2. Our production has a
hybrid genre of
comedy drama with
sub-genres of
coming-of-age and
romance.

3. What are the conventions of a
drama genre?
Within a film with a drama genre, you would expect the
conventions to be that the storyline is generally dramatic, which
could move the audience emotionally for example. A general
drama based genre to a film uses realistic events in order to do
this.
Also, you would expect the audience to relate to the character
(Arabella, our female protagonist) which we can apply the Uses
and Gratification theory to as personal identity. This creates a
sense of sympathy towards the character when in a certain
situation that an individual of the audience that they can relate
to.
Usually, using Tordorov’s Equilibrium narrative theory, the
disequilibrium would usually be an emotional rather than a
physical thing, so relating to our film, the disequilibrium is that
she changes her image in order to impress a boy, and loses all
her friends in the process because of her actions.

4. What are the conventions of a
comedy genre?
For our film ‘Being Arabella’, we thought that comedy would be
good hybrid genre, along with the drama genre shown
previously. This is because we want to avoid the typical clichés
of a ‘chick-flick’, which are usually just romance and comedy.
The conventions of a comedy genre are that typically, teen
comedies like our film are usually set in a high school, or
involve high school in some way. This links in with our film
because Arabella does in fact go to high school.
The typical character for a comedy film would be naturally
clumsy, accident prone people, which usually generates laughs.

5. Sub-genre: ‘Coming-of-age’
The original idea of a ‘coming-of-age’ genre would be a person
going through the transition from childhood to adulthood,
mostly common in teen films. The film would therefore be
targeted at a teenage audience.
Most themes used in a coming-of-age film would be storylines to
do with things like drugs, pregnancies, relationships and
friendships for example. This makes the film effective because
for the majority of the storylines, teens can relate to them.

6. Subgenre: ‘Romance’
This type of film is usually aimed at a female audience, and
typically a ‘boy meets girl’ scenario. There are usually hints
during the film which may suggest that they are a good ‘love
match’, and the films would usually end in a ‘happy ever after’.
As a disequilibrium, you could say that there is normally some
sort of disagreement/argument between the pair, however
somehow they reunite, leading to that ‘happy ever after’.
This relates to our film because to create a film following the
type of genre’s we are aiming towards, typically, we should
involve the standard equilibrium theory. This would mean that
in a romance genre, the girl (being our female protagonist),
meets a boy, however something goes wrong (disequilibrium) but
they manage to sort it out and there is that sort of ‘happy ever
after’ idea.