Genre Research

Hi Blog! 

So, Renn, Vicky and I met up on Sunday for about 2 hours to have time completely to ourselves to discuss what we wanted the story to be about and narrow down a genre. It was a super productive meeting, and we decided on Coming of Age. This genre is going to be a fun way to capture where we are in our current filmmaking careers, because coming of age very often refers to teenagers, specifically with the challenges that come with being in that awkward time in your life. Our film also will include some aspects of the drama genre, since the main character will experience several conflicts, and the story focuses on how they will deal with such issues, which is among the main characteristics of the drama genre. 

Coming of age is one of the most common genres when it comes to having a target audience of teenagers and young adults, which we all agreed on in the beginning. Our target audience that we can best represent would be the ones similar to our age and interests, which is why we instantly knew that we wanted to go that route. The main characteristic of a coming of age story is that the character shows growth as their life progresses and they get older. They often tend to focus heavily on one main character's point of view, since it is effective to emotionally attach to one character and watch them grow, just as we do when we see the people we love mature in their life. For that reason, we want to make sure that we exhibit that pathological approach in our own film. The growth from adolescence is an experience that everyone understands, so even though our target audience would be people currently experiencing this transition, we also acknowledge that the older audience may also find interest in our story for nostalgic sake.

Coming of age is a genre present in many forms of media from books to television to short films. Some of the full-length films that we are taking heavy inspiration from would be Turning Red, Perks of Being a Wallflower, and Here. These films are all perfect for the classic coming of age genre, and they all could contribute different points to our research. 

As for short films, there are a few that we watched as a group to get some inspiration. The ones we took heavy inspiration from were "Why Can't We Just Be Ghosts?" by Patrick Jang, "Words that Don't Exist" by Lorenzo Zottoli, and "The Seed" By Aaron Tharp. We thought it was really important to study some short films as well, since that is what we will be creating.

I am going to do a deeper analysis on these examples soon, so stay tuned!