#2 Initial Planning for Task

As I am working individually, time is very important to me to make sure that I complete all necessary tasks. I began my initial planning to prepare any ideas, get the opinion of others on these ideas, to get me closer to picking a genre, and to help me understand where to start with my research.

I found this to benefit me greatly and I now have a choice out of two genres that I would like to pick to use for my short film. The genres were chosen by picking my two favourite genres, comedy and horror, and also mentioning popular films of these genres which I plan to take a look at. For example, popular horror films include; Paranormal Activity 1, 2 and 3, Insidious and The Exorcist, and popular comedy films include; White Chicks, Superbad and The Hangover. I also mentioned my two least favourite genres, romance and science fiction as these are genres that I have little or no interest in. I then asked for my friends opinions on these two genres to help me make the tough decision between the two.

One friend said that 'comedy can be risky, as not all humour is shared', which is a very valid point as success from comedy films mainly comes from the amount the audience laugh as opposed to the actual story. Another friend said that 'horror films shot in 'home video' style are very effective as they seem very realistic', this relates to films such as 'The Blair Witch Project' which largely uses this 'home video style'/amateur footage technique. A third friend said that 'both films can be very successful with a wide demographic if done correctly, and horror-comedy hybrid is a new area'. After typing 'horror-comedy genre' in to Google, I found that this genre does exist, and films such as the Scary Movie film series are of this genre. It may benefit me too take a look at the Scary Movie films, although I feel it would be more 'safe' to stick to just one genre, and avoid hybrid or mixed genres as it is harder to follow conventions.

Below are the scans from my initial planning.