Drama Genre Research

 Lights, Camera, Action!

   Drama (along with comedy) were the earliest genres in cinema, and to this day they've held on to their popularity. Reaching a total of 36.89 billion dollars on box office revenue in North America from 1995 to 2020, drama films are arguably one of the most popular and successful film genres. Drama as a whole is a very broad subject, including various subgenres such as psychological dramas and historical dramas, which all contributed to the mass success of the drama genre.  

Content:

     Dramas consist of a serious presentation of settings or real-life situations that portray realistic characters in conflict with themselves, others, or the forces of nature. Overall, these films are extremely character-driven as opposed to plot-driven. Though subgenres like the ones mentioned above add more plot to the narrative, at the end of the day dramas driven by the characters, who they are, and what they do.

Ex: Though Joker and The Help have insanely different plots, both of these movies portray realistic characters in real-life settings, such as a man who faces mental health issues and a woman who faces racial discrimination.

Production Techniques:

        Because drama's are centered around a character themselves, shots and angles that develop characters as well as their relationships with others are used constantly throughout the film. Some of these may include close ups, which creates intimacy between viewers and the character, as well as two shots, which are used specificially to create a dinamic between two characters. Long shots are also commonly used throughout this films to establish a setting while also allowing viewers to see the characters full range of motion. 

    Drama films also use editing, lighting, and set design as a way to represent the characters feelings, for example when a character is at their low, this can be represented through low key lighting as well as a set desgign of primarly dark blues.

This long shot was used in Marriage Story as a way to establish how alone the character felt.

This two shot from Pride & Prejudice demonstrate how the relationship between these to characters has evolved

This close up of Fake creates intimacy between the audience and the character while also developping his role as an artists. 

 

Marketing: 

    Drama films have a relatively large demographic, however the target audience does lean towards women as well as older generations. This varies along each subgenre, for example period dramas tend to have a demographic of 17-45 year old women while war dramas tend to be mostly male. This is a great thing for drama films as their able to reach people of all ages, race, and gender because of the large variety of content they can produce. Trailers tend to include shots that establish the characters as well some long shots to establish more of the plot. The movie posters also tend to focus on portraying the main subject of the film, which would be the main character.

Art Films

    Since my last post on Sunday, I've spent nearly every moment I had decided between the two ideas I had mentioned. After talking the ideas over with my peers and teachers I did end up choosing the drama about the troubled artist. Because of this, I am planning on doing a new research post dedicated to researching the drama genre as a whole, however, I thought it would be a good idea to first research and create a list of some drama films concentrated on art and artists, that way I might be able to watch some of them and include them in my drama genre research. 

    To do so I did as anyone in the twenty-first century would and searched up "movies featuring artists as the protagonists". From there I was able to find many websites that spoke about movies about artists both fictional and real. From these movies, I hope to gain a better understanding of techniques, shots, and angles used specifically to develop an artist and their stories, such as painting scenes as well as certain mise-en-scene characteristics used to portray artists. 

    Some of these movies that I've bookmarked to watch include:

The Moderns (1988) 

Séraphine (2008) 

Edvard Much (1974) 

Artemisia (1997)

Frida (2002)

 

Brainstorming

    After learning the importance of a film opening and the ways to properly create one, it was time to begin thinking about our own project. Ever since our teacher first introduced the portfolio project to the class, my mind had immediately begun thinking of many different and elaborate ideas that could be not only a great concept for the opening of a film but also its entirety. Due to the fact that I will be working alone (and also the fact that I have zero to no experience with filmmaking other than what we've done in class), however, I tried my best to step back and not get too ahead of myself. In the end, I will have to find a balance between a great concept and one that is attainable within the reach of my abilities. 

    During the first official brainstorming day, I decided to set aside the ideas I had before and begin from scratch, taking a moment to look over the variety of genres that I could choose. During this, I came up with the idea to draw out a web/flow chart as a way to help me organize my thoughts. In this chart, I listed some of the genres that I could dive into along with some key facts of each genre, movies in the genre,
and any ideas for my own film in each genre. 

