From Buddy Films to Teen Slashers

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From Buddy Films to Teen Slashers

• Genre in Movies

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Genre

• Set of interrelated stories and their associated
  images
• Uses conventions stories, characters,
  situations
• Enables viewers familiar with genre to anticipate
  developments and outcomes
• Enables filmmakers to achieve highly concentrated
  meanings within genre

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Movie Genres

• Westerns
• Drama
• Comedy
• Film Noir
• Action/Adventure
• Documentaries

• Sci-Fi/Fantasy
• Gangster/Crime
• Musical
• Mystery/Horror
• Romance
• Animation

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Westerns

• Oldest screen genre
• By 1910, over 20 of movies were Westerns
• Dropped off in the 1970s, never to return to
  prominence
• Exceptions Silverado, Tombstone, Unforgiven

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Conventions of Westerns

• Defined by
• Period from Civil War to WW1
• Setting west of MS allows use of migration,
  Indian wars, railroads, cattle drives, gold rush
  landscape is a character
• Theme conflict between civilization and the
  wilderness
• explain why violence is necessary
• culture of honor vs. culture of law
• no social order beyond peers, family
• reputation is a two-edged sword

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Conventions of Westerns

• Opening scene riding into town from wilderness
• Character only have clothes on your back, your
  gun, and your horse
• Violence vs. Law
• Violent skills of protagonist tested in a public
  arena (saloon)
• Conclusion gunfight, riding back out of town

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Drama

• Largest film genre
• Many subsets
• Epics
• Historical dramas
• Romantic
• Biopics biographical films

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Drama - Conventions

• Serious, plot-driven stories
• Realistic characters, settings, situations Focus
  is on character development/ interaction
• How does a character change through the course of
  the movie?
• What causes this?
• How does the director show this?

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Comedy

• Light-hearted plots
• Designed to amuse, provoke laughter by
  exaggerating situations, relationships,
  characters
• Subsets
• Slapstick
• Satire - portray persons or social institutions
  as ridiculous or corrupt
• Parody critique from within
• Romantic comedies
• Black comedies

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Comedy

• Elements
• Surprise
• Incongruity
• Conflict
• Repetitiveness
• Opposite expectations

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Comedy - Conventions

• Use of Irony
• Situational character expects one thing, gets
  another
• Dramatic audience knows more than character
• Exaggeration
• Situations
• Characters
• Action
• Language

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Comedy - Conventions

• Rule of Threes
• maximum humor can be attained by creating a
  structure
• a joke is set up
• the setup is reinforced
• The punchline breaks the pattern
• How do you get to my place? Go down to the
  corner, turn left, and get lost.
• I know three French words Bonjour, merci, and
  surrender.

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Film Noir

• Means Black Film
• More of a mood, style
• Often black and white
• Creates mood of melencholy, bleakness, moral
  corruption, evil, guilt
• Evolved in the 1940s through 1960s

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Film Noir - Conventions

• Cynical, loner hero the anti-hero
• Hard-boiled detective
• Femme Fatale
• Locations
• Seedy, big cities
• The underworld class of people we normally do
  not see/interact with
• Themes of fate, hopelessness, desperation

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Action/Adventure

• High-energy, big budget
• Escapism
• Exciting stories, locations
• Subsets
• Serialized films (James Bond)
• Epics
• Blaxploitation films

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Action/Adventure - Conventions

• 2 Dimensional characters
• Good guys, bad guys
• Unrealistic situations, proving abilities of hero
• Locations, situations are usually exotic,
  original, or outside of viewers experiences

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Musicals

• A product of sound films came to fruition with
  the development of sound
• Emphasize full-scale scores or song and dance
  routines
• Combinations of music, dance, song, or
  choreography
• Will often be combined with another genre
• Musical comedy
• Dramatic musical
• Romantic musical
• Musical Western

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Musicals - Conventions

• Often center on the courtship rituals
• Song/dance expressed desire for each other
• Dialogue scenes shot in realistic style song
  sequences are far from realistic
• Bifurcated style
• Belong to a less cynical age optimism and
  innocence
• Antirealism story is least important of the
  elements just connects the songs

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Gangster

• Developed around the sinister actions of
  criminals
• Rise and fall of a career criminal
• Often with immigrant origins
• Most famous Little Caesar with Edward G.
  Robinson

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Gangster - Conventions

• A perversion of the American Dream Horatio
  Algers
• A sustained critique of society
• What is wrong with a society if it produces
  people like this?
• Death of the protagonist must be spectacular
• The American Nightmare

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Horror

• 1930s the Golden Age
• Dracula, Frankenstein, Mummy, Wolfman, etc.
• Began as a storytelling convention has developed
  into shock theater
• Targets a specific audience, but utilizes
  universal fears
• Represents a confusion/violation of social
  categories
• Normal/abnormal, human/animal, living/dead

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Horror - Conventions

• Basic narrative situation normalcy is
  threatened
• Often a romantic couple or a parent/child
• Best monsters are human and inhuman
• Modern horror is more unsettling
• Monster doesnt die, and endings are not always
  happy

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Fantasy/Science Fiction

• Visionary movies what might the future hold,
  what alternatives might have been
• Often deal with the potential of technology to
  destroy humans
• Quasi-scientific best movies seem realistic
  (Minority Report)

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Fantasy/Science Fiction - Conventions

• Settings are fantastic futuristic, other
  dimensions, strange environments
• Complete with heroes, impossible quests, great
  villains, futuristic technology, extraordinary
  monsters
• Transcends the bounds of human possibility and
  physical laws
• Element of magic, myth, wonder, and the
  extraordinary

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Romance - Conventions

• Affairs of the heart
• May overlap with dramas, comedies, westerns, etc.
• Center on passion, emotion, and the romantic
  involvement of the main characters
• Journey of love from courtship to marriage
• The love story is the main plot focus

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Documentaries

• Cinema Verite
• used to show true stories
• 1922 Nanook of the North first full length
  documentary

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Documentaries - Conventions

• Archival Footage and Photographs
• Talking Heads apparent experts and
  eyewitnesses
• Jiggly Camera use of handhelds allowed for
  intimacy with action
• Voiceover Narration often an authoritative
  narrator
• Real People and Re-enactments not actors

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Animated Films

• Individual drawings, paintings, or illustrations
  are photographed frame by frame
• Stop-frame cinematography
• Earliest films were created by hand-drawn images
• A technique, not a genre
• Often appeal to children, but not strictly for
  children

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Animated Films

• Sinking of the Lusitania - http//www.youtube.com/
  watch?vnN-KdPBhyjc
• Steamboat Willie first Disney film cartoon
  with sound first one with post-produced
  synchronized soundtrack. The birth of Mickey
  Mouse
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vAEEaT_UQnVM
• Pixar computer animated movies
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?viHI0--lbRBM for
  the birds
• lamp - http//www.youtube.com/watch?viuMAsRTf-iQ
  featurerelated