Choosing your genre

Choosing your genre

Task 1
According to http://financialedge.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0410/Movie-Genres-With-The-Best-ROI.aspx the most popular genres of films are:



• Action Adventure films tend to hit the headlines with a huge number of ticket sales. Record breaking ticket sales however are usually matched with a large budget, meaning these films bring in a lot of money, but not the best return on investment.


• Drama, Romance and Comedy come in second on the most popular genre of film. With less of a requirement for a high budget for special effects, a Drama, Romance or Comedy film can bring in a lot of return on investment if one is very successful. Despite this, there have been many box office failures in this category of genre.


• Documentaries come in third most popular to an audience. With little need of cast, crew, special effects and big name stars, documentaries are made at a small fraction of the cost that big- name Hollywood blockbusters need. This means that when a documentary film makes it big, the ROI can be astonishing.


• Horror and Thriller are also very popular among audiences. Horrors have had many hits with large ROI and very few misses.

Task 2

From the research conducted on the popularity of film genres, the top favourites have been highlighted.


With little budget and restricted time, space and equipment, an action or adventure film I feel would be too hard to produce, despite it coming in top in the box office ticket sales. Romance is an option to consider when deciding what genre our group will choose, however again I feel it would be hard to produce due to limitation on actors and the skills they withhold. The storyline within a romantic opening sequence is also limited, as there are few directions we would be able to go with it.


Comedy, we decided could be a huge failure as it is hard to match the humour of a large audience. People have their own sense of humour which makes it a niche market and consequently, a difficult one to appeal to. Documentaries would also be a difficult genre to choose as we would need to find a serious issue that we was all passionate about. Documentaries need their own footage, footage that we do not have. If we were too make it up, it would not look believable and as a result, would appear as a joke to the audience. Horror and Thriller genres would also be difficult for us to do with a low budget.

Task 3

As a group we conducted a questionnaire on a sample of forty people in a variety of ages in order to investigate the current favorite film genres and why, what an audience expects or what to see within an opening sequence and the genres of films audiences want to see more of. We carried out this research in order to gain a greater understanding of what film goers currently want cinemas to obtain, so that we can make decisions on our opening sequence to match the requirements of the audience.



From our questionnaires, we can learn that Comedies, Mystery/Thrillers and Dramas come out on top opposed to Horror, Romance, Sci-Fi’s, etc. Audiences want to feel captivated during the opening sequence to a film, obtain the feeling of suspense and want to watch more and are not overly fussed about character introductions, and would prefer to be put straight into the action. Interesting camera angles and movement was also listed as an important factor that audiences would like to see. On average, the majority voted that they either visit the cinema once a month with either friends or family.



This research is important to consider when deciding the genre and plot of our opening sequence as we want it to appeal to a large audience. With Comedies, Mystery/Thrillers and Dramas being the most popular, the demand is to go with one of those. By asking the sample what they want and expect from an opening sequence, we also gain knowledge on what to try and include which is the feeling of suspense, a variety of camera angles and movements.