Genre - A category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter.
Types of Genre:
•Action - include high energy, big-budget physical stunts and chases, possibly with rescues, battles, fights, escapes, destructive crises, non-stop motion, spectacular rhythm and pacing, and adventurous, often two-dimensional 'good-guy' heroes (or recently, heroines) battling 'bad guys' - all designed for pure audience escapism.
•Adventure - usually exciting stories, with new experiences or exotic locales, very similar to or often paired with the action film genre.
•Comedy - light-hearted plots consistently and deliberately designed to amuse and provoke laughter (with one-liners, jokes, etc.) by exaggerating the situation, the language, action, relationships and characters.
•Crime & Gangster - films are developed around the sinister actions of criminals or mobsters, particularly bank robbers, underworld figures, or ruthless hoodlums who operate outside the law, stealing and murdering their way through life.
•Drama - serious, plot-driven presentations, portraying realistic characters, settings, life situations, and stories involving intense character development and interaction.
•Historical - include costume dramas, historical dramas, war films, medieval romps, or 'period pictures' that often cover a large expanse of time set against a vast, panoramic backdrop.
•Horror - designed to frighten and to invoke our hidden worst fears, often in a terrifying, shocking finale, while captivating and entertaining us at the same time in a cathartic experience.
•Musical/Dance - cinematic forms that emphasize full-scale scores or song and dance routines in a significant way (usually with a musical or dance performance integrated as part of the film narrative), or they are films that are centred on combinations of music, dance, song or choreography.
•Science Fiction - often quasi-scientific, visionary and imaginative - complete with heroes, aliens, distant planets, impossible quests, improbable settings, fantastic places, great dark and shadowy villains, futuristic technology, unknown and unknowable forces, and extraordinary monsters ('things or creatures from space'), either created by mad scientists or by nuclear havoc.
•War - acknowledge the horror and heartbreak of war, letting the actual combat fighting (against nations or humankind) on land, sea, or in the air provide the primary plot or background for the action of the film.
•Western - the major defining genre of the American film industry - a eulogy to the early days of the expansive American frontier.
•Thriller – A novel, play, or movie with an exciting plot, typically involving crime or espionage. A Thriller is a non – linear film as flashback occurs throughout the film. It has action, enigma and problem solving aspects.
Theorists
•Steve Neale – Suggests that ‘genre is instances of repetition’ and difference and that the ‘difference is essential to the economy of genre.’ The mere use of repetition would not attract audiences. He argued that pleasure is derived from repetition and difference; there would be no pleasure without difference. He believed that we may derive pleasure from observing how the conventions of the genre are manipulated.
•Tom Ryall – He believed genre provides a framework of structuring rules in the shape of patterns/forms/styles/structures, which acts as a form of supervision over the work of production of filmmakers and the work of reading by the audience. He believes that genre becomes a cognitive respository of images, sounds, stories, characters and expectations.
•Gill Branston - http://www.mediastudentsbook.com/
•Roy Stafford -
•David Bordwell – ‘any theme may appear in any genre’. ‘One could argue that no set of necessary and sufficient conditions can mark off genres from other sorts of groupings in ways that all experts or ordinary film goers would find acceptable’.
•Robert Stam –
•David Buckingham – ‘Genre is not simply given by the culture: rather, it is in a constant process of negotiation and change’.
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