Codes & Conventions in more detail

Disaster Movie - Codes & Conventions in more detail

What constitutes GENRE?

Okay so we all know what genre is - we 'use' it to label films and to choose which films to watch and which to avoid. BUT do we know how to define genre? What elements go together to make up that genre we're so fond of or the one we loathe...

I don't know about you but I really don't like Westerns and I don't much care for adaptations of classics like 'Jane Eyre' or 'Emma'. I know why I don't much like WESTERNS - I find the characters very repetitive and the plot lines are very similar. I don't find the settings or locations very inspiring either. But I do like thrillers and Sci-fi and yet they're also quite repetitive in their use of characters and storylines.

So, thinking about GENRE - there are several aspects we should be interested in as film students. Firstly we need to be sure we know what the elements are that make up genre. They are:

SETTING - think location in a geographical sense as well as location in time

THEMES - the kinds of issues and ideas that are developed and explored in the films

CHARACTERS - genres use character types again and again, some are stereotypes so we get to know them quickly as an audience and some are more 'fleshed out' and explored in the film in detail - they'll be main characters. Genres use types often so we see 'Gunslingers' in westerns, the Sheriff, the almost silent stranger, the whores in the whorehouse... In Sci-Fi we see Scientists, mad scientists some kind of military or controlling force such as the army or the police, A key character who provides the only hope of a solution..you get the idea

PROPS OR SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS - genres include props and objects that crop up again and again. Using our previous examples, you'd expect guns, a sheriff's badge, cowboy hats or perhaps in Sci-fi, robots, aliens, ray guns, computers and stars/planets....

NARRATIVE & PLOT - a key way of defining a genre film is by looking at the storyline and how it is plotted. Lots of genres that seem hard to define in terms of similar characters or props often hold together strongly when you consider narrative. For example, the people may change, the location and time may differ widely but an alien threat to life on earth will make it a sci-fi genre movie

STYLE - Genres can have a style (or elements of a style)...for example WESTERNS might include lots of long lingering shots of desert or brush.. there are usually long periods where the camera moves across the vista with no action or dialogue. Gunfights are usually quietly tense, the tension built up by 'extending time' (achieved by giving the camera a long look at many source points BEFORE the action starts).

It's worth thinking about how each broad category of genre then has 'SUB GENRES' within it, a good example of which would be Sci-fi - not all sci-fi films have the same characters, settings or

props and storylines which might hold other genres together as a category but there are similar storylines and these can develop into sub-genres.

Secondly there are other key areas to consider in relation to genre - the way the audience uses genre and how producers use genre.

Finally some films clearly belong to more than one genre - called HYBRID. A good example would be 'Independence day' which is an action movie, a sci-fi movie and a disaster movie. Generally HIGH CONCEPT films are hybrid genre films.