Researching the DRAMA genre.

My sister's keeper... 

The genre of this film is Drama; a film about a girl who was created in order to help her older sister, who has cancer. It all stops when she decides to take her parents to court and not giving them permission to use her bone marrow or any other parts, to help her sister, albeit it would help her. However, she only does this because her sister asked her to refuse to help so she can die peacefully. Then the story is about her families’ journey during this process and how they learn more about each other.

The opening establishes:

• The characters- it is clear that this story will be based about a household but mostly about this girl her sister and their parents.
• Music/sound or dialogue- In the opening we can instantly here soft, calming music in the background and then we here dialogue. A little girl, who we believe is the main character as she talks about her life.

In the opening the dialogue is used to give a brief understanding about the film and what type of character is, by her speech.

•          The setting- we know it will be based at home and after the 2 minutes end we see a school bus so we know it’s set in a neighbourhood.  

I think this is an interesting way to open a film, because we establish that this film is about this girl who was "engineered" to help her sister, by a voice over of the main character. However, knowing this definitely raises questions because we want to know what’s wrong with her sister if she needs help. Also, the various shots are being flicked off the screen, as if reading a book. Whenever the girl was saying something the shot linked to her words, from when she was speaking about how a child is created and her family.  Overall, the opening of this film had everything you need; it introduced you to the basic characters in this film, with the flashes of home videos we knew that it will be based on a family: mother, father and two girls. We get music and even dialogue, in the same time giving us an understanding of the narrative and the genre of the film; What the story was based around and the music did give a calming atmosphere, but it added to the sympathetic feeling we felt towards the girl. It introduced the genre as drama again because we know that there must be something tragic with the sister in order for the parents to 'create' another baby. Nevertheless, it establishes equilibrium because we don’t know what the real problem is, which raises questions as to what the real problem is?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS55xHZWzEo

Farjana Reshma Rahman