What is genre?

         GENRE           

Genre is a way of containing or categorising a media product based on its conventions. 

Genre is important to institutions because it helps them to identify their audience and market the film. This allows them to target the audience effectively as they know what conventions are needed in the film. This is done so that the institution can fulfil the expectations of the audience effectively.  

 

 

Genre is the main umbrella of categorising a film. An example of a genre is action, such as a comedy. This keeps the potential audience relatively small as a specific genre, such as romance, has a stereotypically mostly female audience. 

Sub-genre contains a category within the category of that genre. For example this might reveal the comedy is a dark comedy. Thus, making it even clearer to the audience what they can expect from the film. An example of this is the dark comedy Parasiste.

A hybrid-genre is when two or more main genres are merged together. This can be very effective in pleasing more than one audience. It can also make films more unpredictable which keeps films interesting as the audience is less sure of what audience they should expect from the film. This might have the ability to target a wider audience as they won't be sure of what emotions will be revoked.  For example, the horror-comedy film "Shaun of the Dead" offers the conventions of both horror and comedy films. A trailer for this film can be seen below.

 

With each genre, comes expectations from the audience. For example, if the audience is watching a horror film they may expect the setting to be a large house in a remote setting or to be set in a dark forest. They might also expect the victim to be a young girl or child. Above all, the audience wants to experience jump scares and experience suspense. On the other hand, if the audience is watching a comedy, they might expect to see an everyday situation that has been over-exaggerated to create a humorous effect. The audience wants to laugh and find a light-hearted escape in the film.