Project 1: 250 Word Draft

A cruise ship captain may often work with maps. A funeral home director must see a number of obituaries throughout his day. A human resource department head flips through resumes like they’re the daily newspaper. Genres are not limited to novels and scholarly papers, but are rather a way to categorize all forms of media that are intended to reach and captivate an audience. While various communities operate through a plethora of genres, I will be focusing on my high school film club’s use of interviews within our weekly broadcast to build stable viewership.

Running an entire TV production and film program during my senior year of high school was - while rewarding - a massive responsibility. The task of producing quality content that educated while entertaining the simple teenage mind, although laborious, is not impossible. One of our most popular genres of visual material was the student interview. Nearly all of our bits, whether hard news, pop culture, or comedy, incorporated several interviews with our peers. This gave students the opportunity to share their thoughts and opinions with the entire campus. Quickly, these interviews became coveted, as students begged to be featured on the program for their ten seconds of fame. Not only did this boost our reputation as a club but increased viewership as it catered to the selfish nature of high school students and their insatiable thirst for popularity.

Although our TV production club juggled a variety of genres and media formats, video interviews truly played a vital role in our purpose to inform and amuse the student body. The use of this particular genre is almost solely responsible for the success of our program and highlights the importance of connecting to an audience to achieve an effective, rhetorically appealing composition.