Some genres are often misunderstood as being one thing when they are actually another. This is a function of writers not learning more about what film genres are and what they are not. Both dramas and comedies share an interesting quality — they can have one of many effects on an audience, depending on the exact nature of the story being told. In other words, there are different kinds of dramas and different kinds of comedies.
Note that the words used above are words that evoke a feeling or emotion. These words are subjective, and therefore speak to the entertainment experience that the audience will feel when watching these types of stories. These words are not subgenres , but they do show how genres like drama and comedy can have a wide range of impact on the audience, depending on what kind of story is being told.
We are constantly exposed to words that are meant to describe the tv shows and films that we watch, and they are often used interchangeably or incorrectly. The simple answer is this: Main genres create an emotional response as well as potential expectations of ideas. Subgenres generally create ideas but not emotions. Here is a list of subgenres which will get their own blog post for further explanation.
Note they are different from main genres:. Also note that you can take each of these words and pair it with different main genres.
Subgenre classifications give the viewer an idea of the kinds of moments they will expect to see, but not creating an idea of a specific emotion. It does create ideas of things you can expect to see — criminals, wrongdoings, weapons, theft, etc. But there have also been plenty of crime comedies. The general rule of thumb when trying to figure out if the word you were thinking of is a main film genre or subgenre, ask yourself this question:.
Do you have a sci-fi thriller? Do you have a dramatic comedy? Or a comedic drama? These can be difficult questions to answer but it is vital to understand which genre will be the prime genre of your screenplay, and which genre is the supporting or lesser of the two.
But now that you better understand film genre and how to approach it in your screenplays, go and take your audience on a ride… no matter what kind of ride it is.
Open Screenplay. Save my name and email in this browser for the next time I comment. Subscribe to comment. Updated: March 19, By Jason Bash. Not knowing the film genre can be confusing Without understanding what kind of story we are seeing, the audience will feel a subconscious questioning of what they are supposed to be watching. Overall there are two main ways of figuring out the genre for your screenplay: Decide the genre early and write material to fulfill it.
However, one day, someone is found dead and robbed. Everyone is left shocked. Because so much time has passed without violence, the police are unprepared. But they review the crime scene, and conclude that it was murder. Since they have never investigated a murder, they are unsure what should they do to find the murderer and how should they to go about doing it.
They arrive at a procedure and find the murderer. The murder was an accident. The murderer was surprised as everyone else. The people realize a murder or accidental death can always happen, so the society has to be prepared and set up to handle it. Even though the story is fantastical in many ways, it can still make comments and raise questions about society and morality. Science fiction genre, like any genre, can cross over at some point or points to another genre.
This example crossed over to the crime genre. However, to determine the main genre, review the story, characters, plot, and setting together. In this situation, these elements are most geared toward the science fiction genre. In other words, a fantasy movie has no limits. The setting could be anywhere at any time with characters who appear and act in any way the script writer wants. The story could be about anything. The plot will be inner conflict.
According to Wikipedia, fantasy stays away from scientific and macabre story aspects, so it does not become a piece of science fiction or horror. You can see how all three genres: science fiction, fantasy, and horror are similar but different. A group of misfits are given a task by a wizard to find the perfect person. They must do this in order to save their friend, who is terminally ill and will die shortly.
The wizard tells them that their friend is not terminally ill but under an evil spell that he can break. The characters are Jack, Suzie, and Alec, who are misfits because they are the outcasts from their home village, which is in a fictional country.
The wizard gives them a clue to look where no one has looked or would think of looking. Jack, Suzie, and Alec think that the perfect place to find the perfect person is in a graveyard because nobody would think of looking there.
But how would the perfect person appear in a graveyard? After searching through several cemeteries, they become frustrated because they find nothing unusual and do not know what the wizard was talking about.
They finally find a cemetery where they can enter a new world that is built upon their imaginations. Using their imaginations mean, as they discuss a trait or physical appearance, they can build the person using their minds. What they imagine can become reality. Using their imaginations, they begin to discuss what the perfect person would look like and act. They cannot decide because the traits that they imagined as a perfect person are foreign to them.
Finally, they start talking about themselves, and what they like and do not like. After a lengthy conversation that continues for days, Suzie stands up and yells that she has the answer. She states they should make three lists of their best physical and mental traits.
That will be the perfect person. The perfect person is within them as it is within all people. They compile the perfect person using their imaginations and take it to the wizard.
