Rick Altman identifies four ways that genre can be understood: as a blueprint that guides film production, as the formal structure that individual films are based on, as the label used to categorize films for distribution and exhibition, and as the viewing experience that audiences expect from a particular genre. He argues that major film genres can be defined by a group of films that satisfy these four aspects - they follow an established production formula, have common structural elements, are distributed under a consistent genre label, and are interpreted by audiences based on the associated genre.

1. Rick Altman on Film Genre Genre, it would appear, is not your average descriptive term, but a complex concept with multiple meanings, which we might identify as follows:

2. Blueprint genre as blueprint , as a formula that precedes, programmes and patterns industry production

3. Structure genre as structure , as the formal framework on which individual films are founded

4. Label genre as label , as the name of a category central to the decisions and communications of distributors and exhibitors

5. Contract genre as contract , as the viewing position required by each genre film of its audience

6. Simple Or put more simply even: Production (blueprint) Text (structure) Exhibition (label) consumption (contract)

7. Summary Each major genre has been defined in terms of a nucleus of films obviously satisfying the theory's fourfold assumptions: (a) Each film was produced according to a recognizably generic blueprint . (b) Each film displays the basic structures commonly identified with the genre. (c) During its exhibition each film is regularly identified by a generic label . (d) Audiences systematically recognize each film as belonging to the genre in question and interpret it accordingly. ( contract )