This document provides an overview of genre theory and how it can be used to theoretically evaluate a media production piece against this concept for an exam. It defines genre and discusses key aspects like subgenres, common elements across genres, and how genres appeal to audiences and evolve over time. The document also analyzes teaser trailers as a possible genre with evolving conventions and focuses on applying genre theory to evaluate the student's own coursework trailer.

1. G235: Critical Perspectives in
Media
Theoretical Evaluation of
Production - Question 1(b)
Overview

2. Q1(b) is out of 25 marks and you have 30 minutes to write it.
You have to theoretically evaluate ONE of your coursework pieces against one
unseen media concept/area of theory:
•Genre
•Narrative
•Representation
•Audience
•Media Language
I recommend that you pick the product you want to analyse and stick to this for the
exam. I recommend your trailer but am not being prescriptive.
For you to succeed in this all notes must be prepared as if they are your revision
notes for the exam.

3. G235: Critical Perspectives in
Media
Theoretical Evaluation of
Production - Question 1(b)
Genre

4. Aims/Objectives
1.To introduce the concept of genre theory
and key genre theorists.
2.To have a basic understanding of how to
evaluate your coursework against genre
theory.

5. What Is Genre?
• ‘Genre’ is a critical tool that helps us study
texts and audience responses to texts by
dividing them into categories based on
common elements.
• Daniel Chandler (2001) - the word genre
comes from the French (and originally Latin)
word for ‘type'.
The term is widely used in literary theory,
media theory to refer to a distinctive type of
‘text’.

6. All Genres have Subgenres
• This means that they are divided up into
more specific categories that allow
audiences to identify them specifically by
their familiar and what become
recognisable characteristics.
•Steve Neale (1995) stresses that
“genres are not systems they are
processes” – they are dynamic and evolve
over time.

7. Generic Characteristics across all texts
share similar elements...
1. Typical Mise-en-scène/Visual style
(iconography, props, set design, lighting,
temporal and geographic location, costume,
shot types, camera angles, special effects).
2. Typical types of Narrative (plots, historical
setting, set pieces).
3. Generic Types, i.e. typical characters (do
typical male/female roles exist, archetypes?).

8. Typical studios/production companies…
4. Typical Personnel (directors, producers,
actors, stars, auteurs etc.).
5. Typical Sound Design (sound design,
dialogue, music, sound effects).
6. Typical Editing Style.
• KEY: Important elements, less important
elements, elements of minimal importance.
How does this apply to your film trailer’s
genre?

9. What is the genre of your teaser trailer?
• Social realism?
• Thriller?
• Urban?
• Contemporary?
• British?
• All of the above?
• Is it a hybrid?

10. Jason Mittell (2001) argues that genres are
cultural categories that surpass the boundaries of
media texts and operate within industry, audience,
and cultural practices as well.
In short, industries use genre to sell
products to audiences. Media producers use
familiar codes and conventions that often make
cultural references to their audience’s knowledge of
society + other texts.
Genre allows audiences to make choices
about what products they want to consume
through acceptance in order to fulfil a particular
pleasure.

11. Pleasure of genre for audiences
• Rick Altman (1999) argues that genre offers audiences ‘a set
of pleasures’.
Emotional Pleasures: The emotional pleasures offered to
audiences of genre films are particularly significant when they
generate a strong audience response.
Visceral Pleasures: Visceral pleasures are ‘gut’ responses and
are defined by how the film’s stylistic construction elicits a
physical effect upon its audience. This can be a feeling of
revulsion, kinetic speed, or a ‘roller coaster ride’.
Intellectual Puzzles: Certain film genres such as the thriller or
the ‘whodunit’ offer the pleasure in trying to unravel a mystery
or a puzzle. Pleasure is derived from deciphering the plot and
forecasting the end or the being surprised by the unexpected.

12. The Strengths Of Genre Theory
The main strength of genre theory is that
everybody uses it and understands it –
media experts use it to study media texts, the
media industry uses it to develop and market
texts and audiences use it to decide what texts
to consume.
The potential for the same concept to be
understood by producers, audiences and
scholars makes genre a useful critical tool. Its
accessibility as a concept also means that it
can be applied across a wide range of texts.

13. Genre Development and Transformation
Over the years genres develop and change as
the wider society that produce them also
changes, a process that is known as generic
transformation.
Metz (1974) argued that genres go through a
cycle of changes during their lifetime.
1.Experimental Stage
2.Classic Stage
3.Parody Stage
4.Deconstruction Stage

14. Teaser trailer – is it a genre?
Does it have specific conventions?
What separates teaser trailers from
trailers?
They can be very often anti-narrative/
surrealist.
They can be ambiguous, open meaning
(Eco, 1981) and experimental.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teaser_trailer

15. Definition:
A teaser trailer, or teaser is a short trailer used to advertise an upcoming movie,
game or television series.
Teasers, unlike typical theatrical (main) trailers, are usually very short in length
(between 30–60 seconds) and usually contain little, if any, actual footage from the
film. Sometimes, it is merely a truncated version of a theatrical trailer. They are
usually released long in advance of the film they advertise. One of the reasons for the
name "teaser" is because they are shown usually a long time (one or one and a half
years) before the movie comes out, so as to "tease" the audience.
Teasers are also commonly used in advertising. The
so-called teaser ad/campaign consists typically in (a
series of) small, cryptic, challenging, advertisements
which anticipate a large(r), full-blown campaign for a
product launch or otherwise important event.

16. Teaser trailers are usually only made for big-budget and popularly themed
movies. Their purpose is less to tell the audience about a movie's content than
simply to let them know that the movie is coming up in the near future, and to add
to the hype of the upcoming release.
Teaser trailers are often made while the film is still in production or being
edited and as a result they may feature scenes or alternate versions of scenes
that are not in the finished film. Other ones (notably Pixar films) have scenes made
for use in the trailer only. Teaser trailers today are increasingly focused on internet
downloading and the convention circuit.

17. Teaser trailer – a genre with many sub-genres/postmodern
styles?
Teaser trailers are a genre intended to
appeal directly to a specific audience.
They are used to promote awareness at
an early stage in the marketing of a new
film or a film that is part of a franchise
They don’t have to be literal representations
This is a medium known for being
experimental and controversial
The generic conventions stay the same
but the style (the look of something)
changes
http://youtube.com/watch?v=kAEme33ZQHI

18. Nicholas Abercrombie (1996) suggests that
'the boundaries between genres are
shifting and becoming more permeable'
Abercrombie is concerned with modern
television, which he suggests seems to be
engaged in 'a steady dismantling of genre’

19. Genres are not fixed. They constantly change
and evolve over time.
David Buckingham (1993) argues that
'genre is not... Simply "given" by the
culture: rather, it is in a constant process
of negotiation and change’.
As postmodern theorist
Jacques Derrida reminds us –
‘the law of the law of genre is
a principle of contamination,
a law of impurity’.

20. In terms of your coursework...
• How we define a genre depends on our
purposes (Chandler, 2001).
• What was your purpose and the medium?
• Your audience and the industry sector you
were working within will have defined what
you understood as the genre and sub-genre
of the texts you created.

21. “Media texts rely on audience knowledge
of generic codes and conventions in order
for them to create meaning”.
Explain how you used or subverted
generic conventions in one of your
production pieces.
Think of this question as the first part
of your revision...