Our Chosen Genre and Research

For this task we need to decide on what genre we are going to base our film opening on. Our three narrowed down options are comedy, thriller and action so we need to decide which one to choose. In order to choose we need the gather the ideas we have to see what we can make of them and see what genre they fit into best.

Questionnaire

I created a questionnaire to see what people expect to see when watching a thriller film, comedy or action film so I have an idea of what people like about them and what is possible for me to create for that genre. I found out that the most popular genre people liked was comedy so we were highly considering to choose this genre. Most of the participants said in action films they would expect to see a realistic situation, in comedy films they would expect to see characters with a sense of humour and in thrillers they would expect to see tension. Finding out this information has allowed me to understand what is necessary to include for my film opening, depending on which genre I choose, as most people would expect to see it. In the last question about what they expect to see in successful films, the most votes was 'A list actors' which is understandable but I can't make that possible for my film opening. However other options like well-known locations, technology and a complex storyline had some votes too which I can learn from and adapt into my film opening.

Our genre

The genre we have chosen to do for our piece is action because I know a lot about the genre now as I have done most of my research on it and I have lots of good ideas that have improved and developed whilst I have been researching. Some of the film openings that have influenced us is the student film opening 'Redemption', Deadpool and Fast & Furious 7. We really liked the concept of Deadpool, and it had the most votes in the questionnaire, so we have also considered to include some comedy to our piece as well. The ideas I have are along the lines of having someone meeting another person to deal with something but it doesn't go to plan.

Research

In action film openings, I have noticed a lot of things that various films have in common. For example capital letters in titles, fast transitions for the titles, neutral/dull colours, natural lighting, non-diegetic music, little dialogue, etc. I will be sure to try and add these aspects into my film opening to outstand the genre and to make my film match the theme of action films. Since 1995, the genre 'action' is ranked 3rd towards its market share compared with every other genre. It has made a total box office of around $36 and with around 816. In my questionnaire I found out that in action films people expect to see content like big stunts, fight scenes, a chase of some sort, explosions and to be located in a big city. Some of these however we wouldn't be able to perform for example explosions as we are not qualified to do that sort of thing. We could edit it in after filming, but this may look unrealistic making the film opening look a bit cheap. However in the Godzilla film opening there was an explosion which was probably edited in so it is possible, its just got to be done correctly.

Conclusion

I am happy with the genre we have chosen as I have lots of good ideas for our film opening. We chose to go with action because we want to challenge ourselves and make our film opening interesting and intriguing, and by just going with comedy I don't think we would achieve that as well. Therefore by embedding them together I think will make our film opening open to a wider audience whilst being interesting. Action is probably my favourite film as enjoy the complex storylines behind them and they make me feel a part of the story as they help me learn about the world and what it would be like if these sort of situations happened. Now I need to start gathering my ideas together and research on what our institution will be.