Research: Film Genres

Films are put into genres depending on common, repeating conventions. Each genre has a list of conventions which an audience would expect to see within a movie of this type; a film does not have to contain all of the conventions of each genre to be labelled but it must have at least a few of the obvious ones. Genres help to classify films for both a creator and a consumer, helping to target a specific niche audience.

Genres change over time, emerge and often become hybrids of two or more genres, for example, Rom Com films. The convections can be to do with: content, themes, mood, period, plot, setting, props (mise en scene) and recurring iconography.

Some of the classic, primary film genres are as follows:

Action
Adventure

Comedy

Crime

Drama

Horror

Musical

Science Fiction (Sci-Fi)

War

Western

Thriller

Our project is specific to film trailers, each genre above also has a list of codes and conventions which should appear within a film trailer of a specific genre. Most film trailers are destined to give the audience some kind of insight into the setting, characters, genre, atmosphere and narrative, however in a trailer the narrative can’t be given away too much. This will show an audience what type of film they are going to see and therefore they can decide whether they would like to see the movie when it is released or not. This means that film trailers are crucial for the success of a movie as they help to target the specific audience and allow them to be engaged and motivated to watch the full length film.