Ideas From Genres of Films

We looked at different genres of film to help us get ideas on how to make our films appear more realistic to the genre that we have chosen. The first genre we looked at was types of gangster film including Kidulthood, Get Carter and Good Fellas.

Kidulthood is a more modern film compared to the other two and has non-diagetic sound of a drum and bass track which appeals to the audience but also shows the mood of the scene. The way that it is edited shows all the main characters and flashes past the people who are more in the back round of the film. This tells the audience that the film will be very fast paced.

The next gangsta film is Get Carter. This is much more sutle and starts with a very slow fade in and a slow zoom. The sound is very quite and creates tension in the scene. There is hardly any dialog in the first 2 minutes of the film and it is only the projector that is amplified so that the audience concentrates in it.

The last gangster film we watched was the beginning of Good Fellas. The titles at the beginning are very plain and simple but the main title with the name of the film on it is in red which relates to blood. The voice - over is an American person and 50s music to try and set the scene.

The two musicals we watched were Hairspray, High School Musical and Grease

Hairspray used blue bubble writing that appeared out of the haze of the spray. The music is very happy and upbeat. The film has sounds of older bikes to set a 60s scene. Old cars and old shops are used to make the film more believable.

High School Musical begins with white titles to show what time of year it is. (In this case white)
The lighting is used to introduce the two main characters.
The music in Grease is slow and romantic to show the genre of the film. It also has cartoon writing to show who it might appeal to.

The last genre we watched was the Horror genre. These included Saw2, Scream and The Village.

Saw's opening scene was very good at creating atmosphere and uses lighting, camera shot/angles and sound to make the audience feel scared.
The light was very dark and only showed a light bulb on its own showing that the person in the scene is on his own by the way that the camera looks around and the breathing that is coming from behind the camera.

Scream's titles are very good showing the title of the film in white then a scream and a knife slash can be heard. The title then goes red representing blood. There were many close ups on things that didn't appear very special in the film. The camera keeps following the girl showing that something might happen to her later on in the scene.

The titles in 'The Village' were in a very Gothic font showing that the film may be set in the past or in a distant place. High pitched music is used a lot and the only thing seen in the beginning of the film is the dark trees of a wood.

Using the things we have seen in the 3 horror films we can try and apply these techniques in our short film to try and make it better.