Genre

What is Genre?

Every different type of genre is governed by a set of codes and conventions, or rules that are followed for that genre.

Genre - Is a specific type of music, film or writing.

Genre is relevant to magazines as it can give the magazine a targeted style, audience and purpose, by following the conventions set out by particulars types of genre the magazine become a representation of that genre, a media text that reflects the style and demand set by that genre. Different audiences mass or niche that respond to various types of genre will respond to the magazine as it meets the expectations and requirements set by the audience and genre. 

Rick Altman's Genre Theory

Applying Rick Altman to the Horror Genre

Semantic: Abandoned house, intense music, blood, dirty area, demons, ghosts, fear, insane asylums, graveyard, dark, shaking camera, low key lighting, scary masks, props such as chainsaws and axes.
Syntactic: Main protagonist (victim/hero), the villain (monster, mutated freak etc.), stupid immoral teenagers getting killed, creepy children etc, religion as a story, Todorov's Narrative Theory, main setting presented as the first thing in the film.

Todorov's Narrative Theory

1) Equilibrium: The state of normality in the story.
2) Disequilibrium: The event that disrupts the state of normality such as a possession in the house in a horror film.
3) Realisation: Characters realisation that something has disrupted the equilibrium such as the realisation of possession of the child.
4) Repair: Characters attempting to fix the situation such as bringing in a exorcist to get rid of the possession.
5) New Equilibrium: The new state of normality.

Horror

The very first horror film was created in 1896, by a french film maker known as Georges Melies, the film was titled 'Le Manoir Du Diable' this translated to the 'The Devil's Castle/The Haunted Castle'. The film was only a two minutes long but contain various elements that would later become connections of horror films, the use of bats, castle, cauldron and devil like figure all contributed to the eerie atmosphere.
The horror genre aims to create a sense of fear, panic, alarm and dread for the audience, doing this by scaring the audience with the portrayal of their worst fears and even nightmares. Horror films usual focus on an evil presence, looking to ancient mythologies as the primary source of influence for their plot, looking at evil figure such as the devil, ghosts and demons, Horror films traditionally used a large amount of violence and gore to drive it's plot, however in recent years this has changed and developed as the ability to scare someone hugely relies on being unexpected and surprise, during the early days of film, blood and gore was never heard of on the big screen, however these days it's become a cliche and fails to entertain the modern audience in the same way.
Due to this the horror genre has to continuously change and evolve to stay fresh, creating new ways to mess with audience. This created sub genres within the horror genre, these include:

• Comedy Horror
• Teen Horror
• Monster Horror
• Slasher
• Supernatural Horror
• Zombie Horror
• Psychological Horror

For example Slasher's and Comedy Horror's are both types of horror films however the way the reach their aims are different, Slasher film is a sub-genre of Horror film that revolves around a psychopathic killer. This killer stalks and murders his victims in extremely violent and memorable ways. Though it centers on a specific killer, the violence is what sets Slasher films apart from other horror films. A Slasher film will devote more screen time to portray murder and mayhem than a traditional Horror film. Comedy-Horror combines comedy with traditional horror movie themes and characters. Because of the subject matter, Comedy-Horror films can cross over into the Black Comedy sub-genre. Comedy-Horror films aim to scare the audience, but also provide comical outlets that let the audience laugh at their fear.

Comedy

The earliest known publication of a comedy film is 'L'Arroseur arrosé', an 1895 French short black-and-white silent comedy film directed and produced by Louis Lumière. It was first screened on June 10, 1895. The entire film lasts only 45 seconds, but this simple bit of slapstick may be the forerunner of all subsequent film comedy.
Much like the horror genre comedy has also taken a hit with higher expectations, as the audience gets use to the jokes and gags being used in various films, their ability to generate laughter becomes less successful so directors and actors have to envision new ways to make people laugh that is original, for this reason the surplus of comedy films being generated have meant that not many of them become successful.
The Comedy genre, uses humor as it's driving force, it's intended to generate laughter from the audience through the use of it's narrative or characters. Although comedy has taken on serious material as it's source of inspiration, such as movie spoofs. They tend to generally have a happy ending. Comedies are more likely than other films to fall back on the success and popularity of an individual star. Comedy is a incredibly diverse genre forming many other sub genres due to it's ease of being incorporated into other genres, hence Rom-com, being a romantic comedy. The following are sub-genres of comedy:

• Anarchic Comedy
• Action-Comedy
• Black-Comedy
• Horror-Comedy
• Dramedy
• Parody/Spoof
• Romantic-Comedy
• Slapstick

Crime

Crime film is a genre that revolves around the action of a criminal mastermind. A Crime film will often revolve around the criminal himself, chronicling his rise and fall. Some Crime films will have a story line that follows the criminal's victim, yet others follow the person in pursuit of the criminal. This genre tends to be fast paced with an air of mystery – this mystery can come from the plot or from the characters themselves.
Crime uses many conventions created by both thriller and horror as it leaves he audience on the edge of the seats trying to pule out what happened alongside the protagonist.
The following are sub-genres of crime:

