Writing About Genre

Below are some resources to help you see how journalists or reviewers write about a certain media product. This is the detail we are looking for in classwork or practice work / essays:

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QUICK LINKS

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> Exemplar How To Write About Genre- here

> List Of Film Genres and their Sub Genres- here

​> What Is Genre?- here

> What Is A Sub Genre?- here

> What are Genre Codes and Conventions (e.g how narrative, colour, editing, camerwork, lighting define a genre) - here

> What do you expect to see in the genre "Action & Adventure Films" - here

> What do you expect to see in the genre  "Comedy" - here

> What do you expect to see in the genre  "Crime" - here

> What do you expect to see in the genre  "Documentary" - here

> What do you expect to see in the genre "Drama - here

> What do you expect to see in the genre "Epics" - here

> What do you expect to see in the genre "Horror" - here

> What do you expect to see in the genre "Musicals" - here

> What do you expect to see in the genre "Sci Fi" - here

> What do you expect to see in the genre "War" - here

> What do you expect to see in the genre "Westerns" - here

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WHAT TO INCLUDE IN MY WRITING

Write a paragraph about:

1. The genre of the film and explain this using media terminlogy

2. If the product uses or subverts the codes and conventions of that genre

What should be the characteristics or codes or conventions that you identify with the genre of this film e.g. e.g. iconography, setting, main character in film. Does this film conform to (repeat) enough of the genre’s conventions to be considered a part of that genre or subvert these conventions (difference) to be considered a unique product?  Explain and give examples

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THEORY

> Lesson Powerpoint- Genre, Sub Genre and Hybrid Genre- here

> A List Of Film Genres and their Sub Genres- here

> Lesson Powerpoint- Genre Codes and Conventions- here

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​What Is Genre?  back to top

Genre is a French word that means ‘type’. In Media Studies, we classify films into different genres. When you walk around your local video store or browse through films to buy online, they are often categorised into genres. Some notable genres include: action, adventure , comedy, crime, epic films, horror, musicals, science fiction, war films, westerns and film noir.

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The conventions of a genre are the elements that commonly occur in such films, they may include things like characters, situations, settings, props, themes and events. For example, a convention of the science-fiction genre is that the narrative often incorporates advanced technology. Sometimes, films cannot be easily classified into a single genre. Back to the Future Part III is a good example, because it is a science-fiction film, western and comedy.

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Sub Genres   back to top

Sub-Genres are more specific sub-classes of the larger category of main film genres, with their own distinctive subject matter, style, formulas, and iconography. Some of them are prominent sub-genres, such as: biopics, 'chick' flicks, courtroom dramas, detective/mystery films, disaster films, fantasy films, film noir, 'guy' films, melodramas (or 'weepers'), road films, romances, superhero films, sports films, supernatural films, thrillers/suspense, and zombie-horror films. 

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Genre Codes and Conventions back to top

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Different media products have codes and conventions that define their genre and set up audience expectations. The main genre codes and conventions are:

a) Narrative
This is how the story is told in a film or television programme through plot devices, situations, characters and actors associated with specific genres.

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b) Settings and iconography
The mise-en-scène is everything included in a scene and how it is staged or arranged. This includes the setting, the props, the costumes, the lighting and the people or characters. The mise-en-scène plays a big part in determining genre, whether in a hospital drama, a gardening programme or a horror movie. For example:

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Component            Hospital drama            Gardening programme      Horror movie
Setting                     Hospital ward                  Back garden                           Haunted castle
Props                       Medical equipment        Spade, plants, soil                 Spider webs, candles, stone floors
Costumes                White coats, surgical      Wellington boots, gloves     Black cape, grey dress, rags
Lighting                   Stark and artificial           Warm and natural                Candle light, dark shadows
Characters              Doctors, nurses               Well-known TV gardener     Monster/ghost, hero/heroine, victims (played by actors)

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c) Visual codes
Visual codes can help define genre through the use of different camera shots, angles, movement and other visual elements.

Extreme close-up
The Extreme Close Up is used in both moving image and print texts to focus on one particular aspect of the subject or object, for example someone's smile in an toothpaste advert, or the eyes of a frightened character in a horror film.
 

Low Angle Shots
Low Angle Shots make the subject look more powerful and, even intimidating to the audience; these shots are often used in action-adventure films to make the character seem invincible.

