Reflective Analysis on Genres

The term 'genre' is not absolute, many factors have conspired to blur genre definitions. Initial divisions of film types resulted in the standard and widely agreed genres of the Western, the musical, the horror film, the comedy, the war film, the thriller, the crime film and the sci-fi film. Yet, an individual genre movie, in order to distinguish itself in the market and attract an audience needs to challenge and innovate genre conventions. As an audience we always need to be alert to the fact that our genre expectations may be subverted or undercut in some way by filmmakers who are well aware of the elements audiences normally expect to find in films from any particular genre. Film genres must constantly evolve otherwise they will inevitably become very repetitive. Nowadays, we are getting used to sub-genres such as romantic comedies, or action thrillers or even post-apocalyptic films and hybrid genres like western musicals and action comedies.

This research into film genres enabled me to have a better understanding on genre analysis as classification i.e. trying to fit films into particular groups which consequently helps me consider which genre I would go for and patterns within that genre that I could integrate in our short film.