Suzie explains to the wizard with the assistance of Jack and Alec that the perfect person was within them as it is within all people. The wizard states that they found the answer to the clue. As such, they are also able to break the spell over their friend. The spell is broken, and the four leave and live happily ever after. The setting regarding where the movie takes place can be instrumental in a horror movie. Many times, horror movies take place in a historical area with big, old houses that hold many secrets.
Secrets provide the basis of a story as the house is supposedly haunted because something gruesome happened there many years ago. However, the setting may not be unusual, but it can be a typical small town or city just like the one where you live.
The plot, once again, is inner conflict. The main character, Suzie, inherits the house, and she is determined—to the point of becoming obsessed—to prove that there is no such thing as a haunted house. However, she takes her boyfriend, Jack, with her to the house. After they become frightened by unearthly occurrences in the house, Jack asks his friend, Alec, to join them at the house to find a solution to what is going on.
Alec states that in order to make it a clean, healthy house again, they have to discover the problem and solve it. The three of them enter a room late in the evening and try to contact a spirit to identify the problem. They find, at one point, that the house was owned by a slave trader or human trafficker. Down in the basement, many bodies were buried. Suzie cannot stand thinking that a relative was a human trafficker and nothing can really be done to solve this problem.
The house was owned by an evil man who is suffering in the spirit world because of his past actions. Jack thinks that the only cure to these past heinous actions is to burn the house down, which would cremate the bodies that were buried in the basement and possibly put them at peace. Suzie does not agree with that action, but Alec agrees with Jack in order to find a cure for the haunting.
Possibly, after the burning, Suzie can build a different house. Suzie starts to act in an irrational manner, like she is becoming her past relative, who was the slaver. Alec and Jack burn the house. Suzie becomes completely enraged and has to be restrained until the house is completely burned down. Once the house has finished burning, Suzie no longer acts like she is possessed. The whole area becomes quiet. Suzie speculates that they just need drive away from it.
The three of them drive away. The horror genre brings fear, and fear generally brings thrills and suspense. With a suspenseful scene, people like to scare themselves.
The four elements of the drama genre have to be serious, portray life, tell a story, and the characters have to have an inner conflict that brings out emotions at different times throughout the story. These are all points that we have been discussing with the other genres. The characters and the story are general, like everyday people and situations. Somebody is dying, something has to be obtained, or something has to be accomplished are the three common stories for dramas.
Jack is an accomplished musician, who is going to be playing at Carnegie Hall, and he finds out that he has a fatal illness after passing out during a rehearsal. Or, Jack lived in the slums and a teacher noticed something in him that could be cultivated. Jack becomes a renowned doctor, scientist, or mathematician. Or, Suzie risks everything to find a cure for a disease that is killing many thousands of people on a Caribbean island.
The viewer often knows what is going to happen but often the characters and their development is what makes a drama interesting. The story is relatively simple, the plot is inner conflict, and the setting is inconsequential because the characters make the movie.
Did you find Cyrano de Bergerac to be a drama? Cyrano de Bergerac had a firm foundation in unrequited love, a very romantic element in the story. Action, thriller, suspense-thriller, biography, film noir, neo noir, and mystery are terms that are often referred to as different genres. However, none of these are genres. They do not contain just the four basic elements of a genre—no matter how much people insist that they do. They contain the genre elements and other elements, like cinematography, that are not part of a genre.
Writers, educators, critics, historians, and others have stated that the above terms developed into being named a genre and that they can be accepted as a genre over time. How many of you heard or read the terms action genre, film noir genre, or suspense thriller genre? Just because they have been referred to by these terms, over the years, does not make them honorary genres. These terms, by themselves, still have the same meaning even if they have been named genres.
Most of these terms refer to specific cinematography when shooting the movie, or they refer to the way the movie was edited.
Action, thrillers, and suspense thrillers all have similar types of action in them. Adventure, spy, crime, war, and Westerns could all be action movies or thrillers or suspense thrillers. Action, thrillers, and suspense thrillers do not touch upon the four elements that make up a genre. Film noir and neo noir are predominantly crime movies that have certain cinematography. They overlap both in the construction and production aspects of making a movie.
The character types in film noir are loners and schemers, but they are reflective of the types of characters in crime movies. Detour is a good example of film noir regarding the characters like Al and Vera. The voice-over narration of the protagonist describing the forward action, using black and white film, and many scenes occurring at night are examples of film noir.
But voice-over narration, being in black and white, and a lot of the movie occurring at night does not determine the genre. The jaded characters, story, and plot of murder defines the movie as a member of the crime genre. The night scenes and voice-over narration are a directorial style. These decisions are characteristics that distinguish it as film noir. Neo noir is the new noir for the later 20th and 21st centuries when most movies are made in color.
