Genre

Why is genre an important factor of filmmaking?

Genre is the classification of media texts into groups which have similar characteristics. Genre is an important aspect of filmmaking due to the fact that different genre's will appeal to different audiences, therefore depending on what audience a filmmaker is targeting will more than likely depend on the choice of genre. For example, the film 'Superbad', has the genre of a comedy, therefore this would be important to a filmmaker as they will have made the film to make the audience laugh at the film, so the filmmaker will have focused on this genre purposely. In addition, the genre of a film would also be important because if people see the trailer of the film and it is a popular genre such as horror or a thriller, people will be more interested to see the film. Consequently, when filmmakers are doing research before making a film, genre will be a main focus as they need to see which genre will appeal most and see how the audiences differ due to this. Also, if the filmmaker has identified what genre their film will be, they need to add the typical conventions to make the genre recognisable, for example, a gangster film would have some of the following: car chases, guns, villains, heroes and villains etc. Therefore I believe the genre is very important when making a film, as you need to know what category your film would fall under and how it could affect your film or audience.

Hybrid Genres

Hybrid genres are films with more than one genre. For example, the film 'Kill Bill', has elements of an action, thriller and a Western genre making it a hybrid genre. Filmmakers do this to make the film more exciting and more appealing to different audiences, and try to keep the audiences entertained and make it different from your typical one genre film.