Why we picked horror (Planning)

Why we picked our genre
Horror

The first part to decide about our opening two minutes was the genre, from there we could develop a story line and characters and shots but first we needed to pick a genre. Picking a genre is key as some can't be done as well on a low budget, some require great amounts of acting which would be hard to acquire whilst others require a more experienced and refined film making to be able to execute effectively. Having said that, this was a much easier process than i had imagined as we quite quickly ruled out several genres and weren't left with many to choose from by the end, here's a list of all the obvious film genres:

- Action

- Comedy

- Crime

- Documentary

- Drama

- Horror

- Musical

- Period & Historical

- Romance

- Science Fiction

- Fantasy

- Thriller

From this list we were immediately able to eliminate comedy, crime, documentary, musical, period and historical,  romance, science fiction, fantasy and war for these given reasons:

• Comedy -  Although we thought for a moment about doing a comedy as it wouldn't require a large budget like some of the other genres would and you could choose from a variety of locations it's downside is trying to actually get the comedy aspect into it. What i find funny or my friends find funny may differ from other people so the risk in doing a comedy is that nobody else will find it funny and your opening could be met with unsatisfied silence. If comedies aren't funny then they aren't good and I don't think my group would be able to nail the comedy side of the opening and therefore we're not doing comedy.
• Crime - A brilliant genre, possibly one our group didn't think too much about when maybe we should have done, but it can be similar to action but just harder to achieve a realistic, interesting plot line and therefore we chose not to do crime.
• Documentary - documentaries limit your creativity more than any other genre and don't really stretch the boundaries of film, they're good in the sense you can do them on whatever you want but that was too simple, too plain - we wanted to create something almost everyone could enjoy watching.
• Musical - Just no. None of my group are musical gifted nor care too much about it, having to write songs and choreograph dance sequences on top of everything else would just be too much. Also I feel it wouldn't work for an opening two minutes as it's not long enough to portray a good opening in the musical genre.
• Period & Historical - As much as I would have loved to do an opening in this genre it simply wasn't practical, these are some of the most expensive films ever made and require extensive research and planning, more than most other genres. The clothes, language, settings, everything has to be perfect and historically accurate along with the fact the sets would cost ludicrous amounts of money we simply don't have. Although you could just hire costumes and shoot in a woodlands I don't think this would be the best opening we could create and the amounts of planning is un-doable in the short amount of time we have.
• Romance - This genre was one of the main possibilities as I really like this genre but I don't think I'd be able to have a good enough plot for the opening two minutes and wouldn't be able to demonstrate enough film making techniques nor do I think it would stretch me enough. To add on to that getting two characters to act 'in love' and have to do kissing scenes would be far too awkward!
• Science fiction - This genre is just so expensive with the extensive amount of CGI and SFX needed and it's hard to make it so it doesn't look cheap. I think for a student project science fiction could end up looking very cheap and unprofessional.
• Fantasy - simply too expensive and elaborate for a student project.
• War - just like period and historical as much as I'd like to do this genre they're just too expensive.

So after ruling all of those out I'm left with 

- Action

- Drama

- Horror

- Thriller

Between these genres I think we'll choose horror as it's not expensive but still needs a lot of planning to make sure it's not a pathetic flop. My second choice would probably we drama as I'm not find of fight sequences as I think they're hard to get right so maybe wouldn't choose action and a drama could be shot in the city and have vibrant settings and it would be interesting to develop characters in the opening.