- Genre is a type or style, which helps to identify an audience and categorises by conventions.
- Genre is an important aspect of targeting an audience as it is very important concept used to maximise profits- as genre is a way of packaging, presenting and selling a film. As fans of particular genres are waiting for their type of film to be produced.
- By using different styles and conventions to categorise films this helps to identify an audience. For instance, conventions of an action film would help to identify an audience because there will be lots of violence and weapons- therefore would identify a male audience
- Genre can be used to denote different types of storytelling extending across a range of different media, such as: fairytales, plays and TV soaps- simply different types of storytelling. But it can also be used to refer to the classification of films, into types such as, horror, comedy, science fiction or thriller.
- Genre does not simply rely on whats in a media text but also on the way it is constructed. Construction---> mediated.
- A media text is said to belong to a genre because it adopts the codes and conventions of other texts within that genre and lives up to the same expectations. Often content and style are closely linked. For example the film 'love field' has generic characteristic types of a horror. It uses eery non-diegetic sound (which creates tension), it uses a crow prop (which represents death) and then there is diegetic off-screen screaming then silence. The film is also set in a corn field which creates the idea of a horror as this setting is common within horrors.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4meeZifCVro
- However films can be more than one genre, this is called a 'Hybrid' as there is more than one genre within the film. 'Love Field' fits into this category because the film becomes about the birth of a baby and the setting is made happy by the lighting becoming brighter, so becomes a drama or a family film. Whereas at the beginning it was suggesting a thriller or horror by having the crow at the beginning and low key lighting. Using close up shots of a still females feet covered in dirt and different objects suggesting murder.
Steve Neale studied 'Repetition and Variation' = genre survival
- Each genre film repeats conventions of the genre formula but also offers new variations. He found this is necessary in order that the genre evolves and survives
- Genres are also 'systems of expectation' and 'anticipation' which spectators bring to the film. Spectators are therefore involved actively in producing meaning- genres cannot survive without the input of spectators
Rick Altman says we can analyse genre in two ways:
- Through Semantic Codes
- this is concerned with the conventions of the genre that communicate meaning to the audience, such as characters, archetypes, iconography, locations, props, music, shooting style and other signifiers of meaning.
- And through its Syntactic Codes
- these are codes of narrative structure- Its what the audience expect to happen
- Genres tend to have similar patterns of narrative that are part of the conventions for that text
In your discussion of generic conventions of Horror in Lovefield - use terms - Non diegetic, Props, setting, dialogue etc etc.
ReplyDeleteGood - High Level 3 - add links perhaps to take your reader to the films or the key concepts or theorist.
Well done.