Conventions of my chosen genre

Conventions of my chosen genre-Silent/Mystery on Prezi

My Chosen Genre

In terms of choosing the genre for my five minute short film, I had to consider a number of things. For example budget, locations and the suitability of actors. I also had to consider the extent of the technologies at my disposal for film production. This allowed me to exclude a number of genres. These included fantasy, supernatural and sci-fi (due to the both genres heavy reliance on advanced SFX.), westerns (because of the lack of a suitable location), disaster (due to the lack of suitable SFX) and war (due to the lack of equipment).

I have however, selected a few genres that are possible. These are mystery. (due to the genre only requiring simple locations and not requiring SFX.), and silent (due to the genre not requiring dialogue, and the genre ‘s appeal being purely visual). The reason I have chosen to consider the mystery genre because I enjoy the fact that the mystery genre creates so many enigmas for the audience to think about and as such, said audience will be thoroughly immersed in the film. I am also considering the genre of silent films, which has become increasingly more popular since the release of ‘The Artist’ (Michel Hazanavicius, 2011). I like this genre because of how the lack of dialogue means that the impact of the film is purely visual and because of how the audience cannot rely on their ears to tell them what’s going on and have to constantly stay focused on the cinematography. This means that the audience will watch the ENTIRE film instead of sometimes, how people do something else and just passively listen to the film.

I have considered all possible ideas in terms of what is and isn’t possible with the technology available to me for this project, and I have decided to do a short film of the SILENT/MYSTERY genres. I have chosen this genre because currently there are hardly any silent/mystery films on the internet, which means it is a very original genre that not many hardly any film companies have attempted before.

Short Film Analysis 1 - PRISM

My Group

I (Robert Wetherall) will be working on my own for this project as I am the only member of our class who opted to create a 5 minute short film instead of a music video.

Brief

A short film in its entirity, lasting approximately five minutes, which may be live action or animated or a combination of both, together with two of the following three options:

- A poster for the film

- A radio trailer for the film

- A film magazine review page featuring the film