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During the planning phase, the Production Team discusses and decides on the Production's genre.
When we had one of our first team meetings, we had something very clear in mind: before starting any brainstorming ideas for our narrative, we had to have a genre.
Why is it important for us to have a clear genre before starting our narrative and production?
As the video below explains, it's recommended to stick to a single genre or, at most, a hybrid (two genres).
It's important to understand that having a clear genre is necessary to either follow the conventions of that genre or break them, but not to jump between different genres. Doing so creates confusion, distracts the audience, and harms the narrative. It's important to reiterate that we are making a 2-minute opening scene, and therefore the best way to do it is to have a simple, easy-to-identify genre. Also as beginners, if we weigh in a scale having a baseline and following the conventions of that genre vs. being creative and trying to fit the story into a genre, it's more important to have the genre established first, as a broad focus will allow us to zoom in on the details later and the probabilities that the outcome is better increase significantly.
Why is it important for me as an editor to have a clear genre in our production?
As an editor, having a more appropriate approach and idea of what genre we are doing will simplify the process of doing a better job since I can research more about the transitions, cuts, and editing used in them. Have a blueprint to follow to be able to implement it in production in the near future, and make production adhere more to the genre.
Brainstorming & process of elimination:
To choose a genre, we plan to first as individual conducted researched in our favorite genre, then we met and talked about what attracted us as a team, and we began to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of each one according to our needs and goals.
Through the process we eliminated the romance and drama genres, because it's difficult to interact with and attract the audience in just one opening scene, and it requires development to make more sense. Also, one of the most important conventions that almost all productions in these genres have is dialogue, and my skills aren't very advanced. Although I'm honing them through editing and previous projects, the director suggested that we avoid using audio to prevent a lack of understanding and distraction.
We also eliminated comedy, because even do it was one of the best options our team is not qualified to make comedy, we didn't feel comfortable thinking about it, and if we have problem thinking and planning, we would possibly have problem implementing.
Furthermore we also eliminated action, since we want to have more control in the surroundings (mise-en-scene) and that can be complicated when trying to do chases, danger and fights. Also we notice that we may need more actors if we choose this genre, or the contrary the narrative can be affected and don't even fall in an action genre.
After researching for a while, the thriller genre caught our attention because it allows us to pose the question "what happens next?" As an editor, I don't have much knowledge of this genre, so in the following blogs, I'll be dedicating myself to researching it in more depth. The director and cinematographer agreed to choose it because it created a motivational relationship. However, we felt something was missing, so I proposed adding mystery. This genre was appealing to our production, not only because interesting, but also because the director pointed out that we don't have to explain everything, which saves us from the mistake of telling the entire story. The cinematographer commented that it would be effective to use strange or out-of-place elements in the mise-en-scène since it hides a reality behind the events, which can help us have a clearer representation and interact with the audience. She also said that the focus would be more on the visuals than the audio, which would compensate for my weakness as an editor in combining audio and visuals. And I, as the editor, suggested that there were transitions and editing techniques that were more commonly used, and since I had previously researched this genre, I had an idea of what to do and follow the genre ambits,
Takeaways & Lessons: This planning process was fundamental in creating a foundation for our production. By evaluating and analyzing, we were able to find something that everyone agreed on. I learned that the team can compensate for my weaknesses, and I can compensate for theirs. Now that we have a starting point, the path ahead seems clearer; a mystery thriller is our foundation
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