Drama vs. Horror

Research can be a very tedious task to undertake, but whenever I do research I always find it so interesting. I'm the type of person that doesn't mind doing something like research because I'm learning. This is definitely good, especially for right now because I'm starting the research portion of my film opening project.

I decided to begin by researching drama and what it truly entails. The genre of drama is seen as a real life representation of relationships and hard times people go through. Drama is all about representing humans, whether it's at their best or their worst. The genre of drama is most likely the largest type of genre, due to the fact that there are so many sub-genres. There are sub-genres like romance, melodrama, biography, political, historical, and so much more. Now, my target audience for drama would be mostly women, and an age range from around 65 and older. The age range could make drama harder to create. Since, there is such a gap between my age and my potential audiences' age. It could cause some major problems in the future. Yet, that also depends on my sub-genre. I was thinking of doing a romance drama or something like a coming-of-age movie, which would definitely be geared towards women, and could lower the age range.

Coming-of-age movies like The Spectacular Now have done extremely well at box office, 6.9 million U.S. dollars to be exact. Coming-of-age movies are feel good movies that young people can relate to and older people can feel nostalgia towards. From previous movies, coming-of-age and romance have been proven successful. I feel as though since it's something I have personal experience with I could make a movie that will pull at the heart strings of others.  It would definitely still be a challenge though.

Horror movies, on the other hand, have a low age group ranging from 18-30. The age range would make horror easier for me to create since I know what people in that age range enjoy. Horror movies are described as movies that are designed to cause panic and to frighten the individual watching. They are used to invoke fear and show the darker side of life. Despite being made to scare people, horror movies are fun movies to watch with friends, and considering I've watched many horror movies, I'd love to try to create the opening for one.


Movies like Paranormal Activity are extremely popular, with 889.7 million U.S. dollars made at the box office. Horror movies seem like easier movies to make, because the characters, though they need some development, don't need as much development as drama genres characters do. Horror movies seem like a more creative genre to make. My topic would require a lot of research to make sure some of the storyline is plausible, if I choose to go with the horror genre.



All this research has given me a lot to think about, stay tuned to see which genre I choose.

Citations:
Buffman, N. (2011). Drama. Retrieved from https://thescriptlab.com/screenplay/genre/952-drama/
Palmer, W. (2017). CinemaCon 2017: Who Is Your Audience in 2017?. Retrieved from https://pro.boxoffice.com/who-is-your-audience-in-2017/ 
Unknown. Unknown. Drama Films. Retrieved from http://www.filmsite.org/dramafilms.html
Unknown. Unknown. Horror Films. Retrieved from http://www.filmsite.org/horrorfilms.html
Wikepedia. (2018). The Spectacular Now. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spectacular_Now
Wikepedia. (2018). Paranormal Activity. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranormal_Activity