Saturday, 27 August 2016

Research - What is Genre?

One of the most important element of planning for any media product is choosing which genre your short film will fit into. This will help me decided many different elements of the process of making the short film. Genre will help me determine the different characteristics of my target audience such as age, gender, location. Choosing a genre will also give me a list of conventions that other short films of the same genre generally follow. These conventions will give me an idea how stereotypical genre short films are developed in terms of content, themes and structure.

Over time the number of genres have dramatically increased. Genres started to develop after the end of the silent film era. The main genres established at that time were: the melodrama, the western, the horror, comedies and action-adventure films. Some writers and directors followed the conventions for each of these genres however others mixed the different conventions leading to a wider range of genres and eventually sub-genres.

Choosing a specific genre for a film can be both helpful for the institutions and the audience as well. It allows institutions to understand who would be most interested in their film and helps them build a profile for the typical target audience they should be marketing their short film towards. They can also include themes and plot lines that will appeal to their audience which in turn will make a larger profit for the institution which can then be reinvested into other projects.

Some different examples of genres are:

  • Action films
  • Adventure films
  • Art
  • Biographical 
  • Comedy Films
  • Crime and Gangster films
  • Documentary
  • Erotic
  • Educational
  • Exploitation
  • Fantasy
  • Epics/historical films
  • Horror films
  • Musical/Dance films
  • Mystery
  • Propaganda 
  • Reality 
  • Romance 
  • Thriller
  • Science Fiction films
  • War Films
  • Western films
  • Coming of Age
  • Disaster 
  • LGBT
There are also different methods of production that can be used to categorise short films, these include:
  • 3D
  • Animation
  • Black and white
  • Feature
  • Independant
  • Live Action
  • Low Budget
  • Short 
  • Silent
As I have a very limited budget and very limited access to different resources my product will most likely be independent and low budget genres. 

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