2. Rick Altman was born on the 9th January 1945 in
Louisiana, United States. He is a professor at
the University of Iowa, United States of Cinema
and Comparative Literature in the Department of
Cinema and Comparative Literature.
He proposed a theory that had a semantic and syntactic approach to film genres and
these are the 2 ways he proposed film genre to work.
Semantic + Syntactic =
Better Understanding
3. Semantic
Semantic is the way that the media is presented, e.g. The way characters are
presented(clothing, makeup, attitude, body language, etc, music(tempo and pitch),
setting, it adds to the storyline, etc. Basically it’s the materials.
Syntactic
Syntactic is the overlying structure, deeper meaning basically the arrangement
describing all about the relationship between the character and the setting/structure
or narrative in genres.
He went on further to develop his theory by
adding the aspect of pragmatic , the addition of
consideration of the institutions and audience –
the effect of the real world on genre.
