Repitition and difference has successfully created audience pleasure and cemented the bond between encoder (film-maker) and decoder (audience), like a contrast the film makers adhere to and we pay them by returning to the cinema.
Genre theories
Christian Metz in Language and Cinema
He believed that there are four stages to the genre development theory:
- The experimental - Encircles generic codes and conventions of a thriller i.e. Scary Movie
- The classic - Structuring on narrative, mainly victorious i.e. Dracula [1931]
- The parody - Conventions have been deformised i.e. Shaun of the Dead [2004]
- The deconstruction - Generic essentials of thriller varied with current genres such as horror and thriller, where other genre elements and sub genres are introduced i.e. The Blair Witch Project
Emilie Atenloh
Emilie was a film historian and critic who often approached film form a sociological point of view. She was one of the first to realise the specific gender differences when relating to audience perception of films. Women preferred music and melodrama, male working class cinema goers preferred films which included blood and violence.
McQuail, Blummer and Brown 1972
Media provides a diversio, we create a personal relationship (feel part of a social group) create a personal identity (re-inforce our own values through compassion to stars in the media/film . Surveillance (we can see what's happening in the world).
The problems with genre theory
Thomas Schatz states there are only two types of genre, order and integration. Films use the same structures with different paradigms so is it problematic to break down films into categories? Altman semantic elements hijack syntactic elements/ this is the same as the syntagmatic line with the paradigmatic sets (i.s. Lara Craft in Tomb Raider- The paradigmatic set would be vest, guns)
Altman's semantic is when the stories are the same but the costumes are different i.e. a cowboy fighting native american Indians and with the change of semantics its the same as spacemen fighting aliens therefore this suggests that semantic changes but syntactic stays the same.
Genre Themes
Metaphysical (meaning beyond science):
Metaphysical themes are those ideas in society, which are general and abstract, ideas about life, the universe and everything. Science fiction could be said to use metaphysical themes because it deals with issues and abstract.
Social themes
Social issues such as sexuality, race, crime and drug addiction may be included in the horror or Sci-fi genre. Sci-fi films may deal with social issues such as showing a vision of a perfect society or a non-perfect society.
Ideological themes
As America has a massive influence on the cinema which is received in most countries it might be fair to ask what type of ideological themes are being conveyed by the movie makers. In Sci-fi films, the Americans are the ones who are shown to have the 'brains' and the characters with foreign accents (including English) are mostly represented as the 'evil characters'.
Review of genre from my AS opening sequence
For our opening sequence me and my group had chose to go for the genre 'comedy', this is because we wanted to amuse and entertain the audience and also after receiving the results from the questionnaire that we produced for our target audience, the majority of them preferred the genre comedy. The conventions we used for our opening sequence consists of the main character dressed 'geeky' wearing knee high cocks, huge glasses and going through a series of events to make the audience laugh, one of them being her having tissues trapped in her socks after using the toilets. We realised that it was quite hard when trying to add comical events into the opening sequence because we didn't want to the audience to feel sorry for the main character but instead find it funny and humorous.
Conclusion
After all the research and finding out more in depth detail about genre, I believe that it will help a lot when producing our short film as a group, and know what characteristics, background, props and mise-en-scene fit altogether to suit the genre.
A paradigm is a set of associated signifiers.
Genre employs a paradigmatic sets for action and adventure for example in the film 'tomb raider' there are signs such as a hand gun, machine gun, vest top and boots which are easily read by the audience.
My understanding of what genre means:
The following codes are the characteristics of a particular genre which can be defined as conventions:
Technical codes – camera, lighting techniques, sound
Enigma codes – A sense of mystery that intrigues the audience
Narrative codes – the shape and structure of a story
Action codes – action that makes us realize where we are in the narrative and that the story is developing
Written codes – captions, anchorage
Character codes – similar to symbolic codes, including costume, make up of a particular character
Symbolic codes – body language, use of colour, mise-en-scene
Review of genre from my AS opening sequence
For our opening sequence me and my group had chose to go for the genre 'comedy', this is because we wanted to amuse and entertain the audience and also after receiving the results from the questionnaire that we produced for our target audience, the majority of them preferred the genre comedy. The conventions we used for our opening sequence consists of the main character dressed 'geeky' wearing knee high cocks, huge glasses and going through a series of events to make the audience laugh, one of them being her having tissues trapped in her socks after using the toilets. We realised that it was quite hard when trying to add comical events into the opening sequence because we didn't want to the audience to feel sorry for the main character but instead find it funny and humorous.
Conclusion
After all the research and finding out more in depth detail about genre, I believe that it will help a lot when producing our short film as a group, and know what characteristics, background, props and mise-en-scene fit altogether to suit the genre.
Action codes – action that makes us realize where we are in the narrative and that the story is developing
Written codes – captions, anchorage
Character codes – similar to symbolic codes, including costume, make up of a particular character
Symbolic codes – body language, use of colour, mise-en-scene
Review of genre from my AS opening sequence
For our opening sequence me and my group had chose to go for the genre 'comedy', this is because we wanted to amuse and entertain the audience and also after receiving the results from the questionnaire that we produced for our target audience, the majority of them preferred the genre comedy. The conventions we used for our opening sequence consists of the main character dressed 'geeky' wearing knee high cocks, huge glasses and going through a series of events to make the audience laugh, one of them being her having tissues trapped in her socks after using the toilets. We realised that it was quite hard when trying to add comical events into the opening sequence because we didn't want to the audience to feel sorry for the main character but instead find it funny and humorous.
Conclusion
After all the research and finding out more in depth detail about genre, I believe that it will help a lot when producing our short film as a group, and know what characteristics, background, props and mise-en-scene fit altogether to suit the genre.
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