Friday, 20 April 2018

Unit 1: Theory of Genre

Critics that write about the theory of film/genre:

Daniel Chandler - codes and conventions of the content of the film, how it looks and how it is mades is what makes up genre.

Steve Neale - genre is as much about difference as it is similarity. If all genre films were the same then no one would watch them. They have to be unique within a genre. Films are exciting to us when we stretch the genre (move into different genres). ATB - Hybrid: Sci-Fi, Action, Comedy etc.

John Hartley - a film can be categorised as different genres in separate countries and in different times. E.g: A film in the 1960s that was a horror, may now be classed as a thriller. Genre is not fixed, it can change.

Audiences 'use' films for specific reasons: to laugh, adrenaline etc. This is why we like specific genres as we know what to expect, we know we will like them.

Debrah Knight - we know what is going to happen in a film within a specific genre, we watch it to find out how they get to that point.

Rick Altman - two categorise make up a genre:
    • Semantic: guns, cowboys in western films, music used etc.
    • Syntactic: ideologies & narratives (themes, mood etc).
To the producers of films: Genre is a template of the film they are going to make. 
Distributor/promoter: Who the film should be targeted at. 
To the viewer: categorises a film to whether they may like it or not. 

Films within a genre can become cliche, however films that stretch this tend to be more interesting. 

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