From the beginning, this studio appealed to me because the name “Exploding Genre” implies that we will be breaking genres down to their elemental form, analysing those pieces and how they interact, and then piecing them back together in our own work. This is, basically, what I hope to achieve from my participation in the studio — a broad understanding of what genres are, their essence, why they endure (or not) and how they are made. I don’t have any genre in particular that I’m interested in; I’m more interested in the birds-eye view. But having said that, I’ll be operating with an open mind and may come out at the end of this semester with a newfound obsession with a genre I’d never considered before.

I’ve always been fascinated by the people for whom one genre is cinema. I know people who very rarely watch a film that isn’t a slasher horror flick, and who spend unreasonable amounts of time searching for the worst quality VHS rip of a 1980s Canadian B-movie they can find. I’d like to figure out if there’s a way to reckon with this kind of single-minded genre obsession by looking at the genre itself, or, if not, whether there’s another way to understand this phenomenon.

In terms of technical skill, I hope that replicating certain genre techniques in class exercises will help me continue to develop my proficiency with filmmaking, an area in which I’m still definitely a novice.