Deciding our Genre

As a pair, Amy and I sat down and discussed the genres of short films and which ones we were interested in looking into. The genres were:

Comedy :

As our short film had to be kept to a five minute maximum, introducing and revealing a comic narrative in this short space of time would be difficult, as the jokes and funny narrative wouldn't have time to develop and be understood. Therefore we decided we did not wish to produce a comedic short film.

Crime :

From our knowledge of popular crime films, a large budget and a substantial amount of props and actors are necessary in order to achieve the desired affect. Therefore we decided a crime or action film was not best suited to our budget or resources.

Romance :

For the romance genre, actors usually need to portray a bond or affection between them, and we were at a limited choice as to actors that could, or were willing to fulfil this. Also, as we are only making a five minute production, we could not really create a narrative story because it would not allow the plot development or narrative to the story to unravel. However, we did want to use elements of a romantic film, in that we wanted to show a particular bond between two characters, but have it portrayed in a more sinister and realistic light.

Horror :

Despite not wanting to do a horror for our main production, we decided we wanted to use certain elements and codes and conventions of horror films in our final production. We wanted a dramatic turn of events to interest and shock our audience, and wanted to incorporate a degree of tension found in most horror films.

Drama :

Drama films usually have a moral message they wish to convey to the audience. We liked this idea for our short film, as because we were only limited to five minutes, we wanted that five minutes to make an impact on our audience, one that would make them remember our film as a production that stood out amongst others.

After extensive research and discussion, we decided we wanted to do a drama/social realism production, one that conveys a moral message that will affect and move our audience.