genre conventions

My film has a mix of genres, comedy, mystery and elements of sci-fi, because there is no time travel used, but its the fact that the character is missing 35 years of his life, and so its like he's gone into the future. My idea was influenced by television programmes such as 'Life On Mars' and 'Ashes To Ashes'. Science fiction is known more for its setting and how the characters got to that particular place, than the actual storyline. Most sci-fi films have a sub genre which is usually comedy, including films like 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy'.

Comedy is one of the oldest genres and is famous because of films such as 'carry on..' and well known actors which have made comedy highly prestigious like 'Laurel and Hardy'. Most comedies involve over exaggeration, and over lapping storylines in which something funny happens to every character. In my film, I want the comedy to be like I havent actually tried too hard to make it seem funny, I am going to use sarcastic/dark comedy, as I don't want to make it too much of a comedy as the film is actually about the character finding himself again. Other conventions of a comedy is mistaken identity, which could be seen as a big feature in my film, as he isn't exactly pretending to be somebody else, but his persona has changed without him knowing, which gives the conception of the bomb under the table theory, as the audience know what has happened to him, and can kind of guess what is going to happen to him, but he doesnt.

Mystery involves finding out a vital piece of information in this case my character finding out why everything around him has changed. Most mystery programmes/films are usually associated with murder. Which shows that my film is not so much mainly one genre but, has mixtures of lots of genres, which I think is a good thing because when films are based on just one particular genre, you can usually tell what is going to happen, it can also get a bit boring. The fact that the character is going into an era, that the audience understand makes it interesting because, they wonder how he is going to react.

I think the combination of genres work well together because they create something different, and because of the major in difference of the genres, I believe it will target all types of audiences.