Camera pan
A pan camera movement across the screen horizontally shows more of the landscape in which the action is taking place.
A fast pan, called a whip pan, is used to suggest panic and thrills. These are often used in horror and action-adventure films.
 

Handheld camera
Camera operator using a handheld camera
Handheld cameras are often used in documentary programmes

Documentaries are often shot using one handheld or shoulder-mounted camera for ease of movement.
Some reality programmes like Don't Tell the Bride also use this style of camera work.

d) Editing
Tense dramas usually have a slower pace of editing than action adventure films which are more dynamic in style. In most television serial dramas there will be an edited re-cap of what happened in the previous episode to update the viewer on the story so far.

e) Special effects
Science-Fiction and horror films use a lot of special effects. Technological innovation means that huge battle scenes or cityscapes can be produced by computer software and added in to a scene as a backdrop using green screen.
 

f) Facial expressions
Facial expressions which communicate the emotional state of a character can tip us off about the genre. In soap operas there may be close ups of characters with worried expressions. In a romantic drama we might see someone crying when a relationship breaks down.

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g) Colour
Colour is also used to indicate genre. In post-production, an editor might drain some of the colour to make the image seem older if it is a period drama, or bright colours might be enhanced in a superhero film to emphasise its comic book origins.

h) Print
Print texts like magazines, film posters and CD covers, use visual codes to convey genre, through use of fonts, colours, photos and illustrations.​ 

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What Do You Expect To See From The Folllowing Genres back to top

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Here are some of the main genres of films

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Action & Adventure Films
Action films usually include high energy, big-budget physical stunts and chases, possibly with rescues, battles, fights, escapes, destructive crises (floods, explosions, natural disasters, fires, etc.), 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. Includes the James Bond 'fantasy' spy/espionage series, martial arts films, video-game films, so-called 'blaxploitation' films, and some superhero films. (See Superheroes on Film: History.) A major sub-genre is the disaster film. 

Adventure films are usually exciting stories, with new experiences or exotic locales, very similar to or often paired with the action film genre. They can include traditional swashbucklers or pirate films, serialized films, and historical spectacles (similar to the epics film genre), searches or expeditions for lost continents, "jungle" and "desert" epics, treasure hunts, disaster films, or searches for the unknown.

Here are some standard codes and conventions:

• 12/15 certificate, maximising youth audiences

• Young, male, aspirational target audience – secondary female target audience

• Hybridised – often also with Sci Fi, Animation and Romance

• Innocent, often childlike representations

• Graphic violence is tolerated but dumbed down and often encoded with humour

• The narrative commonly involves a quest

• Major Hollywood studio produced and distributed

• High production values including CGI FX

• Fast paced editing

• Classic Hollywood 3 act narrative structure

• Predictable chain of events – narrative cause and effect

• Single stranded, linear, closed narrative

• Dramatic non-diegetic soundtrack

• More narrative action codes than enigma codes

• Clear binary oppositions positioning audiences into a preferred reading

• Star Marketing: Audience identification/expectations e.g. Johnny Depp, Harrison Ford

• Generic Typecasting and Secondary Persona apply (actors are expected to play certain characters)

• Romantic sub-plot (see Propp)

• Humorous dialogue underpinning the narrative

• Relationships with new technology (youth audiences)

• Use of Close up / Insert shots / High Key Lighting

• Dominant representation of gender: male/female action hero encoding a hegemonic cultural stereotype

Comedy Films  back to top
Comedies are 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 Films  back to top
Crime (gangster) films are developed around the sinister actions of criminals or mobsters, particularly bankrobbers, underworld figures, or ruthless hoodlums who operate outside the law, stealing and murdering their way through life. The criminals or gangsters are often counteracted by a detective-protagonist with a who-dun-it plot. Hard-boiled detective films reached their peak during the 40s and 50s (classic film noir), although have continued to the present day. Therefore, crime and gangster films are often categorized as film noir or detective-mystery films, and sometimes as courtroom/crime legal thrillers - because of underlying similarities between these cinematic forms. This category also includes various 'serial killer' films.

Documentary Films  back to top

A documentary film is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education, or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterised the documentary in terms of "a filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception [that remains] a practice without clear boundaries". Early documentary films, originally called "actuality films", lasted one minute or less. Over time, documentaries have evolved to become longer in length, and to include more categories; some examples being: educational, observational, and docufiction. Documentaries are very informative and are often used within schools, as a resource to teach various principles.

