Choosing Genre PT 1.
I got it. I got my project's genre. I didn't think I would get here without excessive overthinking, but sometimes life just chooses to surprise you!
What is genre?
Why does genre matter?
SOOOO, what is genre?
Genre is a categorization of specified artistic pieces, in this case, movies, that are all characterized by similarities in style, form, and content. The word "genre" is the universal term used for various art forms, like music or visual art, and is an idea that can be broken down into multiple parts. Some may break up a movie for example into its characters, story, plot, and setting. All movies under a certain genre uphold specific genre conventions or similarities within that genre, that differentiate movies from one another.
Okay that's cool! But why does it matter...
Genres, specifically in film, have a major significance when dealing with audiences and storytelling. For starters, representing a movie with a specific genre helps audiences create an expectation of what they will be watching, due to traveling genre conventions. Audiences will have an expectation of what they will see and how they will feel when watching a specific genre, for example, when someone watches a horror movie, they walk into the theater with an anticipation of getting scared. If this expectation isn't fulfilled, then the audience will walk out of the theater unsatisfied, negatively affecting the movie's reviews and profits. In addition, genres play a massive role for storytellers. When a filmmaker is creating a story, sticking to a specific genre can help narrow down decisions on certain aspects of the movie. Once the storyteller follows a genre's "recipe", the act of fulfilling an anticipating audience is much easier.
After learning about all this information, I knew that with whichever genre I chose, I would need to focus on delivering its specific conventions, but also in a way that wasn't redundantly done before. Finally, I dove into specific genre types. While doing this, I came across this YouTube video titled "Movie Genres Explained - Types of Films & the Art of Subverting Film Genres" (link here)
While discussing the crime genre, this video showed a short clip of the movie "Knives Out". Seeing this movie reminded me how much I loved it and that I could make a film in that genre. The continuation of the video explored several other genres and subgenres, including the murder mystery subgenre, the horror genre, and the action comedy subgenre.
After watching this video I had a thought pop up. I realized from remembering "Knives Out" that I would really like to do a film opening consisting of an interrogation about an "on-the-loose" murder. Having this idea, I used the previously learned information about genre to realize that I could search for a genre that centers its plot around murder and scenes of interrogation.
As of now, I have just begun the research of genres correlating to this initiating idea. From here, I will choose some of my favorite films that have these scenes and plots and then research their genres. I hope to find repetitions of the same genres so I can narrow down what genre I will partake in! Thankfully now I at least know what my plot will be mainly about for my film opening and what movies to collect that fit into my vision.
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