This is our video presention to our teamwork film. We were asked to create a new film to go out into the market and sell. We decided on our genre as a 'Lovestory-Psycho-Drama' however this proved as a problem because we were then told that 'psychological-horror-drama' was dead in the market, so we then had to re-market and regenrefy our film as a 'lovestory-thriller' to fit into the current trends in the market. We decided on this genre after carrying out a survey which told us that people preferred Romance and Thrillers. We had to keep the film familiar yet original to attract viewers and keep them watching. However, the downfall to our film was that we did not do enough background research into genres, audiences etc. we focused more on the characters and story line of the film which was not needed at this stage of production. I learnt that genre is always changing and we have to make it fit into the current market, also when we start making our real thrillers, we need to complete thorough research beforehand to ensure we know where are film is going.
From my first few lessons of Media so far I have learnt about categorizing genres. Films can be put into many different genres because there are so many different interpretations to what genre a movie should be put into, therefore films can be 'hybrids', where a film is two genres. For example a Romantic Comedy, further abbreviated to ‘Rom-Com’, which then allows films to have a wider audience, rather than just ‘Romance’ or ‘Comedy’, this is the most limiting way of understanding genres because you can only introduce two genres, not many.
However films can be further categorised into ‘sub-genres’ where films are categorised within a genre itself. For example, a Science Fiction (or Sci-Fi) can then have a sub genre like ‘Monster Invasion’
Films build upon other previous films, for example horror films need to be evolved because eventually viewers get ‘desensitised’ to certain ‘monsters’ or the ‘killer’, so film makers need to event new ‘baddies’ or bring back one from a long time ago that people vaguely remember. So in other words, genre is constantly renegotiated between industry and audience to bring a combination of familiar reassurance (the victim always lives) and new twists. Social, cultural, economic and political changes all affected the studio system which then have brought about the development of genre
When you begin to make a movie, you must always start with Genre, because it then brings about a list of conventions to work from like the plot, type of characters, music, stars and iconography. So when I begin to make my thriller, I need to make it clear that my film is a thriller by keeping the sense familiarity, but I need to include a new twist to my story which keep the audience interests and want to watch more.
