Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
FILM GENRES - Coggle Diagram
FILM GENRES
Genre History
Genres change over history and get recast due to innovating filmmakers
• Genres change by mixing conventions with another genre
• Once a genre is launched, there is no fixed pattern of development.
• Genre mixing and innovation can take place anytime when it is created
Film genres are established by borrowing existing conventions from other media
• eg. musicals were from stage plays, melodramas from novels, comedy traced back to comic books etc.
Genres and sub-genres become established when ONE film achieves success and is widely imitated
• film begin to resemble one another and more films in the genre generates
-
Rise and Falls in popularity: not constantly successful!
• experiences cycles: peak in popularity and stagnate until it returns in updated innovations
Genres Influence and mix with one another across cultures
eg. Japanese samurai genre parallel the Western genre
Filmmakers may take elements of two or more successful films, blend them and spin off an entirely new concept
HOWEVER, audiences can still distinguish one type of movie from another despite this intermingling!
Analyzing a Genre
-
-
Genre Conventions can be revised or rejected, surprise and shock viewers
• variations can be mildly or radically different
Interplay of convention and innovation, familiarity and novelty
Defining a Genre
The word 'genre' means type or kind or refers to classifying groups of plants and animals using certain characteristics.
-
Genres develop informally
• Critics, filmmakers, producers, viewers contribute to the formation of a category
Genres are a tacit agreement among filmmakers, reviewers and audiences.
-
Defined by
Subject matter and theme
• eg. Gangster Films = urban crime; science fiction = high technology beyond contemporary science; westerns = frontier
-
-
Distinctive Emotional effect (amusement, tension, grief)
-
-
-
Three Types of Genres
The Western
-
Iconography reinforces duality of civilization and savagery
• Settings (schoolhouse, church vs campfire and hills)
• Costumes (sunday suits vs indian tribal garb vs cowboy jeans)
-
-
-
-
-
Innovations: treated Native Americans as more civilized than White society and condemns cowboy to wander forever due to his inability to tame hatred
The Horror FIlm
Characterized by the intended emotional effect on the audience; to terrify, shock, digust, repel
Presence of a Monster, a breach of nature
-
-
iconography of settings (big spooky mansions, drains, cemetries, scientific labs)
-
-
Innovation: presenting violent and disgusting actions with unprecedented explicitness and creepiness, slower paced and arthouse-y
Cultural explanations for the everlasting popularity:
• social concerns about the breakup of american families
• questioning normality and tradition
• younger people's fascination with sexuality and violence
• grotesque imagery, sadomasochism adrenaline rush
The Musical
Response to a technical innovation that combined live vocal and musical accompaniment into scenes of singing and dancing
-
Backstage musical: plot is specifically about show business and features singers and dancers (eg. greatest showman, moulin rouge, 42nd street)
-
-
-
-
Broad subject matter, no main iconography with characters.
-
costumes are cheerful and fancy to keep choreography clearly visible. brightly lit or dramatically lit like a stage, common crane and high angle shots to display patterns and moves
-