Addie's Media Studies Blog

In these next couple posts I will be talking about the different conventions of the comedy drama genre. These include common character types, theme, setting, story formulas and stars.   

In this post I will be talking about common character types and setting found in comedy drama. There are many different characters found in comedy dramas; however, there are certain character types which people associated with this genre.  The common character types found in film in general are found here as an extreme version of common stereotypes of certain groups of people. For example, in the genre comedy drama, parents found in this type of movie typically follow one of three stereotypes. They are either controlling parents who want to control their kid’s whole life and never let them do anything or they are immature and do not care about their kids. The third stereotype being the oblivious parents.  In the movie “The Way, Way Back”, the mom of the main character is caring but oblivious to the fact that her son does not like the person she is dating or that her boyfriend is being mean to her son. Another common character type is the supportive father figure and the rich man. The rich men found in the comedy drama genre typically follow one stereotypes. They are either the rich man who does not care about their relationship at the beginning of the movie. For example, in the movie Crazy, Stupid, Love the main character does not seem to care much about the fact that he and his wife’s relationship is strained rather that he is getting divorced.   

There are many different settings in which take comedy dramas take place; however, they typically take place in one of two places. They either take place in the area the character lives or at a place which the character is completely unfamiliar with. For example, in the movie “Crazy Rich Asians” the main character (Rachel Chu) who has lived in New York her whole life goes to visit her boyfriend’s family in Singapore. This means that Rachel Chu was taken to a place where she did not fully understand the costumes and was unfamiliar with the place. She also did not know what to expect from her boyfriend’s family since she had never met them, only heard about them. Another example, in the movie “Crazy, Stupid, Love” the character goes about their daily lives while dealing with the fact that they are getting a divorce.  

Hi, my name is Adaline Daniels. And I am doing a comedy drama. I am partnered with my best friend. Elizabeth Rom. We decided on a comedy drama after much debate We wanted a movie genre that both of us had seen many movies in and had a convenient place to shot. It also had to be a film genre where we would not have to make a character digitally. This immediately eliminated the horror movie genre. This is a genre neither me nor my partner had seen many movies from. We wanted a film genre we had already seen movies from, so we did not have to watch a whole bunch of movies in order to do the genre. We wanted a genre in which we already knew what good movies in that film genre looked like. The science fiction genre was also eliminated because neither of us is good at editing to the extent where we can create a character digitally which is often now in science fiction. We also decided to eliminate this genre because without creating somethings digitally it becomes difficult to make the scene seem realistic. In other words, immerse the audience in that movie’s world. The western genre we eliminated because we did not have any convenient places to shot. In other words, neither of has a place that looks like a dessert. The other genres were eliminated mostly since me and my partner had not seen many movies from that at genre or it would be hard to film. In the next couple blog posts will be talking about why me and my partner decided on a comedy drama and what the genre conventions are. The blog will also talk about the creation process for our trailer and the overall concept of our movie