With the semester coming to an end, it’s time to wrap up a great studio and finish up our final projects: the last pieces needed to complete our goal of exploding genre to smithereens. The studio has been made up of two parts, theory and practice. For each project, we made a sketch(practice) and ten wrote an exegeses utilising it(theory). This proved quite challenging at times and made sure we were constantly thinking while creating a film. Everything must have meaning/purpose.
To begin the year, the reading Let’s Talk About Genre by Neil Gaiman and Kazuo Ishiguro opened the floor to questions of what genre is. It discussed whether it was possible that what we think of as genre boundaries are actually things invented fairly recently by the publishing industry. We discussed this, among other things. We surmised together that there are certain patterns in films, and you can divide up stories according to these patterns. That is genre. Kazu Ishiguro went on to say that he gets worried when readers and writers take boundaries too seriously, specifically worried that they think ‘something strange happens when you cross them, and that you should think very carefully before doing so’. This was an interesting point to kick off the semester and played a large role in our sketches throughout the semester as we appeased and subverted many genre conventions.
After figuring out what genre actually is, we embarked on our first project which was a short sketch briefly looking into one particular genre. Mine was an audio piece, delving into the conventions of sci-fi. It was set on a spaceship and aimed to create a fantasy scape/world while featuring themes such as ‘good vs evil’, ‘journey into the unknown’ and the problems of future technology. Check out this piece in the link below!!
Following this, and some more research on some more genres such as the musical and vampire film, we completed our second sketch which was a little bit longer. We were asked to mix it up more and question something about the genre. This would help us a lot more on the theory side of things, as we have to have some sort of argument for our exegeses. I wanted to look at the boundaries of film and I chose to do this by making a video from a war film. I wanted to see if I could make a war scene showing the effects of war without explicitly showing it. In my research, I found that the film Waltz With Bashir(Ari Folman, 2008) was able to depict war through animation without explicitly filming events. Although I didn’t use animation, I focused on the dialogue of my characters and the use of audio to show the drastic effects of war and PTSD on ex-soldiers. Below is a link to this piece!
For our final project, I teamed up with Brydan to make a more ambitious short film at roughly ten minutes. I decided what I wanted to argue was that the bottle drama is not a genre, rather a structure that can be used to wield other genres. We decided to use subtle allusions to the western and vampire genre in our sketch along with drama. It was all set in one location. Below is the script to this final piece!!
Project 4: Dinner for Three Script
Throughout the semester we have learned many practical and theoretical elements, all of which will help us become better media practitioners in the long run. We have been reflective with our blog posts and also analytical with our exegeses’. Our sketches have enabled us to be creative and get some hands on experience making our own genre pieces. Hopefully the rest of the Media students enjoy our semesters work at the annual presentations!
On that note: Good morning, and in case I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight!!!
References
- Gaiman, Neil, & Ishiguro, Kazuo. Let’s talk about genre. New Statesman , 4 June 2015
- Waltz With Bashir. (2008). [film] Ari Folman.
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