If we were to analyse our online meetings and calls using the tools of film or television criticism, what would we learn?

The first question a critic usually asks of a piece is the genre that it fits into, because then it can be compared and contrasted with other pieces trying to do the same sort of thing. It's fairer, for example, to judge the overall quality of a horror film primarily on its scariness, rather than the humour or romance, because the critic can presume that scariness was the aim of the film and what the filmmakers put their energy into achieving.

A critic works out the genre partly by considering the content of the story, but equally often by the expression of the content. In our horror example, this usually means shots that have less light, discordant music, visually unappealing objects and probably a lot of screams.

If we asked what genre our typical calls and meetings are, we could conclude from the expression that the static camera angles, the shots of people talking directly to camera and the occasional diagram (via screen-sharing) mean that the genre is documentary film-making.

But is a documentary always the right genre for your call? It would be possible for all your favourite films and television series to be presented in a documentary format, but this probably wouldn't be better than the genres they currently inhabit. They certainly wouldn't affect you emotionally in the desired way. So, is there anything we can take from other genres of film that could be more appropriate for the content of our call?

The simplest example I can think of is the genre of the heist, which is a sub-genre of action/thriller. At the beginning of a heist film, there's usually a series of scenes where the crew is assembled or introduced. This happens in the real world on calls all the time. How many times have you been introduced to another team or a different company, and needed to know and remember what they do? In a heist film, the characters are introduced in a way that makes it easy to remember their function on the team, and the relationships between the different members, by using music, costumes, set dressings, particular ways of speaking etc.

These modifications to a call's video and audio are now possible to do in real-time. So are we ready to leave the documentary genre behind?