The genres could be crime, science fiction, or drama but the cinematography is dark, gritty, and symbolic, similar in many respects to film noir.
Mystery refers to the way the story is shaped. Most mysteries are concerned with who stole something or who murdered someone. Most mysteries belong to the crime genre where the story and the editing keep the audience guessing until the final minutes of the movie. Biography refers to a nonfiction movie that is about a historical or living person.
The background, character, and setting of the movie may determine what other genre a biography might belong to. If the person is a war hero, the movie would be of the war genre; if the person was a criminal or detective, the movie would fit the crime genre, and so forth.
Documentary, according to Dictionary. Sheila Curran Bernard, 23 author of Documentary Storytelling , defines documentaries as:. Documentaries bring viewers into new worlds and experiences through the presentation of factual information about real people, places, and events, generally — but not always — portrayed through the use of actual images and artifacts.
We covered a lot of area in discussing different genres. Even though genres are only considered labels for movies, the four elements of a genre are the basis of any movie. Character, story, plot, and setting are how a movie is constructed. From this construction, the specific theme that is created by the screenwriter and the director can be realized and understood by the viewer. The other chapters in the construction of a movie go into more detail and dissect these elements in order for a better understanding of the scope of these elements and how the theme of the movie is realized.
With the completion of this chapter, the movies to watch that that are excellent examples of different genres are:. Jack is a school teacher, which is a job he loves.
He wants to be the best teacher possible and serve his students well. Because of his desire to serve his students, he has a disdain for the school administration when they want to cut back on the education process while serving themselves with excessive raises. In addition, Jack had a bad family life when growing up. He is rather cold to his mother because of his upbringing.
His mother was domineering to him and his father died at an early age. He wanted to make sure his students were treated better in school than he was at home.
Skip to content Part I: Construction. What People Like the Most about a Movie People will state that a particular movie had a good plot or an intriguing story. Let the Genres Begin We will begin to discuss the different genres, and even the sub-genres, for certain genre types. In addition, as we progress through genres, we want to examine how the genre elements change.
Comedy Genre We begin by discussing one of the most popular, general, and complicated genres—comedy. Slapstick Comedy The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines slapstick as comedy that involves physical action such as falling down or hitting people.
In this example, the setting can remain as a college campus. The above are two demonstrations of satire. Dark Comedy or Black Comedy Dictionary. Screwball Comedy This comedy sub-genre is named after a baseball pitch, the screwball, which was perfected by baseball pitcher Carl Hubbell in the s.
Screwball comedy also had the following attributes: The poor and middle class would go to the movies to see the rich get their comeuppance. This is why movies were one of the few industries of the period that made a profit. People felt a passion of hate toward the upper class because of the mess lower classes assumed the upper class made of the economy. Many of the most famous movie stars of the period appeared in screwball comedies. People went to the movies to see the elegant clothes, cars, and furniture, so they could wish they had those items.
Romantic Comedy Dictionary. Comedy Conclusion Comedy is varied and complex. Western Genre Because of the similarities between the Western and crime genres, I have included back-to-back discussions of the two genres.
Do you see the differences in the stories? Science Fiction Genre Science fiction is linked to the previous genres of crime, Westerns, war, spy, and adventure by the basic theme. What would a fantasy example be like? You are only limited by your imagination.
A wonderful theme can come from any genre. Action, Thriller, Suspense Thriller, Biography, Film Noir, Neo Noir, and Mystery Action, thriller, suspense-thriller, biography, film noir, neo noir, and mystery are terms that are often referred to as different genres.
Documentary Documentary, according to Dictionary. From these two definitions, documentaries are a separate movie entity that is unto itself. Final Thought We covered a lot of area in discussing different genres.
Further Viewing With the completion of this chapter, the movies to watch that that are excellent examples of different genres are: It Happened One Night , , directed by Frank Capra, starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. This is an excellent example of screwball comedy. This is a good example of the war genre. All About Eve , , directed by Joseph L. This is an excellent example of the drama genre. This is an excellent example of the spy genre that became popular as well as the gadgets that came along with it.
This is a good example of the adventure genre. Assignment Jack is a school teacher, which is a job he loves. Based on the above introduction, what genre or genres could this movie idea be developed into? Previous: 1. What Is the Theme? Why Do We Need It? Next: 3. Allport, F. Behavior and experiment in social psychology. Journal of Abnormal Psychology , 14 , — Article Google Scholar.
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