Genre essay
Genre is a very important aspect within our short film that we made for A2 coursework. There are many different ways we found out what we could do within our short film to try and reach the genre specifically for example ways of representation, meeting our target audiences needs and wants, using specific editing techniques, and using a specific narrative, themes and ideologies.
We found our target audience creating a questionnaire. The outcome was that our audience were of people aged 16+ which worked out better for us as well purely because of the topics that come up and the way we represent the youth culture. Also the violence used in our short film we thought would not be suitable for people aged 15 and below, therefore creating that 16+ barrier, also due to the fact it would be shown in schools we needed it to be at a decent age that they’re not so vulnerable to take it so seriously. Our genre was mainly educational and informative.
Therefore because of our target audience we decided we had to represent our teenagers so that our audience could relate well to them. Therefore costume was a very important aspect of representation, we had to make sure they were wearing clothes that people of our audiences age would wear. E.g, heels, dresses etc. The location was also very important and for that reason we chose the location to be at a pub, relating to the older generation of our target audience, due to the fact the characters in our short film were actually teenagers, they could be themselves and we were able to get a more natural short film which relates back to the genre of the educational informative sense because the best educational films are natural, based on real life events. Everyone in our short film was of a white ethnic background, who come from a working class background, aged 16-18. We chose this because we felt we could all relate to this due to the fact everyone in our group was white. We also felt this was easier to control therefore dismissed other ethnic groups. By looking at Halls theory- 1980, of three different types of reading, it is clear to us that our short film was of the “preferred reading” topic, which is the interpreted understanding of the film itself which we got from our audience feedback, having uploaded it onto ‘youtube’ a niche market distribution, the audience feedback we received suggested that we were in fact successful at positioning our characters with the representations that we wanted our audiences to understand. We controlled our audience by targeting people that are of our own ethnicity which automatically dismisses any readings from other ethnic groups that could potentially be negotiated or oppositional (because these aren’t the audiences that we are targeting).
The themes and ideology of our short film was disabilities, it was to create awareness. We touch upon the theme of British culture as well- drinking in a pub, we also use very stereotypical men, wanting more than they can have, this was shown to be quite a negative way, although we balanced out the stereotypes by including a non-stereotypical girl which challenges conventions by the way she is responding, which is shown to be a positive thing the fact she is not allowing what happened to her to have a negative impact on her life. Despite her disability, she wanted to succeed therefore she overcomes her issue. She is also seeing that seeking help is a positive theme which gives a refreshing approach to the genre. We made sure that we made this theme obvious that it could happen to anyone; therefore we set it out in a bar, with teenagers, reflecting contemporary culture. We created a structure for the audience, although we deviated from the generic educational media texts which reflect Neal’s pattern of variation because we were able to push the boundaries and create more interest for the audience which in turn challenges the audience and makes them think more than they would usually have to.
We used a very closed narrative with a non-linear approach because of the flashbacks we used, in this sense we challenged Todorov’s narrative theory. We didn’t follow genre conventions, we decided to challenge them within narrative purely because our film wasn’t the stereotypical education film in the way it didn’t follow a strict linear narrative. We went against this in order to engage a young audience with a short attention span. We thought this would have a better effect on our audience and draw them in within the first 10 seconds of our film which we wanted. We also challenged Vladimir Propps conventions on the character functions in that the female was the heroine in our production which went against stereotypical male who predominantly is known for moving a narrative forward. However, we did follow his character functions in using Becca (the female character) as a protagonist and the Man involved as our antagonist (the one the protagonist has to fight against who creates all these issues).
We were highly inspired by Shane Meadows films, his use of editing, and his realistic approach of characters, we were also inspired by true events due to the fact Shane's films are all based on real life, this made us want to recreate this sense of realism in which we thought we did to the best of our ability, we tried doing this by using specific editing techniques, although We challenged the conventions of the usual editing techniques because we went against the stereotypical way of editing a documentary film which would be elements such as straight cuts etc much like Shane Meadows. We did this because we felt it would engage our audience to a higher level if we edited it in a way that is more interesting, to complete this we looked at some of his films such as Trainspotting and This is England, to see what editing techniques they used and looked at how we could relate to this, for example slow motion, fast pace etc. We used a verisimilitude approach so that it would be very realistic and the audience would believe in the characters and narrative.
Mise-en-scene is a big part of our genre which we had to consider. In mise-en-scene we had to think of costume which was appropriate that people in schools could watch it and not be shocked etc, but also appropriate that our characters were comfortable wearing it and could reflect our target audience well, for example we made sure there wasn’t much skin on show so it would be sensible and controlled, therefore we put them in tights to make sure we didn’t give of a negative representation of females at this age range. We did this to keep in touch with the fact our short film is an education film so it was more about reflecting on the issues and not on the fashion of today’s youth culture, although we obviously had to take it into consideration. Relating this back to Laura Mulveys theory of “the male gaze”, we used a panning upwards shot of our female protagonist’s body, positioning the audience to see her from a male’s perspective. Although we also tried to go against this by not showing too much of the girl characters flesh.
Genre gives each media text its own identity and its own place in mainstream society. I feel that my short film fits perfectly into the education and informative genre, we tried to do everything and anything to make sure when someone was watching it they knew exactly what genre it would fall under, taking aspects such as narrative, mise-en-scene, themes, ideologies and editing techniques into consideration and in conclusion I feel I did this well and had a strong outcome overall.
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