Planning - Genre, Target Market, and Theme Ideas.

The group has been thinking about which genre of film we would like to produce a trailer for.

Last year, we produced a two minute film for the horror/thriller genre, with a vampire theme. We have decided that we would like to work with a very different genre this year, as we feel that we exhausted our ideas for the horror genre last year and would like experience working with a new genre.

We first discussed which genres are possible for us to produce to a standard that we would be satisfied with. For example, we feel that we couldn't work with the action genre as an action film/trailer would require a budget and level of professional special effects skills far above what we can offer to make it realistic and competitive with other action films on the market. We decided that either a romantic comedy or drama film would be the best for us to produce a trailer for, because both genres are "realistic" in nature, hence require less of a budget and professional special effects skills for us to create a high level of verisimilitude.
Out of the two, we settled on the drama genre, as after much discussion we agreed that low-budget romantic comedies often look, well, low budget. Working with a more serious genre will enable us to steer clear from potential "cheesiness".

With the genre we will be working within settled upon, we started thinking about more specific themes that we could work with. To be able to settle on a theme, the first thing for us to discuss which market we would like to target.
According to New York Magazine, the most profitable market for the film industry to target is the female market, as females not only choose the films that they would like to see alone, but those in relationships also tend to choose the film the couple sees.
The 18-34 year old market is often regarded as the "coveted" market, as younger people tend to be more media conscious, hence follow media news and film releases more so than older markets and frequent the cinema.
Therefore, our group decided that we should be discussing themes which target the females 18-34 market. We have started researching popular film and television products which target the same market, and will be producing a mind map for us to organize our ideas and visualize which themes will offer us the most to work with.