumbnails follow the same convention which is by showcasing the face of the main character most likely the perpetrator or victim in a very close up camera angle (direct mode of address) which helps to imply how their emotions give off a sense of secrecy or intimidation. Most of these thumbnails also have a bold/dramatic typography in bright colours (white, yellow, red) in front of dark backgrounds this ensures that the viewers can easily read the text and help convey the message that the word that is emphasised is the main subject of the documentary. Most thumbnails also use a very dark colour palette with shades of grey, black, red, deep blue in order to convey mystery, danger and seriousness.
Here are two examples that mostly peaked our interest:
Here are 2 documentaries in which the thumbnail really intrigued us which is "Ice Cold" and "What Jennifer Did". These 2 follow the typical convention of a crime documentary thumbnail, however "Ice Cold" uses a different approach which is by making it look like it came out of a newspaper and how it uses separate pieces to convey that this person's story has become well known in different news outlets and that this documentary will shine light on each person's perspective within her story allowing the viewers to not be deceived by other media outlets as they shine her on a different limelight. We liked how both documentaries have a very stylistic choice in the picture and layout which is what stood out the most for us. However we believe that creating a thumbnail similar to "Ice Cold" would be quite difficult and time consuming as for "What Jennifer Did" it wouldn't be possible for us to do as the main story of our documentary is about 2 best friends meaning we want to put 2 people as the main focus not just one.
But here is the thumbnail that we will most likely follow
Typography: The title "ICE COLD" is in big, bold, all-capitals font, a clean sans-serif typeface. White text on a dark background helps significantly in readability and gives that stark, cold feeling that agrees with the theme of the documentary. The subtitle "Murder, Coffee, and Jessica Wongso" follows in smaller font, indicating its the subheading from the main title. Typography that feels razor-sharp and stark brings out how dead serious this subject matter is.
Colour palette: Its palette is mainly shades of black, white, and gray to give that cold and sombre atmosphere. The grayscale brings in the documentary and archival feeling; it is as if we are looking at memories of the past. The blood splatters in red create a striking contrast and forthwith direct one's attention to the aspect of violence or crime. The red will add a sense of urgency and danger to the whole composition, which goes in tune with the murder theme.
Lighting and Mood: The general lighting is subduing, moody, and grainy, adding to the dark forbidding tones of the documentary. In addition to the muted lighting, the use of black-and-white photography may suggest a nostalgic, reflective feel; however, blood splatters thrown into this otherwise subdued palette introduce an element of disturbance, an indication that something truly nefarious lies beneath. Choices in lighting and mood create tension on the events that are about to unravel .
Imagery: The most prominent part of the thumbnail would be the two girls with layered photographs of them. The usage of photography would depict personal memories of when the two best friends were happy together, which would add emotional contrast to the darker elements in the thumbnail. Casual and carefree expressions in the photos, contrast with the violent connotation of blood splatter, which may indicate a tragic twist in their story. It is this conjunction of violence and innocence that stirs any viewer's mind to want to know the background information for the documentary.
This is another version of the "Ice Cold" documentary thumbnail. We as a team will mostly try to make this kind of thumbnail because it aligns with the main plot we're going for which is 2 best friends and an online boyfriend. So by showcasing pictures of the 2 best friends together it gives off the impression that they're very close but the audience will question if they're that close what could possibly go wrong.
This thumbnail however gave us the idea of making a more digitised documentary as there aren't many that do this convention. So we mostly took ideas such as the typography and the effects from this movie.
(An inspiration from a movie poster)
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Here is the development stage for the title written by Rara. I helped on deciding the typeface.
First we tried out different typographies trying to find which style fit best
However after trying all these different fonts Chelsea gave us the idea to use a font that mimicked your iPhone chat (from a movie called “missing” look at the research above). As we wanted to follow the theme of a more digitised documentary. However this idea of having a more modern/digitised realistic typography was made after we had several drafts of the first few drafts of thumbnails.
