Genre

From my first few lessons of Media so far I have learnt about categorizing genres. Films can be put into many different genres because there are so many different interpretations to what genre a movie should be put into, therefore films can be 'hybrids', where a film is two genres. For example a Romantic Comedy, further abbreviated to ‘Rom-Com’, which then allows films to have a wider audience, rather than just ‘Romance’ or ‘Comedy’, this is the most limiting way of understanding genres because you can only introduce two genres, not many.
However films can be further categorised into ‘sub-genres’ where films are categorised within a genre itself. For example, a Science Fiction (or Sci-Fi) can then have a sub genre like ‘Monster Invasion’


Films build upon other previous films, for example horror films need to be evolved because eventually viewers get ‘desensitised’ to certain ‘monsters’ or the ‘killer’, so film makers need to event new ‘baddies’ or bring back one from a long time ago that people vaguely remember. So in other words, genre is constantly renegotiated between industry and audience to bring a combination of familiar reassurance (the victim always lives) and new twists. Social, cultural, economic and political changes all affected the studio system which then have brought about the development of genre


When you begin to make a movie, you must always start with Genre, because it then brings about a list of conventions to work from like the plot, type of characters, music, stars and iconography. So when I begin to make my thriller, I need to make it clear that my film is a thriller by keeping the sense familiarity, but I need to include a new twist to my story which keep the audience interests and want to watch more.