Why do genres exist?
Audience
- creates an age restriction for its audience, this can either be seen as a good point for the industry as they deliberately place an age restriction on certain films to protect such a young audience from seeing scenes that are either aggressive, violent or simply to explicit for young eyes. Or in the case of young viewers the age restriction simply frustrates then to wait for a certain film they are simply dieing to see.
- Genres are there to create some kind of expectation for the audience, where by they already have certain conventions and expectations that are present in previous films of that particular genre that they enjoy the most so are exited to see a new film in that particular genre of interest.
- Genres give that range of choice to an audience and this interest is direction are a particular target audience, such as a person who enjoys a good comedy maybe put off by the sound of a horror when they have already experienced that thrill. By giving a genre you are kind of subtitling films into categories so that their audience has no confusion about what they are about to see.
- From creating certain genres there are also some negative impacts that they seem to have on an audience, the tendency to cut out whole genres seems to be an increasing pattern through the population. If an audience of a comedy simply didn’t like one horror film, they may cut out the whole genre completely from there idea of going to see another one even though there are thousands of different films available to see out there; audiences trends seem to stick to a particular genre that they appear to be attracted to and don’t tend to experiment and take that risk of seeing a completely different film and become more narrow minded.
- Young audiences though seem to be more flexible in there viewings and just enjoy the overall experience of going to the cinema or watching a film at home on DVD/Blue Ray as an experience and the hot gossip of their generation. Most young teenagers or young adults are willing to see a wide range of genres to keep their minds open to experience and new footage for entertainment purposes.
Industry
- Use of genres has an impact on advertisement and marketing to certain audiences of the genera. If marketing and advertisement seem to hit off later on in the year say for instance Halloween time, this would be a good place to maybe release a horror where as a comedy or family movie would be see to be released earlier in the year during school holidays when the young children are out of school.
- The industry tend to stick to the typical conventions of what works for each genre and therefore most comedies look and feel the same and convey the same story line and become predictable just like stereotypical horrors include the victim and the villain as well as the hero and everything becomes ‘safe’ for the producers as they know what has previously works so they use the conventions as a kind of ‘template’ for film makers.
- Some producers are a bit more adventurous and subvert conventions. By doing so they keep the genre ‘alive’ and fresh for their audience. Hybrids are a good way of subverting conventions of a typical genre of film where by the use of hybridization is a mixture of different genres where they reach out and attract a wider range of audience that maybe interested in either genre or even just the one genre may tempt them into watching a different style. Hybrids appeal to such a wider audience of people.
A trailer aims to give the audience information about the film itself, such as what the story line is about in a rough over view, which the main stars are and what genre and expectations the film is going to give.