Here are some standard codes and conventions:

• Hand held Camera -  encoding realism and ‘truth’

• Narrative Voice Over -  leading the audience into a preferred reading

• Vox Pops and Interviews with experts / witnesses / participants

• Often a shorter running time than non-fiction feature films

• Intercutting / Parallel Editing linking key scenes

• Use of Archive footage to support filmed scenes

• Surveillance (information) decoded by audience (e.g. about McDonalds in Supersize Me)

• Mediated culture – documentaries select and construct, thus encoding opinion and subjectivity

• Selective editing crucial to constructing meaning

• Often point of view with encoded ideology, preferred meaning

• Use of Establishing Shot and Close Up

• Observational, Interactive, Reflexive, Expository in format

• 3 act structure, closed investigative narrative

• Often single stranded, linear – one subject is often the topic

• Exploration of narrative themes, messages and values

• Different purposes – to entertain, inform, educate, satirise, shock, satisfy, provide voyeuristic pleasure and for propaganda purposes (see Triumph of the Wild and Crown Film Unit documentaries – Fires Were Started, Britain Can Take It)

• Characters are often hyper real, exaggerated stereotypes e.g. Charlton Heston and Michael Moore himself in Bowling for Columbine

• Audience cultural capital needed to deconstruct some of the narrative content – more niche target audiences

• Active and passive consumption

• Mainly niche but sometimes mass audiences, dependent on distribution

• Hegemonic and Pluralistic representation

Drama Films  back to top
Dramas are serious, plot-driven presentations, portraying realistic characters, settings, life situations, and stories involving intense character development and interaction. Usually, they are not focused on special-effects, comedy, or action, Dramatic films are probably the largest film genre, with many subsets. See also melodramas, epics (historical dramas), courtroom dramas, or romantic genres. Dramatic biographical films (or "biopics") are a major sub-genre, as are 'adult' films (with mature subject content).

Here are some standard codes and conventions:

• Dramatic narrative (storyline)

• Ensemble cast (each character – own storyline)

• Expressive lighting techniques dependent on sub genre e.g. high key lighting in Period Drama

• High production value sound/emotive

• Exaggerated, hyper real representations of character – cultural stereotyping for entertainment values

• Scheduled Prime Time

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Epics Films  back to top
Epics 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. Epics often share elements of the elaborate adventure films genre. Epics take an historical or imagined event, mythic, legendary, or heroic figure, and add an extravagant setting or period, lavish costumes, and accompany everything with grandeur and spectacle, dramatic scope, high production values, and a sweeping musical score. Epics are often a more spectacular, lavish version of a biopic film. Some 'sword and sandal' films (Biblical epics or films occuring during antiquity) qualify as a sub-genre.

Horror Films  back to top
Horror films are 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. Horror films feature a wide range of styles, from the earliest silent Nosferatu classic, to today's CGI monsters and deranged humans. They are often combined with science fiction when the menace or monster is related to a corruption of technology, or when Earth is threatened by aliens. The fantasy and supernatural film genres are not always synonymous with the horror genre. There are many sub-genres of horror: slasher, splatter, psychological, survival, teen terror, 'found footage,' serial killers, paranormal/occult, zombies, Satanic, monsters, Dracula, Frankenstein, etc. 

Here are some standard codes and conventions:

• Split into sub genres (see below), often hybridised

• Primary target audience – male, 16-24, Mainstreamers

• 15 or 18 Certification (promises of pleasure) – debates on passive consumption

• Uses and Gratifications (active audiences) theory can apply

• Extensive use of Narrative enigmas

• Exploration of Narrative Themes

• Slow pace of Editing, builds tension. Long takes

• Three act narrative structure

• Predictable narrative content (follows format)

• Clear binary oppositions e.g. good v evil

• Use of low key lighting

• Use of CGI, FX

• High production values but many low budget horror films

• Dominant, hegemomic representation of gender: The Female Victim

• Extensive use of close up

• Incidental non-diegetic sound

• Distorted diegetic sound

• Extensive use of narrative off-screen space

• Young/teenage characters

• Use of hand-held camera: audience identification/realism

• Point of view shots

• Low angle shots

Horror Sub Genres

Horror can be split into sub genres:

• The Monster Scare

• Psychological Thrillers

• Slasher Pics

• Zombie Films

Musicals/Dance Films   back to top
Musicals / Dance Films are cinematic forms that emphasize and showcase full-scale song and dance routines in a significant way (usually with a musical or dance performance as part of the film narrative, or as an unrealistic "eruption" within the film). Or they are films that are centered on combinations of music, dance, song or choreography. In traditional musicals, cast members are ones who sing. Musicals highlight various musical artists or dancing stars, with lyrics that support the story line, often with an alternative, escapist vision of reality - a search for love, success, wealth, and popularity. This genre has been considered the most escapist of all major film genres. Tremendous film choreography and orchestration often enhances musical numbers.

