Genre is a French word that means type or kind. Most students will be aware of genre as a way of putting films, television programmes and other media texts into groups that have things in common, such as the story, or the ‘look’ of a film, or the characters, the settings and even the way the characters dress.

Genre, especially in film, is a key concept because it is more complex than just a way of putting similar films together in a...

Media Studies isn’t easy to describe. It’s a living concept that continues to change just as technology and our experience with technology change. The purpose of Media Studies is to provide audiences with access to information no matter how it is experienced and allow people to adopt diverse critical positions.

Media Studies is desirable because its curriculum is inclusive; it recognises that the form of delivery as well as the content to be...

Studying media is about watching, reading, discussing and evaluating media texts such as films, television and radio programmes, newspapers and magazines, and advertisements.

An important aspect of Media Studies is evaluating (this is called ‘reading’) a media text to find out what it is trying to say to the audience, and how that message is being communicated. The first AS module is usually known as ‘Reading the media’.

In the course...

Television and film crime/cop drama is very popular with a wide audience. Crime dramas seek to anchor the representations of all types of police officers, criminals and victims as ‘believable’ characters, with ‘realistic’ plot lines, set in urban locations.The genre has been taken up in the US under the heading of American Quality Televsion (AQT) - see under heading AQT.

Codes and conventions

Crime dramas:

• are constructed realities
...

Contemporary Action Adventure Films (including hybrids)

• Your Highness (Adventure/Comedy Hybrid) 2011
• Raiders of The Lost Ark (1981)
• Pirates of the Caribbean – On Stranger Tides (2011)
• Superman Returns (2006)
• The Italian Job (1969)
• Romancing The Stone (1984)
• Stormbreaker (2006)
• Godzilla (1998)
• King Arthur (2004)
• Back to the Future (1985)
• Chicken Run (2000)
• Star Trek (2009)
• Chronicles of Narnia (2005)
• The Musketeer (2001)
• Blackbeard (2006)
• The...

Period Dramas are also known as Historical Dramas or Costume Dramas. Below are the typical codes and conventions of Period Dramas but also examples of key texts:

• Elaborate costumes and sets to catch the ambience of a particular time period (stereotypically female audiences are attracted as much by the costumes as by the narrative content)
• Multi stranded narrative based on character (each character has their own storyline)
• Often part of a...

Sub Genres

Television Drama is a broad area of study covering a range of sub genres and even genres that would be considered to be a category of their own with their own codes and conventions. Some texts cross over different sub genres e.g. 24 is Crime Drama and Action Adventure. A generic, comprehensive list includes:

• Period Drama | Emma, Downton Abbey, The Tudors, Mildred Pierce
• Crime Drama | The Wire, Luther, Life on Mars / Ashes to Ashes,...

History and Context

Distant ancestors of Punch and Judy shows, Situation Comedies originated, as with much TV Comedy in part on the radio in the 1920s and 1930s. Due however to the exclusive nature of ‘the situation’ and the concept of visual audience identification it remains fundamentally a successful audio-visual sub genre – Hancock’s Half Hour is a notable exception to this in the 1950s transferring successfully from radio to...

Trollied is a Situation Comedy set in a fictional supermarket, Valco in the north-west, specifically Warrington in Cheshire. It is broadcast on a Monday night at 9pm and more unusually it is on Sky 1 (it is rare for Sky 1 to commission programmes from the Sitcom genre). Trollied is repeated immediately after on Sky 2 at 10pm. In its classic 30 minute format it follows some genre conventions but offers post watershed representations.

The...

Associated Resources

• Genre Revision Test.doc
• Genre Test Answers.doc

1. What does the word genre literally mean?  1 mark

2. How does the concept of genre help audiences understand media texts?  2 marks

3. Give three ways audiences can identify genre.  3 marks

4. Using two examples, identify how can genre be understood in terms of narrative themes and structure.  4 marks

5. What are generic codes and conventions?  1 mark

6. Explain the...

Contemporary Examples

• The Rite Mikael Håfström, 2011
• Paranormal Activity 2 Tod Williams, 2010
• Saw (6 films in franchise) James Wan, 2002-2009
• Blair Witch Project Daniel Myrick + Eduardo Sánchez, 1999
• Dog Soldiers Neil Marshall, 2002
• Urban Legend Jamie Blanks, 1998
• I Know What You Did Last Summer Jim Gillespie, 1997
• Hostel Eli Roth, 2005

Codes and Conventions

• Split into sub genres (see below), often hybridised
• Primary target audience –...

