Genre - Background information

What is a Genre?
''A film genre is a rough categorization of films into genres, which describe the typical subject matter—what the film is about: Western films are about the American West, love stories are about love, and so on. This is distinct from film styles, which describe filmic conventions which can be applied to any genre (see below). Of course, the more that genres are defined, the more likely that a filmmaker will try to combine, transcend and evade categories, so not every film can be neatly labeled.''


A genre can be defined by several different components:
- A set of ventions - recognisable, usually through iconography, familiar narrative, mise-en-scene, actors and style of representation.
- Genres offer comforting reassurance in an uncomfortable world. Threate is quashed, outlaws become ''civilized'', gangsters go to prison, romances end in marriage. Genre is a way of ''tidying up'' the mess of life.
- Genre is a way of working through inportant myths and fears by repetition, variation and resolution.
- Genre functions like a language - a set of rules and a vocabulary with which to organise meaning.
- Genres are not static but constantly renegotiate between industry and audience - a combination of familiar reassurane and new twists.
- A creative strategy used by film producers to ensure audience identification with a film - a means of trying to predict risk.


Examples:
There any many different types of Genre; Action-adventure, Disaster, Gangster, Thriller, Art, Biographical, Chick Flick, Comedy, Black comedy, Romantic comedy,Comic Book, Documentary, Mockumentary, Drama, Historical drama, Family, Fantasy, Gothic, Horror, Martial arts, Medieval, Musical, Mystery, Propaganda, Romance, Science fiction, Social guidance, Spiritual, Sports, Spy, Teen, War, Western.


Why is Genre important?
Genre is particularly important in a film. Genre is an essential marketing tool. It provides a means for both distributors and studios to standardise and differentiate product. Films therefore, have to provide elements of apparent originality alongside familiar.


Academic viewpoints about genre issues:
Various people including Richard maltby, Douglas Pye, Steve Neale, James monaco and Jim Collins each have different opinions of what they think about genre in films.
One persons that particularly stands out however, is Partrick Phillips (1996), he states the following;
''Genres are formal systems for transforming he world in which we actually live into self-contained, coherent, and controllable structures of meaning. Genres can thus be considered to fuction in the way that a language system does - offering a vocabulary and a sent of rules which allow us to 'shape' reality, thus making it appear less random and disordered.
at an ideological leve, genre offers a comfortable reassureance, closing down the complexities and ambiguities of the social worlds we actually inhabit, replacing them with patterns of order and continuity deriving from the conventions of genre itself.
Transforming the experience fo living into a set of predictable conventions provides a number or pleasures. These include aticipation of these predictable features and satisfaction when expectations are fulfilled. (At the same time the 'mix' of elements ins slightly different each time thus providing just enough uncertainty for the spectator to be held by anxious curiosity.)''
- I think what Patrick Phillips says is particularly good as he explains  how genre's can effect an audience. How defining what genre you choose can help to intregue those that are watching.