Infographic Breaks Down Most Popular Movie Genre Combinations
What genres go together the most? What's the mash-up we've never seen but really need?
One of the key elements to creating any story is figuring out what genre, or genres, it belongs to. How we categorize a story helps us identify the conventions from lighting to acting, to dialogue. If you're creating, pitching, or developing you need to know genre and genre popularity. You also need to know what genres go together best. At the same time, some of the best movies break convention, mash genre, and turn things upside down.
That's where this amazing piece of data crunching comes in.
If you are looking for inspiration, fascinating data, or just a really cool internet wormhole to burrow in for a while, Dr. Shahin Rostami created Co-occurrence of movie genres with chord diagrams, an interactive infographic perfect for you.
from Filmmakers
The chord diagram started blowing up on Reddit, but digging into Dr. Rostami's data and writing is also fascinating if you want to know more about how he built it.
Most fun of all? Just head to his site, hover your mouse over the graphic and look at how the genres interact.
What are some conclusions about genre combinations?
Drama and comedy are huge. Makes sense, right? They are the two underlying 'tones' that any other genre laid on top of to modify.
Action-drama, or action-comedy for example.
Then again, comedy and drama combine quite often.
What don't we see much of? Animation crossed with drama. Or adventure and music.
With a graphic like this you get a sense of what's been done but also some possible combinations that might unlock new ideas.
We love to bring things back to Star Wars, but how often were science-fiction and fantasy combined prior to 1977?
What about Bladerunner being science-fiction meets crime drama?
Is there a combination of genres here that gets you thinking about something you'd love to see on screen? A mixture of styles?
Up next?
Explore genre popularity over the past 100 years in this infographic, then read more about writing within specific genres, like comedy and action to name just a few!
Source: Shahin Rostami
