Genre Analysis.

In order to produce our coursework film we needed to think, deeply, about what genre we could successfully do. Each group member had their own ideas and got carried away in respects to thinking too far ahead. Luke McAdams and I came up with, what we thought would create a thrilling horror, we suggested going to a heavy woodland area like Hainault Forrest and having a girl running, being chased through the trees and the camera running after them giving a point of view aspect from the person chasing the her. We then told Mr. Lawes about our plan and he advised us that doing a horror will be difficult as we do not have access to certain props and special effects that we would need to generate a good film of that genre. We took this into consideration and decided we would not work with in that field. During one of our lessons we were influenced by a presentation and started to look at a romantic comedy film. Our homework that day was to go home and collect some films of the genres we are interested in using for our coursework. The group spoke outside of the lesson and discussed that a romantic comedy was a popular choice within our class and we wanted to do something different, therefore we brought in films that fit a romantic comedy, comedy and action/adventure. These were the genres we wanted to research to help us make a final choice.

The next lesson we each brought some films in of these genres and analyzed their opening sequences. The first film we watched was ‘Shes all that’. This film was a romantic comedy which opened with a montage of a female character doing some art work, the titles we colour coded with the colours in the art work, the film title letters formed from animated paint splats on the screen. There was also loud, young, ‘beaty’ non-diagetic music playing all the way through the first few minutes, quieter in some parts of the film where there was dialogue. Out of the four films we watched this was the only one with a montage. The second film we watched, ‘The Bucket List’ made us stop and think for a while because we didn’t know what genre(s) it came under so we watched the first 10 minutes and decided that it could be a comedy as there were a few little parts of the film that made us giggle. That was the only genre we categorized this film with because it was a sad film yet funny however it had slight moments of action in it as well but we thought comedy was the main theme. What I liked about this film was that you could tell who the main character was because there was monologue at the beginning; this was the same in the third film, ‘Guess who’. ‘Guess who’ was another romantic comedy which unlike the first, ‘She all that’, had a voice over at the beginning which indicated another main, male character. After watching the first few minutes I would have thought the non-diagetic music would have been soft instead of a fast, rap style song, especially when there’s a romantic gesture in the shot. The last film we watched was just a comedy, we thought as we started to look at romantic comedies we should see how comedy is shown. However this film, ‘Bill & Ted’ opened with a strange, Sci-Fi, racy music which then made us think whether it comes under a Sci-Fi genre as well and comedy.

After watching these four films and getting a structured idea of how these genres can be shown I have come to like the idea of having a monologue at the beginning of the film because it automatically introduces a main character without you even seeing them. This then allows you to bring in other characters without them appearing to take the lead role.