    I think this chart did actually help me as I was able to narrow some of the genres. For example, I have no interest in producing a romance or comedy movie since they usually start a bit slow and rely heavily on actors since they're character-driven movies. I also think that an action movie would be difficult for me to do considering the number of special effects used in the films. Though I love horror movies, they also tend to have a few special effects and for the life of me I can't think of a concept that hasn't been overdone to my liking, maybe in the following days something will come up but as of now, zilch. That leaves thriller and drama, which are two genres that I've been leaning towards since the beginning. I have two separate concepts that I think are in the range of my abilities that would fit these genres. 

    For the thriller one, I'd rely heavily on sound techniques, which is something difficult for me to get right but I do think it's manageable. I have these vivid images in my head of certain scenes that could take part during the opening, such as glimpses of a shovel forcefully digging and close-ups of someones eyes, where through the use of lighting, editing, and the distorted, asynchronous sound of the shovel still digging, would make it seem that the character is going through a delirious moment. I also see shots of the character washing their hands almost exasperated between each take. This would all lead to the character then waking up, with the loud sound fading to silence. 

     For the drama, I actually turned to an idea I had for a script for my creative writing class about a troubled artist. Like for the thriller one, I can also vividly see shots that could take part in the opening, which is great for getting ideas but once it's time to execute them I know for a fact I'll stress over the fact that it won't look the same in person as it does in my head. In this piece, the opening would begin with various shots of this artist sketching and painting in a brightly lit room, with kind of a warm filter to make it seem like the sun is delicately bouncing off of everything. As these shots play, a "chill" acoustic guitar melody would be playing, following along the close-ups, mid shots, and back shots of this artist doing his thing. Then suddenly during one of the closeups, the artist either breaks his charcoal or drags his paintbrush in the wrong way, and the music stops. I see a close-up of the artist's eyes, anger slowly building as he stares at his piece, where suddenly he throws the easel to the ground, and begins to furiously break, damage, throw everything around him in a rage. Once the first throwing of the easel occurs the guitar would start playing again, creating a contrast between the calm music and the enraged artist. 

    Of course, these are all just ideas and there's a lot for me to work and think about before committing to a concept and genre, such as finding people that would be willing to act for me, and, if I chose the second one, find someone that would like to compose an original song (which I am already in the process of talking to someone about it just so I don't have to ask after I've committed to the idea and not have anyone that would be able to do it for me. So far it's looking good, hopefully, it stays that way.) Before the next blog posting, I will definitely think over everything, even get the advice from my peers on the topic. 

    

Film Opening

     As part of the Aice exam, we were tasked with filming a fictional movie opening as our portfolio project. Throughout the following eight weeks, I will be documenting my process, thoughts, and challenges here, in our very own blog. 

    Unbeknownst to many people, the opening of a film can make or break the whole production, it's vital for filmmakers to produce them correctly. In order to do so, I decided it would be best to do some research beyond what we learned in class on the importance of the first few shots of the film prior to the actual planning of our own opening.

    I began reading articles that explained why the opening shot of a film is important, like this one from Outpost, and articles that gave tips to filmmakers and screenwriters on how to make a great opening shot, such as these from No Film School and Variety. Along with these articles, I also watched a couple of videos that not only spoke about how important openings are but also features opening scenes of a variety of movies and explains how these scenes affected the movie, such as these from The Closer Look, Now You See It, and CineFix. 

    From these sources (along with what we learned in class), I learned that the main thing a film opening achieves is setting the tone for the overall movie. The video from The Closer Look mentions how one should imply the plot of the movie through the opening in order to create a mystery that hooks the audience into watching the movie rather than directly stating what the movie will be about (like how the movie they mentioned, The Emoji Movie did for their opening). The same video also mentions how you don't have to rush the story during the opening scene, using the example of Indiana Jones where the opening shot introduces the characters along with the tone of the film. 

    While watching the videos I also noted some of the iconic opening scenes mentioned for future references. Some of these include: 

Apocalypse Now (1979)

The Dark Knight (2008)

The Shining (1980)

The Matrix (1999)

Music Marketing pt ii

 3, 2, 1, Action!

