Analyse one of your coursework productions in relations to genre.

Genre

Analyse one of your coursework productions in relations to genre.

In AS I made a thriller opening that had to suit the thriller genre. We decided to make a crime/psychological thriller, which meant we had to follow certain characteristics in order to ensure our thriller fitted within the genre.  Some characteristics we had to ensure we incorporated were visual style, sounds, edits and conventional character types.

Altman’s theory looks into the idea that ‘people look for certain pleasures when choosing a film genre. These are emotional pleasures, intellectual puzzles and visceral pleasures. My thriller opening falls into all 3 categories to some extent.  The thriller opens with the wife being kidnapped, but we decided to reveal the kidnapper from the start. We then see flashbacks of the couple. The opening ends with the husband meeting a friend who claims he wants to help find his wife but is revealed to the audience has also being the kidnapper. This fits into the idea of the intellectual puzzle as they can make assumptions to suit the rest of the story. Also as we decided to make the thriller convincing  we hoped that this would bring emotional pleasures for the audience as they could make a connection to what is happening within the opening sequence. We also hope that this would give visceral pleasures as it would be a ‘rollercoaster ride’ of emotions for the audience as the story unfolds. We hoped that by using all three styles that this would be more appealing and interesting for the audience.

Jason Missel’s theory suggests that ‘industries use genre to sell products to the audience’. These are like cultural categories that audience members can relate to and gain pleasures from. By following certain codes and conventions found within the typical thriller genre we were able to make references and mirror real events in order to meet our audiences knowledge of society and other media texts. The genres also audiences to make choices about what they are watching and what the accept to be real or not.

Steve Neal sates that there are many different genre types  and that “genres are not systems they are processes”. The boundries surrounding the different genres have changed and evolved over time as we now have hybrid genres which means that these types of films cannot follow a certain of process. Our thiller could follow the process of an action film as well as a thriller which would fit into the hybrid genre of an action thriller.

Abercrombie’s theory that the “boundaries between genres are shifting” this links back to the idea of the thriller opening being more of  a hybrid genre and not just part of the thriller genre. Hybrid genres help keep the audience interests and to ‘refresh’ the look of the thriller genre as it had become tired and old and too predictable for audiences. By blurring the boundaries between two different genres and creating a hybrid genre you can surprise the audience and show them something that is more different and interesting.

In order to make the thriller opening a thriller we still had to follow the average thriller conventions in order for it to fit into the thriller genre and be suitable for audiences who enjoy thriller films.