Film Genres

Genres are important for audiences, to predetermine the feel and style/type of plot.  It’s an agreement between the audience and producer concerning what the film will contain, helping audiences choose the film most suitable to their needs. Using genres media producers can create a clearer image for their footage and appeal directly to the lovers of their chosen genre.

We have chosen to create a film trailer of the Horror/ Thriller genre and have looked at typical elementsof these combined genres, that we will be able to use succesfully.

 

Typical element we use:	Typical element we haven’t used:
o   Scary      o   Psychologically uncomfortable           imagery      o   Weapons      o   Violence      o   Venerable people      o   Darkness      o   Screaming      o   Night time      o   Miss-haps with plot      o   Villains      o   Relatable Characters	o   Actual violence       o   Graphic Images

We do not have the facilities to use CGI (Computer generated Imagery), or the resources to create accurate, realistic graphic violence and disturbing images, for example; bood and gore. As we want to create a profesional trailer, and do not want are efforts to come across cheesy or amateur we have decided to leave out these aspects create a more phycologically disturbing effect, as a result of this we will aim to create a lower viewer age classification, targetting a wider audience.

Genre Views

Marxists - See genre as an instrument of social control, which reproduces the dominant ideology.

Andrew Tudor - It becomes the end point of the critical process to fit film into such a category – what we collectively believe it to be.

Linda William - Argues that horror, melodrama and pornography all form a category called ‘body genres’. Cause a physical reaction for example, sexual stimulation or physically emotional reactions.

Janet Staiger - Hollywood films blend genres, e.g. romantic with comedy, leading to them merging into the same formula.

Four theories of Classification

‘Idealist method’ – judges the genre of a film by pre-determined standards.

‘Social Conventions’ – classification is based on the accepted cultural consensus.

‘Empircial method’ – identifies the genre of a film by comparing it to other films.

‘Priori method’ – uses common genres elements identified in advance.