Filmmaking Tips - How to be a Film Maker ? "Know Your Video" - Part 1
Filmmaking Tips - How to be a Film Maker ?
Know Your Video - Part 1
What is your video? One way to start to answer this question is to tell us your genre. Genre is the one-word descriptor that sets our exceptions for the video.
Genres are most familiar to us in film, like action, horror, sci-fi, corrupt-cop-against-the-system, bio-pics, musicals, and sports stories. You probably know immediately which genres you love and which you can't stand. So does your audience, which is the point of thinking in genre.
Genres come with certain built-in structures that the audience expects you to deliver.
In the romantic comedy genre, two people "meet cute" and hate each other, fall in love,have enormous trouble based on an obstacle or misunderstanding, and then fall back in love again. Viewers love a romantic comedy that fulfills their genre exceptions in unexpected ways, with unexpected charm. But if it doesn't end happily, expectations are dashed and millions of women walk away mad.
The advantage to knowing our genre is that we can help interested people find our work quickly, and vice versa. Genres can seem limiting at first, but soon you realize that they're merely convections-customs common in society that helps you understand the audience is a good thing.
Video have genres too, although you may not be used to thinking of them that way. Instrumental videos, "punked" videos, music videos, webcam rants, sketch comedy, stop -motion animation-the definition are still evolving, but they're there. As with film, video genres both communication what your video is about and lock you into exceptions, and the audience is disappointed.
Try This
"Genre Study"
Back to YouTube for more study: Click through
this week's top 20 or so videos. Look for two or more
of the same genre. How well do they satisfy your expectations?
What makes them stand out as different from others in their genre-for example
why is one sketch comedy video different from another?
For your next video, consider what genre video you are making.
What does the audience expect from you? Make a brainstormed list
and keep the key expectations in mind as you plan. You don't have to
blindly conform to expectations ( what fun would that be?), but if
you deviate, you need to be aware of the effect it will have on your
audience.
An instructional video is one genre, a music video another. If I need to know how to use Photoshop, I'll be impatient with a hot woman singing me a song. Not as impatient, perhaps, as in the reverse situation, but impatient nonetheless.
A sketch comedy video had better be funny. A music video needs to show the band and the entire song. A wedding video needs the " I do" moment. A product. I should laugh and cry while watching a memorial video, and learn how to stack boxes during a workplace procedure video.
The audience's expectations may seem at first like a limitation, but they can also be used for fun- if you know their expectations, you can bend them by doing something unexpected. Genre twists in romantic comedy include a man falling in love with a cartoon character ( Enchanted ), a couple who live happily ever after, but not with each other ({500}) days of summer), and a bromance between a 78-year -old curmudgeon and a Cub Scout ( Up)
These films use genre as a jumping -of point for creativity, and so should you. For example, you could structure the usual wedding video events around post ceremony interviews with friends and family talking about why they were sure Patty and John were completely wrong for each other.
You can also combine genres. A musical instructional video could be pretty interesting if a band sings Photoshop instructions as they're demonstrated on the screen while hundreds of duplicate copies of the same woman dance across the screen.
THANK YOU
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