    As mentioned in the past blog, the first step in our Music Marketing project was to research artists of the same genre we were assigned, which was Alternative Rock. Through our research, we learned how these bands interacted and marketed their products to their fans/followers, Despite the common genre, these artists were all unique in how they presented themselves as a group, however, we found that all of their target audience fell under the range of 15-25, and they all used a form of social media and internet presence to communicate with them. Through a website and social media platforms, the artists we researched were able to market their videos, merchandise, events they took place in, even interact directly with their fanbase. During our research, we also made sure to note down the 'unique' aspects of each artist, such as the things that make them stand out in the music industry. For example, The Killers created their own brand of hot sauce, and Fall Out Boy released fidget spinners along with their music, claimed a mascot as a llama, and even has their own animated show on their youtube. These were all important for when marketing our own band we had to make sure that they'd stand out and not blend in with the crowd. 

    After our research, it was now our group's turn to decide who our artist will be and how will we market their content. First, we spit-balled back and forth different ideas for our brand until we noticed a line in the song we picked, (The Man), "I carry the crown" ultimately deciding on a 'royal' theme and coming up with the band name M'Lady. From there we created our social media, such as our Instagram, Twitter, designed our very own website, along with a youtube channel. After this, we began discussing ideas for our music video, another source of marketing for the band. It was around here where discussed more on how we wanted to be viewed as a band as the question "What is our brand?" arose. We paid attention to the physical image of M'Lady, taking the opportunity of the royal theme, and creating our own logos that would be present throughout all of the platforms and merchandise. This logo, the lion with a crown, would become a symbol for M'lady. We also used the colour pallet of the logo, making sure to incorporate the purples and golds wherever we could. 

M'Lady Official Logo

M'Lady Website

    A big part of an artist's brand is also how to present themselves. Together, we decided that we didn't want M'Lady to be serious, we wanted them to be funny and playful, and overall just a group of people having fun. We wanted M'Lady to act like they didn't really take themselves seriously, and more importantly, we wanted their fans to see them as just any other person. 

    With this in mind, we began planning and storyboarding the shots that would be included in the video, focusing on keeping it lighthearted and comical. Since the lyrics of the song is a bit overconfident,  with the constant lines 'I'm the man', we thought that considering our royal theme it'd be a great idea to have the center of the video around a king. This worked perfectly as a big part of M'Lady's symbol was the crown on the lion's head and we were able to incorporate it in the music video. In order to keep the video comical, lighthearted, and to fit in with the brand of our group, we included many 'foolish' shots, some of which were even thought on the spot. Some of these shots included Logan, our group member that plaid The Man in the video, riding a horse spring rider in a park, and falling off of a tree. We also thought it'd be interested to include some sort of a narrative to the music video and we did this by including a secondary character, played by group member Anthony, who would appear throughout the video obviously mad and troubled at our king, which would all lead to the final clip of the music video where The Man gets pushed by this secondary character into a pool. 

    It took two days to film the shots of the video, and this was almost immediately followed by the editing process which our two skilled team members, Sabrina and Logan took charge of. Like most projects, editing took a bit of time but the end product was absolutely worth it. 

    After the music video was complete, we began working on the presentation portion of the assignment. Here, we basically rallied up all of our information and data that we collected throughout the whole process and made it, well, presentable. During this process, we were also able to refine some of the marketing, such as creating more merch, releasing behind the scenes images, and even editing a blooper compilation of the music video. The presentation itself went well, we faced some technical difficulties such as links not opening and my computer 'blue-screening' practically the exact moment I finished my portion of the presentation, which was discussing our website, social media platforms, and merchandise. 

 

M'Lady Poster Merch

   

M'Lady Logo Graphic Tee Merch

     Overall, though, I think it went well. I for one am super proud of both the work that I did and the work the rest of the group did. I think that we worked really well together, which is something rare when you're randomly assigned partners. I genuinely had a lot of fun creating the merchandise, the websites, and the social media accounts. I even enjoyed filming my small role in the music video, which was something I was a bit anxious about. For me, it's safe to say that M'lady was a success. 

    I think this project has taught me two main things, for one, the importance of marketing not only in the music industry but in general, and two, the process of thinking through, reflecting, and writing out the steps we went through in order to make this project how it is, which is something important for the Cambridge portfolio.

