Drama or Comedy?

Once I decided that I was going to create a film opening, I knew what my first major decision was: what genre will the film be? I basically narrowed my options down to three choices: comedy or drama. Originally, I felt like a comedy movie would be my best option. I have a lot of experience with comedy writing, having participated in the speech and debate event "Humorous Interpretation" for four years now.

However, I quickly realized some problems with that idea. First, comedies have A LOT of dialogue, especially at the beginning of the film. While I don't have any concerns about my ability to write this dialogue, I do have concerns about the ability of my actors (hope they don't read this!). I know that I won't exactly be working with trained professionals on this project, so I believe that I should limit the use of actors as much as possible in my project. With a comedy movie, this is simply unfeasible.

Another problem with creating a comedy is that often, the first two minutes of the movie aren't very funny. Usually, this time is necessary to establish the characters and setting. Therefore, my opening might potentially end up feeling like build up with no pay off. Due to these two concerns, i ended up deciding to create a drama film as my opening. Hooray!