• Mob/Gangster
• Film-Noir
• Neo-Noir
• Crime-Thriller

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Lovefield - Analysis

Short Film - 'Lovefield' by Mathieu Ratthe

This immersive short film, is intended to take the unsuspecting audience and engage them in an emotional roller coaster ride, shifting their perspective of the short film and allowing for their bias view to mislead them in their prediction of the films outcome. The suspense and drama created by the director allows the audience to falsely interpret the piece as a horror extract, the general conventions of the horror genre set the audience up to be at the height of their audio and visual awareness anticipating a jump scare.
Ratthe's intentions do this allows him to take advantage of the audiences emotional attachment to the short film and makes an antic-climatic plot twist that astonishes the audience whilst breaking their perception of reality, this method distances the audience for the film, making them objective spectators as they are now mentally engaged with the film, forcing them to re-evaluate their opinion on the characters. This method of entertainment was first used in theater by director, actor and play writer, Bertolt Brecht. He named it the Verfremdungseffekt, as it alienates the audience.
The short film was hugely successful in captivating the audience in the drama displayed and forced the audience to jump to conclusions by the use of camera shorts, mise-en-scene, sound effects and editing to create the illusion of horror, which in turn was demolished by the sudden realisation of the plot twist.

The opening sequence starts with the opening credits displaying Ratthe's insitution (Matt Ratt Production), followed by the three piano keys accompanied by a blackout, the asynchronous sound of the instrument's slow pace engages the audience as the blackout leaves the audience in a sense of suspense as they await for the film to start.
The black screen fades out to an areal shot with text of the title of the film 'Lovefield' fading in and out as the camera begins to lower to the floor and ambient sounds begin to increase in volume, the various sounds of wind rustling throw the crops, followed by a contrapuntal sound, that fueled suspense, these sounds are communally associated with films based upon horror, being the first misleading factor in creating the haunting atmosphere in which the audience begin to interpret the film as horror. This is successful as the film was intention-ed to shift the reality of the audience, perspective is key when portraying a story in film, the use of sounds leaves the audience in suspence limbo, as they are unable to make any visual interpretation due to the lack of mise-en-scene, making them more anxious and frustrated as they progress through the short film.
The audience responds to different stimuli and attempt to make sense of what they are experiencing, by intentionally restricting the audiences perception, the film is conveying the a dark atmosphere slower than we can mentally process it, this is what causes the sense of suspense and anticipation as the audience are waiting for the film, to reveal the next major plot point, the anticipation and wait makes the audience more visually and audio aware.
The film uses these techniques for the first two minutes of the film, increasing the ambient sounds, and using the camera to make an establishing shot of various locations in the field.

The pace of the film starts to increase as by this point as a tracking shot retreats backwards, the shot again leaves much to imaginations as it passes a phone, purse full of cash, and bloody knickers, followed by a struggling foot. The various ambient sound fades out as woman can be heard crying and screaming. This is clearly intentional by the director and is successful as the audience was lead to believe that this is a horror film, so by seeing this the audience immediately suspect rape with out considering other possibilities, due to their emotional attachment and bias opinion on the film.

The was a long pause, filled with silence as the camera moved back, suggesting that the character died, this builds suspense as the audience wait for the cause of death.

The directors use of mise-en-scene as a knife is revealed, the audience infer that women has been stabbed as she stopped moving, it's successful in conveying a horror atmosphere, as the pauses of suspense as the props and sounds makes the audience fear the worse.

There's frequent cuts to a close up of a crow before returning to the scene, among the ambient sounds is the crows squawk which is said to be unlucky and is a common convention of horror movies as it foreshadows something bad is going to happen. Birds have become a clique in creating the daunting atmosphere of a horror movie, famously used as a main antagonist in Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 horror movie which place birds against humanity. It's a horror classic and is critically praised.

The camera makes a vertical movement upwards on a close up of the body of a suspected farmer, the shot allows for small details to be emphasised, conveying hidden messages to the audience. The camera scans up the arm of the character reached the upper body to reveal a skull tattoo and a balance, as well as a heart with the word "Mum" inscribed underneath. A skull is another clique convention of horror movies, symbolising death it's a clear indication of what's to come, however contradicting this is the mum tattoo, this could be linked with another one of Alfred Hitchcock's movies 'Physco' released in 1960, it sees hotel manager  who's obsessed with his mother even after death as he keeps her corpse rotting away In locked room, the young man dresses up as his mother to commit his violent murders.

From this point onwards the pace of the film picks up as the hands free camera angle creates a shaky and rushed atmosphere. This builds tension creating climax that keeps the audience on the edge of their seats in anticipation It's successful as the sudden panic portrayed contrasts the silent atmosphere that came before.

The panic sees the farmer character rushing to the car, and attempting the open the boot, the camera is placed in a crab shots as the boot opens, the audience can't see what's in the trunk, creating mystery as the audience guess what's in there, among the consistent sounds of the crow, there's the sound of motel clanging, suggesting that there is an array of tool in the trunk.

The man takes a towel and the contrapuntal sounds increase in volume, there's a point of view shot as if you was the body on the floor creating the impression that he's going to clear up the mess. 

The scene comes to anticlimatic conclusion as it shows that he's picking up a new born baby, however the scene has a huge impact upon the audience as it completely contradicts their view on the short film, as they believed he killed the woman. They film was successful in conveying the message on perspective and judgement as it successfully created a false atmosphere using horror convention to make the audience have a bias view on the short film, this makes the audience a objective spectator as they completely tricked the audience into believing they were watching a horror short film. It teaches the audience not to jump to conclusions as it's a matter of perspective.

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