Watch the music video above

Music Marketing pt 1

    Behind the Scenes

    As part of the Aice Media course, we were split into groups and assigned a music marketing project. Together we researched recording companies along with two case studies each of the artists that these companies produced. The work was distributed evenly between all four of us with each of us researching one artist. There were little to no challenges when it came to the research as each of us were able to find a surplus amount of information on our artists, which consisted of The Killers, Fall Out Boy (both part of Island Records), Arctic Monkeys, and Animal Collective (both part of Domino Recording Company). Researching these artist allowed us to gain a deeper understanding on how someone can market their products, in this case how these artists market their albums, for example, during the release of their album Mania in 2018, Fall Out Boy released their own sets of fidget spinners, a product popular to their target audience of 11-15 year olds at the time. 

When we finished the research portion of the project our group began discussing techniques and ideas on how we’d market and film the music video of the song we chose “The Man”. One of the group members, Logan, brought up the idea of twisting the lyrics of the song into an empowering narrative where the main subject of the video is a woman dressed in more masculine clothes and breaking gender norms by being “The Man”. Though this was a great idea after talking it out with the group we came to the conclusion that it could be misconstrued as the opposite of empowering through the idea that women can only be powerful if they fit into more masculine roles which is nowhere near close to the message we originally wanted to send. After this we decided to take a different route and use the lyrics in a more literal sense. In these lyrics there are a lot of symbolism about The Man being a King and after a small joke about dressing up as a king for the music video we concluded that it would actually be a really fun and interesting idea. And so by sticking to this King theme, M’Lady was born. 

After our main theme was settled the group began focusing more on the marketing side of the project. We began with the simple, such as creating a social media presence for M’Lady through Instagram, Twitter and Youtube. After this we created an original website where people can learn more about M’Lady such as their history, songs, music videos, upcoming tour dates, and lastly a gallery of M’Lady’s best moments. Two logos were also made with the theme of royalty, one being the official logo of M’Lady and the other we decided would go on a t-shirt, creating M’Lady’s first official merchandise. Lastly we discussed aspects of the music video itself, where we talked about different scenes and a storyline for the video. We plan on filming shots of our group member Logan dressed as a King and following him through ironic and funny tasks such as helping ducks cross the road and knighting a dog. 

Representation Analysis

Representation in the media, or rather lack of, has been a large issue that has not been addressed till very recently. The definition of representation is the portrayal of someone or something in a particular way, and throughout the past years, the media has had a terrible run with it. By either ignorantly representing certain groups or not representing them at all, the media created long-lasting negative effects on their audiences. Today I will be analyzing two ads and how their representation may affect their audience.

"Spray More- Get More- The Axe Effect" 

The first advertisement is from Axe Body Spray. Essentially the ad consists of women desperately running through an island to reach a man who is spraying the product on himself. To begin, this ad has major issues in both the representation of women and the representation of races. After rewatching the video several times one can accurately say that there are only two POC women visible throughout the entire production. This is a terrible representation for two reasons. The first is the inaccuracy of the amount of POCS compared to the number of white people. Though people of colour are a minority, they're not a minority of two to hundreds of white women. The second one is that by only including two people of colour, the producers of this are basically stating that white women are more desirable to men since in this ad the purpose of the women is to appease the man. This purpose displayed also plays part in the issue with representing women. With the slogan, "spray more-get more" this ad dehumanizes women to the level of a spray, an object. This sends a message to viewers that this belief, that women are on the same level of objects, is okay. 

"Close the Loop"

On the other hand, the second ad from H&M displays amazing representation. It promotes diversity while also breaking gender roles and stereotypes like men not being able to wear skirts, and how there certain colours for each sex (pink for women and blue for men). It promotes breaking fashion norms and trends, such as wearing red when you're a redhead and wearing brown shoes at night. And even though the topic of this ad isn't race and ethnic diversity, this H&M add still hired actors with different backgrounds and cultures, creating an accurate representation of the world and the people in it. The effects this ad has on its viewers is that it's okay to be you, and that social norms shouldn't stop that, and of coruse the aim of the ad which is to recycle your clothes.

Adventure Genre Research

 Adventure Is Out There!