5 Finalised typography
We liked how most were easy to read and how it matched up with our iPhone chats or fonts on your phone, but what bugged us the most was how the ‘&” on the first and second examples were very off and looked too artistic.
So here is our final typography font for our thumbnail.
We decided on this font as we wanted a modern look but also incorporating that vintage style as this font is also used a lot in Instagram so it still fits our modern digitised theme. Although the title here is only shown for display of typeface, the colour, however, will be chosen and elaborated further as we discussed furthermore within the blog post.
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Here is the development of the thumbnail written by Rara and me (Audrey).
Here is the first version and first attempt of the thumbnail design. Rara and Kalista had developed this idea which would be the original template of our thumbnail.
Here, we tried to replicate polaroid pictures of the leading characters (Sasha and Clara; Victim and Murderer) which would connote nostalgia and intimacy.
The use of polaroid pictures evokes vintage vibes which is a popular aesthetic, or recurring theme in modern media texts, young adults are fond of. This will allow us to attract the targeted audience which would be young adults starting from the age of 17. The polaroid pictures also symbolises treasured memories from their friendship implying a strong bond between best friends, building an emotional connection between the audiences as it evokes their sympathy. Moreover, audiences would be more intrigued to click on our show as they might wonder what could possibly have gone wrong between the characters. Their curiosity for the juxtaposition between the warmth of friendship for a crime documentary genre as it connects to a darker message, would create a palpable tension as it creates an unsettling atmosphere.
Although, our biggest concern here is that it does not look real which subverts the whole point of the subgenre of true-crime in documentaries inhibiting authenticity implied in our narratives. It is important to show realism as it is impactful to attract an audience, creating an emotional trust which would increase the engagement between them and our documentary.
From this, to further ensure that the thumbnail connects to our documentary and is in one theme with it, we decided to explore and experiment further to create more versions and options for our thumbnail.
Here is another version created by me (Audrey).
Many of us had been drawn into this thumbnail as it was simple but impactful. The use of the filter and layering of vintage photo effects would have a similar effect with polaroid pictures which I had described earlier in the previous design. I had taken inspiration from the polaroid picture and input it here to connote nostalgia.
The layout conforms to the generic thumbnails of a crime documentary as from our research, we had found several documentaries’ thumbnails to be of a simple template, prioritising and focusing on a picture of (important) leads and the title itself. The reason for that is because it draws more attention from the audience to the leads who are keys to the events in the narratives. This simple layout was easy and quick to make.
I had tried to insert a Netflix logo on the top right corner as how crime documentaries are displayed on the official Netflix site.
By doing so, this would make it seem like a real, professionally-made documentary which is why I had decided to include this Netflix logo for the final design later on.
Regardless, I had tried developing a few more variations from this design.
#1
For the variations, I had experimented on a typeface which is discussed in the section above, however throughout the process, we hadn't decided on a fixed typeface for our title. We had developed this blogpost section beforehand. We all really loved this typeface but however our target audience were young adults and our documentary included clips of screen recordings such as calls and social media pages. This would disrupt the constant theme of digitalised media in our documentary and may also not appeal to our target audience as the typeface looks like a typewriter. It connotes nostalgia but this feeling may be evoked for older audiences as typewriters aren't common in this era. However, we kept it just to experiment before deciding on a fixed typeface.
This first variation would follow the theme of the documentary as it highlights ‘digital prints’ of the two leads. I imputed a glitched effect which connotes uncertainty and unsettling mood as it highlights malfunction and disruption which the audience may decode that there is something going on negatively between the two leads.
#2
For this case, the overall comments on implications within the connotations were the same as the typewriter typeface. Our documentary presented a more modern era (digital) of mass media which means that this ‘ripped paper’ effect isn’t really going to stand out to audiences who are most commonly associated with technologies in this era. This was also a trial which explains why the effects aren’t properly organised to fit into.
