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Week 5: Film Genres, Films fall into a genre and that genre has specific…
Week 5: Film Genres
Understanding Genres
Defining a Film Genre
Genres develop informally
- Critics, filmmakers, producers, viewers contribute to the formation of a category
- tacit agreements between filmmaker and audience
- lacks scientific precision
- genres can be blended & are not always clear cut
- convenient terms
- certain films resemble one another in significant ways
Genres change overtime.
- filmmakers invent new twists onto old formulas
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What Creates a Genre?
- subject matter or theme (sci-fi, gangster)
- manner of presentation (musical)
- distinctive emotional effect (humor, tension, grief)
- plot patterns (detective)
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Analyzing a Genre
Genre Conventions
- recurring elements specific to the genre
- shapes our expectations about what we see and hear in a genre film
- can lead to stale repetition if used WITHOUT adding new elements, blending, varying or rejecting conventions
Plot Patterns
Character Conventions:
- shifty informant, anti-hero etc.
Plot Structures:
- rise and falls, musical numbers, revenge flashbacks etc.
Themes
- broad meanings & values that are summoned again and again.
- eg. loyalty, power struggles
Iconography
- recurring symbolic imagery that carries from one film over to another
- manifested in objects, props and setting (location)
- trapping–called costumes and props
- actors can also be iconographic
- Hollywood iconography used in art films
Stylistic Choices
Characteristic Film Techniques
- low lighting, slow-motion, emotional twist, music, rapid cutting, slow pacing
Genre History
- genres change over history and conventions get recast and resurface
Origins
Genres begin by borrowing conventions from other media
- eg. musicals were from musical comedies and variety shows, melodramas from novels, comedy traced back to comic books etc
Genres are shaped by technology developments
- synchronized sounds in musicals, special effects in sci fi
Genres and Cycles
Genres go through phases
- maturity to parody (mocking its own conventions and actively rejecting them)
Stages of a genre
- Primitive
- Classical
- Parodic
- Revisionist
not a strictly linear progression
Cycles occur when ONE film achieves success and is widely imitated
- film begin to resemble one another and more films in the genre generates
- genres become ESTABLISHED
- entrenched subgenres appear after a short-cycle persists for so long
Genres rise and fall in prestige and popularity
- a genre may pass out of fashion but never dies
- resurfaces in new elements
Genre Mixing
Genre mixing and innovation can take place anytime when it is created
- good way to innovate and gain more target audiences
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!
Genre changes by mixing its conventions with another genre
- blending (eg. musical melodrama)
- merging (comic touches)
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Four Genres
The Musical
Origins:
- musicals were revues, programs of musical numbers with little or no narrative linkage between them
- technology synchronised recorded music with moving images
- performance-heavy
- when subtitles and dubbing solved the problem of a language barrier, complicated storylines emerged.
Conventions
Iconography
Backstage:
- dressing rooms, wings of a theatre,
- flats and backdrops of the stage
- dance floor
- characters recognizable by distinctive stage costumes
Plot & Characters
- plots that could motivate the introduction of musical numbers
- numbers often reflect a couple's courtship (dancing and singing together)
Theme
- musicals tend to attribute and accentuate the positive
Stylistic Choices
- musicals are brightly lit, cheerful costumes and colorful sets and keep the choregraphy oof the dance numbers clearly visible
- contemporary musicals are cut very quickly because of the influence of MTV videos
- crane shots & high angles display PATTERNS formed by dancers and the complex formations
Subgenres:
- Backstage Musical: action centering on singers and dancers, who are in show-business
- Straight musical: people sing and dance in situations of everyday life
- Films fall into a genre and that genre has specific conventions
- mass-market cinema rely on genre filmmaking
- genres are central to filmmaking
Just because a genre intermingles does not mean that they lose their distinctions! We can still differentiate between genres.
How to identify genres in films intuitively
- production hoouse
- poster
- title
- director
- casting (eg. michael bay, tom cruise for action)
- reviews
- distributors
- costumes
- set/location
When we view the genre moovie, what do we expect in the story?
- typical plots
- typical situations
- character
- body language
- dress
- dialogue
- historical setting
- location
in-universe it is fair because the story is positioned as a play.
but out-universe is a creative choice to write this story and therefore you can critique iit