Post 4: Genre as a Media Concept

Thinking back to my previous thoughts on Genre  I now have different opinions on genre than before. I am now also able to give different views on the subject.

There are many different Genres that are interesting to debate about when looked into, they are the following:

. Action
. Adventure
. Comedy
. Crime
. Documentary
. Drama
. Family
. Fantasy
. Horror
. Musical
. Mystery
. Romance
. Sci-Fi
. Sport
. Suspense
. Thriller
. War
. Western

Throughout the lesson, we discussed audiences possible thoughts on the 'The Expendables' which was an interesting film to discuss due to the fact that the film has merged all of the audiences favourite action heroes together  in one film, so for the film company to be successful with this film & by merging all of these hollywood actors together, then they must live up to the audiences high expectations.

We spoke about Robert Altman's views on genres, we discussed one of his theories which was "That genres are defined by producers and are easily recognised by audiences", & we found out that producers choose the actors for their films & this tells the audience what genre of film they are producing.

We came up with examples such as hollywood film stars Sylvester Stallone & Arnold Schwarzenegger who you know just by there personalities are going to make an action film.

We then found a quote from Altman that could be linked with our AS media project 'Thug Britain' which is, "Genres are ideological". This draws the attention of a younger audience where drug related deals, interesting locations and music were all used in our opening scene to attract the audience we wanted.

We then came up with a conclusion that if there is a male in a romantic film which women love, then audiences are going to want to go and see that film just because of the actor.

The same could be said for the male audience. If the male audience see's a film which is all about action with fast cars and explosions, then they are going to be more drawn into it than a female audience.

We agreed that the producers decide what makes a genre, that they want us as an audience to get involved with specific genres & by doing this, it could appeal to my opening sequence as we were the people in charge of choosing the genres and how to portray the genres to the audience.

Genres are not specifically located in history was a quote that the whole class disagreed on as we believed that throughout modern history you can pin point when certain genres where popular in the world. For example in the 50's and possibly early 60's western films were at their peak, whilst compared to now there are virtually no westerns produced because the public has lost interest in them.

This would apply to the opening sequence as we chose two genres that are popular in todays modern cinema, with the idea of large profits in mind. If we had chosen a musical or western genre then we would have not got a great target audience or potentially make profit.