Media Genre Theory

Definition of Genre; the word 'genre' is borrowed from French and derived from Latin and Greek- in all three its basic meaning is: Kind, Sort Class. There are many different types of genres including:

• Horror
• Rom-Com
• Comedy 
• Action
• Sci-fi

Each of these genres have their own characteristic to make them into this type of genre. For example a Sci-fi film will have futuristic elements to it which makes it a Sci-fi movie. 

Audiences find that having genres for films very satisfying as they are able to have an understanding of the film and what it entails from the genre which it is in. This means that they will have expectations for the film in the genre which may be fulfilled and they may take pleasure in predicting what will happen next. A Film that shows this is Scream as a scene in the film shows a character telling everyone the rules of a horror film and then shows these rules coming happening. This is also an example of postmodernism. 

Audiences recognize the key elements or conventions of a genre which they then respond accordinly to. These key elements are called paradigms. The two types of paradigms are:

• Iconographic: signs and symbols (e.g. the costume, props, settings in a Western)
• Structural: the way a text is put together and the shape it takes and how structures in the text deal with issues such as ideology and gender. (e.g. how gender is represented in a Rom-com)

There are paradigms present in my music video, like the lip syncing and all the band sequences of us playing instruments,  these are apart of the Iconographic paradigms. This is because you see this is nearly all music videos. Band sequences where the instruments are being played mainly happens in indie genre of music videos which is what our is.