#3
This was a more simple approach that I did within the variations. I personally enjoyed this but it seems that something was missing, and I couldn’t identify what. My teammates also weren't interested in this design so we decided to discard the idea.
We came up with a couple more ideas.
The red backdrop was a default setting as I only focused on developing the main elements. This was inspired by the picture below that was suggested by Chelsea.
Here is another variation to the layout design. I had input the title to view how the thumbnail would look as a whole. I discarded the glitch effect on the background because I thought it was a bit too much for the audience which would prevent them from clicking as it may look unappealing and unprofessional. I added a shadow which may possibly connotes something darker within which may create suspense.
This was a creative idea to showcase the whole digital media theme that we had incorporated in our documentary. There were also several documentary thumbnails that used this element, a desktop or layout from computers/PC. However, it just does not look real overall and the platform that we used is also limited so we discarded this design as well.
Rara made this design and we were quite fond of the black and white theme but however it does not represent our documentary accurately as the colour grading here isn’t used throughout. This would not make a clear connection between the thumbnail and the documentary itself.
Here is another layout for the thumbnail that I had developed from the photobooth tab layout.
This idea was overall our favourite as everyone in our team likes how our 2 main characters were put together showcasing their bond. And we wanted to have our thumbnail to fit our main theme of our documentary (digital media/online) which is why the picture was shown in Macbook’s photobooth tab. The shadows added gave the same connotations from our experiment before.
Developing from the idea before, I inserted the pictures and divided them into different tabs. This was an idea we got inspired from a documentary on Netflix. The different pieces of each cat connotes that each of the cats side have its own perspective, so with this we want our audience to know that our 2 main characters have its own perspectives that clash with one another even though they are so called ‘best friends’ we want to build an image that there's something else going on in their friendship. Hence why we believe this element fits best not only for our plot but for our overall theme as again our documentary is focusing on a digitised approach.
(An inspiration we took from another crime documentary thumbnail)
Here is a variation of layout derived from the photobooth tab previously. This approach was designed and written by Rara and Audrey.
Step 1
It still gave a sense of suspense with the black background (connotes: mystery, death and evil) I also changed the glitch effect to white with a different design. I added a shadow to further emphasise the title to make it stand out but it doesn’t look good.
Step 2
So initially we didn't have a subheading as you can see from the draft above we added one on the spot because again our whole plot is about a horror that was unveiled through online suspicions and evidence.
Step 3
Then I asked for feedback for this thumbnail and Chelsea and Audrey said that the word ‘him’ was not noticeable enough. I also tried to move the text lower but then it just seems more out of place. So I tried removing the subheading from the draft but it doesn't give enough context for the audience to know what's the main plot so we decided to use the subheading.
Step 4
We then included the subheading but again having the text in a the lower portion side of the thumbnail makes it look more off and not aligned with the rest of the images/elements.
Step 5
We thought that the shadow was a bit much and that it actually makes the image look weird. Our worry was that the title could not be seen and viewed by the audience which prevented them from being interested to click on our thumbnail and engage further with our documentary. So, we tried to discard the shadow and see the results without it.
Step 6
We figured that it was still off as the audience could not read the title well from the colour. But, to conform to thumbnails of crime documentaries, it’s only acceptable and professional to use monochrome colours, or red. So, we decided to highlight the word ‘him’ to create a confusion to the audience which acts as a hermeneutic code as we don’t reveal the ‘him’ directly in the thumbnail but to falsely and purposely give a hint on the murderer/assailant. This would also keep the audience engaged and may be interested to click on the thumbnail. However, our intentions were discouraged as the red text does not make the word stand out but rather making it more difficult to read which is why we had to change it.
Step 7 (FINAL)
Here we only changed the size of the font in order for it to pop up more and can be easily read by the audience. We also decided to leave the word ‘him’ white because we changed the filter for the back picture so the white text can be more easily visible which solves all the problems we had regarding the thumbnail and leaves us the final design.
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