Sci-Fi Films  back to top
Sci-fi films are 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. They are sometimes an offshoot of the more mystical fantasy films (or superhero films), or they share some similarities with action/adventure films. Science fiction often expresses the potential of technology to destroy humankind and easily overlaps with horror films, particularly when technology or alien life forms become malevolent, as in the "Atomic Age" of sci-fi films in the 1950s. Science-Fiction sub-categories abound: apocalyptic or dystopic, space-opera, futuristic noirs, speculative, etc.

Here are some standard codes and conventions:

• High production values

• Younger target audience although significant older appeal

• Wide/saturated distribution (normally by an American Studio e.g. Warners or Disney). Mainstreamers and Aspirers

• Dedicated, sometimes obsessive fan base

• Convergence and Synergy – computer games, merchandising, forums and blogs, fan sites…

• Emotive, often ‘romanticised’ narratives

• Hyper real, idealised representations

• Saturated primary colours

• High key lighting

• Significant CGI and FX e.g. green screen technology

• Aspirational, escapist characters, often undertaking a quest

• Occasional political narrative themes only understood by an older target audience with significant cultural capital (e.g. about minority groups)

• Reputation for being ideologically traditional e.g. Disney ‘teaching’ gender roles to young target audiences

• Positive narrative outcomes (happy endings)

• Simplistic, linear narrative (e.g. a Hobbit travels across middle earth encountering danger)

• Propps character roles can often apply

• Iconography includes magic, mystical creatures e.g. Elves and Fairies

• Often set in the past (King Arthur) or in an imagined time

• High production value costume design

• Exhibited mainly in multiplex cinemas

• Escapism as key audience appeal

War and Anti-War Films   back to top

They often acknowledge the horror and heartbreak of war, letting the actual combat fighting or conflict (against nations or humankind) provide the primary plot or background for the action of the film. Typical elements in the action-oriented war plots include POW camp experiences and escapes, submarine warfare, espionage, personal heroism, "war is hell" brutalities, air dogfights, tough trench/infantry experiences, or male-bonding buddy adventures during wartime.

Themes explored in war films include combat, survivor and escape stories, tales of gallant sacrifice and struggle, studies of the futility and inhumanity of battle, the effects of war on society, and intelligent and profound explorations of the moral and human issues.

Westerns Films  back to top
Westerns are the major defining genre of the American film industry - a eulogy to the early days of the expansive American frontier. They are one of the oldest, most enduring genres with very recognizable plots, elements, and characters (six-guns, horses, dusty towns and trails, cowboys, Indians, etc.). They have evolved over time, however, and have often been re-defined, re-invented and expanded, dismissed, re-discovered, and spoofed. Variations have included Italian 'spaghetti' westerns, epic westerns, comic westerns, westerns with outlaws or marshals as the main characters, revenge westerns, and revisionist westerns.

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EXAMPLE 1: MADE UP MOVIE  back to top

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The genre of the Calibrium Six film is advertised as Science Fiction and with sub genres of Exploration, Action and Supernatural. The “cinema goer” would be expecting to see humans against Aliens or a more powerful “force” similar to films such as Star Trek: Rise Of The Klingons or Star Wars: The Next Sith where a clear linear narrative, crowd pleasing action, excessive CGI, new alien technology, creepy aliens, epic orchestral sounds and heroic characters fighting evil with good would be expected.

In my opinion the film subverts that genre in many ways. In media interviews with Director James Wong his plan was to bring a new style of Science Fiction action blockbuster that didn’t follow the usual genre structure we had come to expect. Initially we see the main character of Rath Mador as a space pirate commanding legions of shock troops. No subversion of genre there. But we are then given access to his personal struggles and emotions of leadership which are laid bare to the audience which is a refreshing new idea in this genre and it could have worked.  Does it provide meaning and impact for the audience? Well it could have worked but it is poorly executed with poor acting from James T West with a week script. As Acting Weekly says in its June edition “James T West fails to deliver…