Genre Essay


At AS we created a film opening called On Track, this had a sports genre. We conformed and subverted to the conventions of a sports film. It was vital to make the genre of our film clear to the audience and also to be recognisable. 

We researched similar sports films in order to see what we could include in our own. We looked at Fast Girls which was the main film that influenced us with our film opening. This was because it was a low budget film which meant that a lot of the locations used within were available for us to use at school, such as the running track, swimming pool, field, studio. There were also some themes in this film that we felt would be good to have in our film opening. One of them being jealousy between the two main characters and another being rich vs poor. Another sports film that we researched was Double Teamed, in this film there are two girls who are completely different, but both have love and passion for the sport of running. Again, from this film we got the idea of having the two main characters as completely different. 

Daniel Chandler said that genre is a type. Our type of genre used in our film opening was a sports genre. We suited these conventions due to everything which we included in the film, for example the running track, the swimming pool, the gym, the coaches and the runners. These things make it clear to the audience what 'type' of film it is going to be. 
Steve Neale said that genre's are made up of repetitions and differences. Our genre is similar to a sports genre film as it conforms with the typical competition build up, the training and the winning that a sports film has. Our film is different to sports films in the fact that the two main characters are women and not men. 

The settings that we used for our film made the genre of the film easily recognisable, this is because the first shot is of the running track, not only is it easy to tell that it is a sports film form this, but it is also easy to know that it is going to be a film based on athletics of some sort. By having different locations it allowed the audience to get a wider feel of the genre in case they didn't get it from the first shot, for example you  see the swimming pool, the gym, the field and these settings show you the genre. The props used such as the gym bag, the running trainers and the stopwatch show the idea of sports and also the lead up to a competition due to the training and timing. You have the low angle shots of the characters which shows that they are powerful girls who are training for something big, you also have the tracking shot of them running. There is lots of split screen shots which shows the difference in class between the two girls, the shots of the locations gives the setting. The girls were wearing sports outfits, these allowed the audience to see the genre by the costumes, the lighting throughout the film opening was bright and sunny which shows that it is positive and happy. 
The music which was played was motivational music leading up tot he competition, off screen sound included the gun shot which set the girls off for their race. The emotion created from the sound would have been motivations and also curious, because the audience would have wanted to know what was gong to happen in the competition. The dialogue was the conversations between the coach and the runner, showing the passion they both have for the sport and for wanting her to do well in it. 

In conclusion, we conformed the conventions of the genre quite a lot throughout the film opening due to the locations, props, costumes and shots that we used within it. We did also subvert to the conventions of a sports genre film as the main characters were women, whereas in many sports films they are very men heavy and women often don't play a big role. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Narrative Question

Narrative is the way in which the story is constructed and how it affects the audience. The film opening which we created at AS level was called 'On Track', it was a drama based around the story of two girls who are completely different in the sporting world training for the same competition. In the film opening the two girls are training for the Olympics, you see the split screen of both girls which shows the comparison's between them with one being more advantaged than the other. We used the theme of sport as we felt that not a lot of women are involved in sports films so we felt that by doing this our film opening would stand out. We used the locations such as the running track, the swimming pool, and the field to really get that sport vibe for the audience and to show that the girls were training hard but not getting the same use of facilities. Levi Strause had the theory of binary oppositions, we brought this into our film opening in many ways. One way was by using s...
Read more

Genre Question

Apply the concept of genre to one of your coursework productions. Genre is the style or category of art, music or literature. Daniel Chandler is a theorist who says that 'genre is a type', he said that the genre should meet the audience expectations of the genre. In our film opening which we created at AS called 'On Track', we subverted the target audience's expectations, we did this by using two girls in the film rather than men which are mainly used in most sports films.We conformed the expectations by using the settings of the running track and the swimming pool. Steve Neale is a theorist who believes that genre is based on repetition and difference. The settings which we used were the running track, the swimming pool, the gym, the field and also the girl's houses. These settings all linked to the genre of the film which was sports, this made it easy for our audience to straight away identify our film genre which also meant that they were instantly engag...
Read more

How Facebook changed the world

'Somebody had to show the outside world what was happening' A fruit seller committed suicide due to not being allowed to sell his produce and the pressures of life becoming too much. The day after, 100s of people gathered in the place where he died and began shouting about what they believed in as they felt the same as the fruit seller. Video footage of this protest was shown online on Facebook, it began to become a confrontation but then soon turned into a street war with the police. However, even though all of this had happened, nothing was shown on television the next day. The police wanted to arrest anyone who was filming as they didn't want any of the footage to get out. However with 2 million of the Tunisian people on Facebook, this meant that they knew they could put the footage on here. Once the footage was released on Facebook, the videos went viral at an uncontrollable speed, it was then shown on television. Police then started to stand on the streets in case an...
Read more