Genre Decision Blog

 After thorough research and thought, we've decided on the Drama genre. Horror, drama, and comedy are three entirely different genres, and are rather difficult to compare. Our pitch has a rather dark and serious aspect to it. With this, concluded that the lightheartedness of a comedy was definitely not the way to go. Aspects of a comedy include things bright and joyous lighting, fun props and light makeup. It is clear that a film capturing battles with substance abuse and addiction would not be portrayed in a breezy light hearted way. Further, popular movies under the comedy genre, like Step Brothers and Mean Girls, have none of the vision that wee see in our movie. This left us to decide between horror and drama. While these can both have chilling, surreal aspects, one just fit our theme better than the other. Horror films make use of dark lighting, setting and mood, but horror does it as the scare the watchers, and we don't want to go THAT dark. Horrors use a lot of eerie music and visuals, which we would stay away from. Editing with jump cuts, split screens, and zooms are very common in horror movies, but do not seem fitting for this film. There is also very commonly some type of horrifying costume being used in the film. This in a sense strips away the realism that we are looking for. We are not aiming to give any type of jump-scare or teeth gritting feeling, maybe unease, but not distress. Keeping the film authentic feeling and empathetic is our main goal. Drama was the perfect decision. A drama uses the perfect amount of both high-key and low-key lighting to capture the story. All elements of a drama film can show the authenticity in our story. Moreover, example films, Thirteen, Euphoria, and more have exactly the same feeling that we are going for.