Genre functions as an analytical category for comparing films across years, especially when stakeholders want to know whether audience preferences changed before, during, and after lockdowns. section 5.2.1 section 5.4.1
A practical genre analysis typically involves:
- Selecting genre data alongside admissions and distributor data to identify potentially interesting industry stories. section 5.4.1
- Assigning annual records to pre-COVID, during-COVID, and post-lockdown periods, while acknowledging that annual data blurs exact timing. section 5.4.3
- Inspecting non-numeric revenue markers such as <0.1 before converting box-office values for aggregation. section 5.4.3
- Comparing total revenue, yearly revenue breakdowns, and release counts by genre rather than relying on a single measure. section 5.4.3
- Treating post-lockdown differences as leads for further investigation when the available data is limited. section 5.4.4
Comparing genre performance around COVID-19
Load annual genre records, classify 2020 as during COVID and later years as post-lockdowns, replace <0.1 with a documented placeholder, then plot revenue by genre for each year. The resulting differences can support questions about changing preferences, but limited post-lockdown observations prevent firm conclusions. section 5.4.4
