A few days ago, me and my partner, Shreya, chose our genre for our portfolio project film opening. After much deliberation upon what was/was not feasible based on our skill set and what we have available, we chose….. drumroll please….DRAMA! Although at the beginning of the year we wanted to make a magazine, we came to love the different aspects of filmmaking. I am excited and nervous about starting this project because I know it needs to be done well but at the same time I don’t know how well our opening will turn out. Anyways, the point of this post is to introduce this genre to anyone out there who doesn’t fully understand drama and explain why this genre will work with our ideas.
When I think of “drama” what almost immediately pops into my head are romantic sob fests that toe the line between what’s plausible and implausible. However, that is just a tiny pinprick of what drama really is. A drama is a complex or intertwining plot based on the actions and interactions of the characters. While action movies focus on world ending disasters that one hero saves us from, drama focuses on the relationships between, not just people, but everything.
The purpose of a drama is to make the audience feel something, which is why my previous example of a romantic epic is misleading. Romance movies elicit a specific emotion among a specific target audience but dramas can also make you feel anger or loss. Character development is essential in drama because they are the basis for the entire story. The character must be someone the audience can empathize with, feel sorry/happy for, the audience needs to connect with the main characters, otherwise the film has no purpose and will not perform well.
Another important convention that drama films have is a dialogue heavy script to further the relationship between characters through conversation. Conflict is integral to the formation of a plot in a drama or any genre for that matter. But what makes drama unique is the various forms that conflict can take, for example conflict can be internal like when a character is struggling with their feelings/personality or conflict can be external and driven by the actions of opposing characters.
We decided to conform to the conventions of drama because of the relative freedom we have in creating a plot. Shreya and I knew we wanted to have an element of tragedy in our story and drama fit the best for our plot. We will include the aforementioned conventions in our project to encompass what a drama needs. While some artists seek to challenge conventions, our main objective is making our ideas known.
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