Recommended Reading

• ‘Spectacular Bodies’ - Yvonne Tasker (Routledge) 1998
• ‘Action’ – Richard Dyer, 2000
• ‘Action Women: Muscles, Mothers and Others’ – Yvonne Tasker, 1998

Contemporary Action Films

• Your Highness (Adventure/Comedy Hybrid) David Gordon Green, 2011
• Inception (Action/Sci Fi Hybrid) Christopher Nolan, 2010
• Quantum of Solace Marc Forster, 2008
• Die Hard 4.0 Len Wiseman, 2007
• Tomb Raider Simon West, 2000
• Mission...

Examples

• Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson, 2001-2003)
• Harry Potter (Chris Columbus, 2001-11)
• Chronicles of Narnia (Andrew Adamson, 2005)
• Tron (Kenneth Branagh, 2011)
• Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006)

Codes and Conventions

• High production values
• Younger target audience although significant older appeal
• Wide/saturated distribution (normally by an American Studio e.g. Warners or Disney). Mainstreamers and Aspirers
• Dedicated, sometimes...

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Click on the link below to download a PDF booklet you can print out.

Popular_Music_Video.pdf

Click on the link below to download a PDF booklet you can print out.

Film Genre - Thrillers.pdf

Click on the link below to download a PDF booklet you can print out.

Introducing_Genre.pdf

Click on the link below to download a PDF booklet you can print out.

Genre_and_Sitcom.pdf

Background

David Buckingham studied 8-12 year olds undertaking this experiment.  He found that:

“genre was being used as an unspoken rationale for moving from one topic to the next. Thus, discussion of one comedy programme was more likely to be followed by discussion of another comedy programme, rather than of news or soap opera.” (Buckingham 1993: 139)

Genre is a French word that means type or kind. Genre is a way of classifying a media...

Practical ways to study the concept of genre.

The new specifications for A-level (AQA) doesn’t require the study of genre explicitly at A/S Level.  However, at A2 the Specification suggests that candidates could consider Genre Theories as part of their understanding of why and how texts are created as they are.

For the research element of the MEST 4 study, it may well be that students wish to study a particular genre.

For example, a...

These quizzes are best viewed in Firefox.

Firefox is an excellent alternative to Internet Explorer which is available free for both PCs and Macs.

These quizzes are best viewed in Firefox.

Firefox is an excellent alternative to Internet Explorer which is available free for both PCs and Macs.

Vampires don’t exist, unless they’re bats. However they are potent monsters that have been recently finding favour with audiences: the new independent-Hollywood Twilight franchise (2008-), based on Stephanie Meyer’s novels; the Swedish horror film Let the Right One In (2008), from John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel; series one of the BBC3 genre hybrid series Being Human (2009). Genres need to evolve in order to remain fresh so it’s...

A History of Horror Films Some obscure sub-genres covered

Horror Film History An outstanding guide to the horror film genre across the decades by Karina Wilson

Horror Movie Trailers on eSplatter

Horror The Movie Contains most of the horror conventions in a condensed format.

Genre Theory An Introduction by Daniel Chandler

Crime.netfirms.com

‘Welcome to my Crime Drama website. The principal aim of this site is to provide an online revision aid for my A2 students concerning the ME6 unit of the WJEC syllabus of Media Studies. At present the site is not conclusive of the unit and focuses only on crime in film.’

Crimeculture.com

Katpad on Gangster Genre

Theories of Humour on Wikipedia

BBC Comedy

British Comedy Guide

Filmsite on Types of Comedy

An Introduction to Genre Theory by Daniel Chandler

Wikipedia on Comedy

Wikipedia on Comedic Genres

Genre is a French word that means type or kind. Most students will be aware of genre as a way of putting films, television programmes and other media texts into groups that have things in common, such as the story, or the ‘look’ of a film, or the characters, the settings and even the way the characters dress.

Genre, especially in film, is a key concept because it is more complex than just a way of...

Media Studies isn’t easy to describe. It’s a living concept that continues to change just as technology and our experience with technology change. The purpose of Media Studies is to provide audiences with access to information no matter how it is experienced and allow people to adopt diverse critical positions.

Media Studies is desirable because its curriculum is inclusive; it recognises that the form of...