Thursday 4 January 2018

The Film Industry

Genres:

  • romance
  • horror
  • thriller
  • action
  • drama
  • sci-fi
  • fantasy
  • historical
  • crime 
  • adventure
  • surreal 
  • comedy
  • fiction
  • documentary
  • international e.g russian movies
  • psychological
  • musical
  • sports

Why genres? We need genres because there are different types of movies that appeal to someone; people have their own preferences. 

Steven Neale: Popular cinema relies on audiences finding pleasure in difference and repetition i.e recognition of familiar elements and the way those elements are linked in an unfamiliar way or the way that unfamiliar elements might be introduced.


From the spec: Genre theory is about what genres are, and about how and why they are created, chang, endure or decline. Neale argues that genre is a process by which generic codes and conventions are shared by producers and audiences through repetition in media products

Codes and conventions

  • Mis-en-scene
  • Props
  • Non-diegetic/diegetic sounds
  • Iconography 
  • Structure
  • Theme
b) Vampire Horror iconography: 
  • Blood
  • Vampires
  • Fangs
  • Dark clothing
  • Suspenseful music
  • Murder
  • Stereotypically a stake and coffin 
  • for make up; pale skin, different coloured eyes, stereotypically they'd be red
  • gothic settings; castle, rich, opulent settings
Structure: A mysterious, secretive new guy in school, and all the girls are interested, but he only focuses on one girl and tries to get close to her, eventually the girl would fall in love with him, but once the truth is revealed about him being a vampire, the girl is shocked but despite that, she stays with him 

Theme:

Structures for a Teen movie: 

A rite of passage narrative: moving from once social identity to another

Could manifest in: change from geek to princess, loser to winner, losing virginity

Also power structures within the high school setting.

General themes: the need to belong to a group and the importance of popularity

Genre stages:

1st stage - primitive, the formative stage in which the genres characteristics are first established

2nd stage - the classical, the genre at its peak, with generic qualities refined

3rd stage - the revisionist, which scrutinizes and reevaluates, often in a critical way, the conventions that typify the genre

4th stage - the parodic, in which the genre is satirized in a consciously self-reflective, tongue-in cheek manner

Andrew Tudor: "A genre defines a moral and social world"

The rise of the teenager: The great depression of 1930s forced young people into  high schools because there were no jobs, but in the 50's, it was a time of prosperity, which meant that teenagers no longer had to work. Teens were loyal to the cinema in the 1950s due to the rise of TV, it was quite cheap and common.

In more recent years, filmmakers have sought to redefine teen movies; critical movies, often made by outsider voices, were made by within the genre


Pastiche - a 'lovely', respectful homage to previous conventions


Tarantino's films are often viewed as pastiches of multiple genres


Parody - a humorous subversion of genre expectations. Audiences enjoy seeing conventions subverted


The Spoof - More a series of 'gags' than a fully functioning narrative, dependant on specific genre knowledge. Generally popular with teens and can be highly profitable due to low production costs.



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