Genre Conventions

Genre is a way of categorising films into sections, which will appeal to different audiences. It is a French term meaning 'type' or 'kind'.

Some examples of genre are:

• Film Noir
• Action
• Adventure
• Horror
• Thriller
• Family
• Comedy
• Romance
• Western
• War
• Science Fiction
• Documentary
• Crime
• Gangster
• History

Some films are hybrids this is when a film has more than one stated genre for example:

• Romantic/Comedy
• Action/Adventure
• Horror/Thriller
• Gangster/Crime

A way in which you can establish what genre a film is, is through the iconography.

The iconography is the way we describe the particular signs that identify a particular genre for example the props on set, the mise-en-scene, what you can see when you watch the film that links to a certain genre, an example would be :

A western film would have iconography such as; Cowboy hats, horses, deserted places, tumbleweeds.

Sophie Cain



Some other conventions will include things like;-

• Narrative
• Theme
• Ideology
• Mise en scene

These things are what really set the scene and define what genre they belong in. The narrative of a film is one of the most important as a story about an axe murder is not going to be a romantic film. Films with a boy and a girl and a love story are commonly a romantic film and the story line might be how they met. The theme of the film for example when discussing a film noir it will be the doomed relationship between the femme fatale and the damaged hero, it's something that is recurring in every film of it's genre. The ideology is the ideas behind the film and what the audience is expecting from the film, which is mainly the little things in the movie the way a character acts can easily define a movie in some ways. For example Jason in Friday the 13th, can easily be seen as something to scare a person which would relate to a thriller or a horror. Lastly the mise-en-scene of the film sets the scene, this includes the surrounding area, the lighting and the people/props in the shot. All of these parts of the mise-en-scene really highlight what the movie is going to be like for instants it is commonly known now-a-day that a haunted house connotes to something scary therefore meaning that it will be a horror or a thriller. Same goes for something like a car chase shot, it's profoundly known for the film to be action adventure.

In conclusion I think that there is various elements of a film, mainly the conventions that highlight the genre of the movie that someone is watching. This means it is very important for our trailer to have some of the stereotypical conventions of a film noir so that we appeal to the target audience and so that we achieve the kind of movie we set out to promote.
Sophie Kilty