One Page: Genre and References
Small Tutorial to Fill in your One Page
This is the ribbon-cutting post of a series of entries in FilmLAB that will help you fill in the One Page of your project that will be sent to the producers through the online script and co-production market Filmbox.
Today we start with two very important sections: the genre and the references.
Genre
In our One Page you will find up to 3 choices to incorporate the genres of your film. This section is really important because the genre is the stamp of your project and for some genres a certain performance at the ticket office is attributed. In addition, many producers are directly interested only in producing projects of a specific genre.
Genre can also mark the international potential of your project. While dramas or comedies tend to draw more local stories, others such as terror or action usually bring more universal stories that are easier to sell in other countries.
Understanding what is the main genre and what are the subgenres of your movie is the key. For example, you can have a movie that takes place in the future on a distant planet but it is an intimate love story. In this case, the romantic genre will prevail over science fiction (subgenre) since your target will not be the young male Star Wars but the female, who will be the one who will ultimately be attracted to the love story.
References
To give the producer you are selling to an idea of your project, there is no more useful tool than using references from other films. As much as you explain the plot or the genre of your film, sometimes it is not until you name the references that the other person fully understands what type of movie you want to make. The references allow the producer to easily identify the tone, the visual or the magnitude of the project while at the same time allows him to take into account his trajectories at the box office.
To show the references at the One Page we decided to use the style “My film is X meets Y”, a very American sales tool that producers like a lot. It tries to synthesize the references in two films that mix with each other. Returning to the previous example, in the case of having a film that is an intimate love story in a futuristic science fiction context, your references could be: “Two Lovers” meets “Moon”.
Throughout the next few weeks you will find more entries on FilmLAB about other fields of the One Page that will help you to show your project in the most faithful and correct way.