Adventure films are one of the highest-grossing genres in the world. With 63.57 billion dollars in total box revenue (1995-2020), adventure movies are the most popular movie genre in North America. The popularity of these films originally arose in the 1940s with movies such as Captain Blood and The Adventures of Robinhood, as since then many subgenres were created, one of them being "swashbuckler", in other words, adventure films characterized by sword fighting.

Content:

Adventure films are distinguished by the protagonist's journey and pursuit of the unknown. Facing obstacles and barriers, the protagonists have to overcome their challenges in order to reach their end goal. Commonly throughout adventure films, the protagonists tend to be successful in their escapades by the time the conclusion arrives. These films take place in exotic locations or those that add history to the plot, but no matter what the setting is, it always plays a large factor in the movie. Violence in these films, if there are any, are usually less graphic as compared to other movie genres as they tend to insinuate violence rather than specifically showing it.

   Example: In the movie Up , the protagonists travel a great distance through various exotic settings in order to arrive at "Paradise Falls" which was the protagonist's main motivation throughout the film. 

Production Tecnhiques:

As said before, the setting in an adventure movie plays a large role in the overall finished piece. It is arguable as important, if not more, as the characters themselves. Because of its importance, along with the fact that as the protag's journey goes on the setting changes, most adventure films utilize establishing shots in order for the viewers to easily understand where the scene takes place.

Example: This establishing shot from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is used to mark a new chapter in the protagonist's story, indicating that the following scenes in the movie will take place at the school.

Scores are also commonly seen throughout adventure films. Scores aid in evoking the specific emotion directors of a film want the audience to experience. During high action scenes, there will be music that increases the adrenaline, during intense scenes music may aid in increasing an anxious feeling. Scores also make the audience relate a specific song to a film, which many times evoke the feeling of nostalgia for those rewatching.

Example: The score for Jurrasic Park became popular after the film's success. This resulted in the Jurrasic Park theme being universally known by many.

Adventure movies most commonly have an uncontrolled mis-en-sence, as production usually strives for a realistic view of a protagonist in a journey. Other techniques used for realism in adventure movies are seen in other genres such as sound effects, natural lighting, environmental sounds, etc.

Marketing:

Adventure films have a large demographic. Originally, the target audience would be men but as the years went by this expanded. Because of its lack of graphic violence, adventure films have a wide viewing audience, including men, women, and children. Like other genres, these movies are mostly marketed through trailers and posters. Trailers tend to include some establishing shots along with shots of the protagonists in action. Posters tend to feature the main protagonists in a collage style.

Samples:

The film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) is the first film of the Pirates of the Caribbean series. This film is one of the examples that fall under swashbuckler in the adventure genre as throughout the movie it highlights several sword-fighting scenes between pirates and sailors alike. POTC features young Will Turner, played by Orlando Bloom, on a quest to save the woman he's in love with, Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) who was been kidnapped by pirates. With the help of Captain Jack Sparrow (Johny Depp), Turner is able to help Swann escape, as arguably Elizabeth did a lot of the saving herself, while also breaking a curse of the Black Pearl, which was a large aspect of their journey. With the popularity of this film, the score became iconic throughout the media, specifically, He's a Pirate Suite, which is now known as the theme for POTC. This song was commonly used during thrilling scenes which creates excitement and boosts adrenaline. As seen above, the poster follows the common poster theme for adventure movies with the collage-like design.

The film Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) is also the first film of the series based off of the first novel. In it, we follow the journey of Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) and friends, such as Gandalf (Ivan McKellen), Legolas (Orlando Bloom), Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), and Sam (Sean Astin) on the quest of destroying a ring powered with evil. Though in this first movie the protagonists didn't finish the quest as of yet, it did conclude in a lighter and happier tone compared to the rest of the movie. Like POTC, LOTR also has a score, which was produced by Howard Shore, which also became well known in the film industry. The film focused a lot on realism despite its supernatural content by location filming and relying on natural lighting. Sound effects were also used to enhance moments in the film such as steps on the ground when running and the sound of an arrow flying past. The poster also fits the adventure theme with a collage-type design.

Other Adventure Films:

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005)

The Matrix (1999)

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

The Princess Bride (1987)

The Mask of Zorro (1998)

Introduction

Hi! My name is Isabella, I'm a Junior in high school and currently enrolled in Aice Media. Here I'll be documenting and uploading projects for the course!