Rachel's Blog: Genre Research

Picking a Genre:

   From the start, my group and I knew we wanted to incorporate thrilling suspense in our film opening. Throughout the year, I have done a lot of research on suspense through many different genres, and I believe this could be a key technique in making our opening stand out. Plus, this choice made it easy to cut out many genres available, and really helped stick two main genres to our minds: horror and thriller.

   Most film openings in the horror genre have one thing in common, a terrifying and gruesome scene. These scenes are typically in a gloomy unsettling setting, where characters are most likely to be killed, setting up the plot for the whole movie. While sharing similar aspects of their intro, these film openings set the start of the film with their own unique off-putting storyline.

   One horror film that demonstrates this well is Stephen King’s It (2017). Suspense is seen all throughout the opening, from the long chase of the paper boat to the introduction to the main antagonist. To end the suspense and introduction, a character is killed. Incorporating a suspenseful death in our project could open so many doors to a creative plot and story for our film and is something we are strongly considering adding. However, we may need to restrict the scene, as creating a realistic death scene could be pretty difficult.

Some other horror films:

Smile (2022)
A Quiet Place (2018)

Another genre that's drawn our attention was thriller. Thriller movies depend on creating a dragged-out suspense for the audience, rather than fear like a horror movie would. In thrillers, the protagonist constantly deals with the antagonist almost everywhere. Additionally, thriller movies tend to create mystery with their opening, doing so in a dramatic way. Since creating mystery is what my group is beginning to lean towards, I feel like this would be a solid genre choice.

For instance, Jaws incorporates mystery and suspense throughout the film. The main protagonist is always dealing with the shark, with the still looming death of a child, and with the main antagonist constantly on his tail! The opening of this film gives structure to the mood of the whole story, creating emotion toward the many lives the shark has taken. The suspense and climax of this opening in such a short time period makes this genre type so interesting and something i'd love to continue to look into.