Genre Research: Drama

Genre Research

At the beginning of the year, we all did a Genre Media Project. This was our first project in this class and it taught us about the aspects of genres. The project required each student to do independent research on the genre of our choice and create a PowerPoint Presentation covering their element/ conventions. Not only was this our first project but it was our first introduction to researching conventions. That was helpful considering, understanding conventions of film styles and genres has been essential so far. All students had to choose from the five provided genres: thriller, action, horror, comedy or drama. I would classify these as basic genres of film, we are all familiar with them. It also made it easier to compare projects, giving us the opportunity to learn from each other. One of the reminders we received during this project was to entail the overall aspects instead of diving into sub-genres. This allowed us to lay a basic foundation of the topic without complicating it. Sub-genres are just the specified versions of a basic one. For example sub-genres of comedy would be, romantic comedy, parody and farce. There are so many sub-genres to choice from, so limiting our options was a favor. We also had a list of requirements that needed to be included in our presentation. These requirements was the list of information that needed to be on our slides. We had to include common camera angles, common sounds, elements we liked, elements we disliked and other common techniques you would find in the chosen genre. One of the best parts of this project was adding music that related to your genre. This music was played in the background as we presented the slides. One of our group members, Courtnie (me), did her project on drama films and she played the instrumental of My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion, the infamous theme song to 2004's Titanic. My project covered all the aspects of drama.