GENRE INTRODUCTION AND DEFINITION

Genre Definitions

■ Three main genres will represent our trailer, and hypothetical film: fantasy, action and drama, creating a hybrid genre.

■ Fantasy: Fantasy often includes magic or supernatural forces, and can sometimes be mixed with the very similar genre of sci-fi.

■ Action: The protagonist takes a certain risky path in defeating the protagonist, which results in dangerous and desperate conflicts, like fight scenes.

■ Drama: Relies on the emotional development of the characters. Dramatic, real life issues are often used as the conflict.

Fantasy-Action-Drama

■ Our teaser trailer will contain main elements often seen in these different genres, creating a hybrid of the three.

■ The fantasy element will be provided by the fact that a supernatural force representing the Devil will feature in the teaser.

■ The drama element is provided by the mental nature of the main character, and the emotional battles that are dealt with in the narrative of the hypothetical film.

■ The action element is provided by the actions that the main character does during his emotional battle and the escalation of his agreement, causing more extreme events, with the Devil.

Altman’s Genre Theory■ Rick Altman developed his genre theory of Semantic and Syntactic approaches and expanded

it to include the way institutions use genre and how audiences interpret it, by adding a third ‘Pragmatic’ approach.

■ This stated that audiences read genre texts in different ways, and they create and re-create genres. This different interpretation allows for different genres to be created. They can manipulate genre too. Institutions often make films of a select number of genres and include certain elements of it for audiences to interpret. If the film is not as successful as it could have been, then perhaps the audience may not have interpreted genre in the way that the institution intended. This allows institutions to understand more about their audience and so they can change the definition of different genres accordingly.

■ This could link to the future of the film industry since audiences now have easier access to create their own products, so this is something to consider also when considering audience response when manipulating genres. An example of this would be that the horror genre has become more popular recently, but in a different form since films including hand-held content like The Blairwitch Project and Paranormal Activity, as opposed to horror films of the past which have a different style, like the Scream series of films.

■ This is relevant and something to consider when creating our teaser trailer since the different elements and conventions that we include will influence the way that the audience interprets it. If we break convention too much, then the trailer will not be as successful. The theory applies to what is currently popular, and the different elements that are seen in the genres that will define our teaser trailer and film and in order for our trailer to be more successful, and attractive to the potential audience, it will be important to include some of these elements.

Sources

■ http://thescriptlab.com/screenplay/genre/drama#■ http://thescriptlab.com/screenplay/genre/fantasy■ http://thescriptlab.com/screenplay/genre/action■ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genres