Portfolio Work Day 2: Genre Statement

 Genre

I first did the genre statement as all the aspects of the film put together in one place. The goal of my genre statement was to figure out my film's identity. My genre statement had to tell how my chosen genre influenced my film to be similar and what I decided to change of the genre.


In my genre statement I directly spoke of influences that came from similar genres, Movies that I talked about was American Psycho 2000, Joker,2018 and Black Swan,2010 as the direct inspiration for the genre details of my film. For example, one of the conventions all these films follow of psychological thriller is an unreliable narrator, which in my genre statement I explicitly said that I would follow this narrative technique


These films were not only used as an example of inspiration for my film but also to figure out parts that I decided to oppose. For example, the main character becoming a danger to people around them through violence, which is something that I decided I did not want to depict in my film. This was an important part of my genre statement as it set the tone for editing,cinematogrophy,mise en scene and sound. My story is less of a morbid look into a bad person’s psychology and more of an empathetic look into someone struggling with internal conflict.


A big part of the genre statement was setting the audience expectations. What will be deny, delay, and deliver expectations the basis of storytelling. In my genre statement I wrote that my film would deliver the audience expectation of seeing a character struggle with mental health as it is expected of a psychological thriller. This might be a given some psychological thrillers do not have a main character that goes through those struggles instead sometimes the psychological thriller is given to the audience, or a villain is the one with those struggles. With me delivering the expectation I am following conventions of the genre.

Black Swan,2010 Nina hallucinating about killing lily

Black swam.2010 Nina after she stabs herself

Black Swan,2010  uses expectations against the viewers. The hallucinations are hard to decipher and through out the film during hallucinations Nina becomes violent. A lot of her hardship surrounds lily and viewer expect a breaking point were Nina actually does what her hallucination tell her to. On the top photo its Nina killing lily and the audience expectation are deliver. Yet later on they are denied as turns out it was just a hallucination and Nina actually stab herself instead. The uses of expectations in black swan are what inspired that part about my genre statement.

An important idea was finding the film's own identity. The genre statement is all about setting the tone, goal, and style of how my film will look. And while writing this statement I took a lot of inspiration from media that I liked, and this helped me a lot in the writing process. Yet it made it difficult to feel like it was my own movie. Often, I thought about if I was too much like one of the movies I watched or was subconsciously copying a film. It was worrying as I wanted to do something that would be identifiable as made by me. I figured that by rejecting some of the more conventional aspects of the genre like the dark colors, and violence it would differentiate film enough.