2. • Genre....
• Creates atmosphere and narrative.
• Pulls in audiences to watch the film.
• Audience find genre good because it separates taste,
and makes it easier for them to find the best genre for
them.
• They are useful to producers and directors as it gives
them a blueprint to work off and build upon.
• However the problems with genre are...
• They can limit what can be in a film.
• It can become hard to define what genre a film is.
Genre can mean ‘type’ or ‘category’ of
something such as a book or film. Each
genre has a set of conventions which
allows them to be different from each
other.
3. Detective is a sub-genre of crime fiction
and mystery fiction in which an
investigator or a detective—either
professional, amateur or retired —
investigates a crime, often murder.
Horror is a genre
which is intended to,
or has the capacity to
frighten, scare,
disgust, or startle its
viewers by inducing
feelings of horror
and terror.
Thriller is a broad genre of film and television, having
numerous and overlapping subgenres. Thrillers are
characterized and defined by giving viewers
heightened feelings of suspense, excitement,
surprise, anticipation and anxiety, examples of
thrillers are the films of Alfred Hitchcock.
Make-believe is what this genre is all about.The fantasy genre
contains unrealistic settings, or magic, often set in a medieval
universe, or possibly involving mythical beings or supernatural
forms as a primary element of the plot, theme, or setting.
TheWestern is a genre
tells stories set primarily
in the later half of the
19th century in the
American Old West, often
centering on the life of a
nomadic cowboy or
gunfighter armed with a
revolver and a rifle who
rides a horse.
Drama film is a genre that relies
on the emotional and relational
development of realistic
characters. While Drama film
relies heavily on this kind of
development, dramatic themes
play a large role in the plot as
well.
Action is a subgenre of thriller in which
the protagonist or protagonists end up in
a series of challenges that typically
include violence, extended fighting,
physical feats, and frantic chases. Action
films tend to feature a resourceful hero
struggling against incredible odds.
4. Burton
(2000)
• “Genres are created through a process of repetition
and recognition leading to anticipation and
expectation”.
Genre and audience expectation
• As genres become more established with audiences,
they begin to expect certain things.Genres contain
conventions that audiences expect to see within the
films.
• “All genre texts combine the familiar and the
unexpected”.
5. Steve Neale • ‘Theory of Repetition and Difference’. Steve Neale
states that genres all contain instances of repetition
and difference, and that difference is essential to the to
the economy of the genre.
Genre is defined by two things:
• How much is conforms to its genre’s individual
conventions and stereotypes.
• How much a film subverts the genre’s conventions and
stereotypes.The film must subvert convention enough
to be considered unique and not just a clone of an
existing film.
6. Genre and
Audiences
• Genre is used in films as it is familiar to us as we
recognise certain features of the genre in films, and
this familiarity draws us into watching and consuming
the film.
• Genres also offer the audience emotional pleasures
such as empathy and escapism, which is when the
viewer is so consumed/absorbed in the film that they
escape their real life.
• Genres are helpful to some audiences as they make it
easier for viewers to find the right type of movie that
suits them.
