Genre

Before planning our final piece, the opening sequence of a film, and after watching and reviewing some opening sequences we as a group had to chose which of the many Genres we were going to use for our opening sequence. Listed and briefly explained below are some of the possible genres available to us to use. The majority of the information I have collected about the following genres below was taken from the website: http://www.wikipedia.org/ and we found this really helpful.

Thriller..
Thrillers are normally fast-pacing containing frequent action and including resourceful heroes who must thwart the plans of more powerful and equipped villians. Thriller films are normally filmed in exotic settings such as foreign cities, desserts or high seas. There are many great thriller films around including 'The Bourne Identity' and 'Seven'.

Western..
Westerns are devoted to telling stories primarily set in the later half of the 19th century. They often portray how primitive and obsolete ways of life confronted modern technological or social changes. This can be shown through conflict between natives and settlers of the U.S. cavalry or between sheep and cattle farmers. American Westerns of the 1940s and 1950s emphasize the values of honor and sacrifice. Westerns from the 1960s and 1970s often had more pessimistic views, glorifying a rebellious anti-hero and highlighting the cynicism, brutality and inequality of the American West.


Comedy..
Comedy is any humourous discourse generally intended to amuse, especially in television, film and stand-up comedy. Much comedy contains variations on the elements of surprise, incongruity, conflict, repetitiveness, and the effect of opposite expectations, but there are many recognized genres of comedy.

Horror..
Horror movies normally strive to elicit the emotions of fear, horror and terror from viewers. Their plots frequently contain death and many also include a central villian. Horror movies are generally bloody and gory. Horror began as a genre with black and white films based on early gothic/horror books such as 'Frankenstein' and 'Dracula'. Horror genre films is now one of the fastest growing genres in the film making world.


Action..
Action films are jaw dropping type of films that tend to keep the viewers on the edge of their seats. Action films are still today known for some of the best films in the world including 'James Bond' and 'Mission Impossible'. In almost every action film there is a muscular powerful male who has a job as a secret agent or undercover guy who normally saves the day in dramatic action fashion. Action films normally contain a beautiful women who gets saved by the hero and falls in love.

Romance..
Romance is a very popular genre and is based around only one thing...Love! The success of the genre romance has come through its use of highly emotional and touching storylines. Many examples of great romantic films are 'The Titanic' and 'Romeo and Juliet'.




Gangster..
Gangster movies contain criminals who are normally members of a crime organisation (gang). The terms gangster, criminals and criminal organisation are normally used in reference and association with the Italian Mafia and individuals such as Al Capone. There are many popular ganster movies including 'The Godfather Series' and 'GoodFellas'.

Fantasy..
Fantasy films use magic and other supernatural forms as their plot, theme and setting. Fantasy was and is generally distinguished from science fiction and horror. Fantasy is dominated by mass medievalist form since the great success of the novel 'Lord of the Rings' by J.R.R Tolkien.


After reviewing and talking about the possible genres available to us, we as a group went in the direction of an Italiano/American gangster style opening sequence. We said that everything we film will be in black and white for effect and that to portray the gangster genre we will film it in a poker area and add appropiate effects and soundtrack to get this across to our viewers. The time period of our opening sequence will also be the 1950's.

We have decided to choose this genre because of the technical abilities we can use within it. For example; the black and white effect, smoke across the screen, a soundtrack, voice overs from a persons perspective and silhouettes. We also chose this genre because we wanted to make an alteration to our preliminary video and our preliminary video was a humourous piece, whereas this one is going to be rather more serious.