Genre Research: Comedy

 Madelyn Argueta

AICE Media Studies Period 6

Hello Everyone, 

The genre that I researched was comedy. Common camera angles that I noticed often in comedy movies were pan, tilt, zoom in and out, lots of high angles and low angles, tracking, medium close up, close up, and more. However, the camera angle that I saw the most was at eye level. This angle made me feel more connected with the character and understand the feeling/vibe that the person in the film is experiencing at that exact moment. A huge thing that I noticed was the costumes that the people wore in the film. Their costumes were related to a holiday that was occurring at the time that the film was taking place, the age of the characters, which setting they were in whether it was at work or playing a sport, etc. This also applied to the props as well, everything correlated with what they were doing then, what activities they were participating in, etc. While I was doing some research, I didn't see much editing other than one of the movies that I watched called "Family Switch", which had a collage of videos of different areas of Hollywood/California. But what I did see was a couple of cross-cutting as well cuts. There wasn't as much fading in the movies as I expected nor dissolving, but I feel like not including certain edits like those made the film flow more and didn't make it seem unprofessional if it wasn't needed or included at the wrong time. For sound, they all had some kind of soundtrack playing, but the music was mainly played when the camera was focusing on the setting in which the film was taking place or when a scene didn't have any dialogue. The two most common sounds that I noticed were ambient sound as well as dialogue. To me, these occurred more than the music playing so the movie seems more real, and for the viewer to better connect with the movie along with feeling as if they are taking part in the movie as well. The movies that I used for my genre research were She's a Man, Murder Mystery, and Family Switch. Elements that I liked were that they caught my attention, I liked how depending on the situation or holiday, the clothing matched it, the people were dressed their age and according to where they are like if they were going to work they would use more professional clothing and if they were on a boat they used more beachy/tropical clothing. Something that I didn't like was that although there were some exciting parts of the films, it didn't leave me constantly on the tip of my toes wanting to know what would happen next. Except for murder mystery (one of the movies that I researched), there wasn't any big surprise at the end so the fact that I was able to predict the final and how it would end was kind of a bummer to me. I wanted to see a surprise or an ending, I didn't expect that moment.