Speaker 1: What is it about films that we find so enjoyable? When we go to the movies, what is it about the trailers we see that makes us go, That looks good. I want to see that. A film being good or bad is subjective to you, the viewer. But why is that? We can all appreciate a good performance from an actor. We can all enjoy a good musical score. So what is it? More often than not, someone's preference in a film, TV show or video game is down to the simple matter of its genre. What is genre? Well, I'm glad you asked. Ladies and gentlemen, let's talk theory. So, genre, what is it? Well, as you can probably tell, it's not actually an English word. No, we stole it from the French. Which makes a lot of sense if you look at how it's spelled. It actually sounds much better in a French accent. Oh, the genre of this film is magnifique. Oh my goodness, I should never be allowed to do accents. Anyway, the word itself simply means a kind. So, in other words, when we refer to the genre of film, we are simply talking about what kind of film it is. But before I go into a long list of what genres exist, we first need to understand how you can identify the genre of a piece. To start with, what are these identifiable traits called? Most commonly, they are referred to as the genre's conventions or generic conventions. These are also sometimes referred to as paradigms, but that's normally what you use if you want to get extra marks on your vocabulary from your teacher. Anyway, these conventions can be easily broken down into four sections. Character and story, set, technical and audio. Story and character obviously refers to the storyline and the characters involved. Each genre has its own set of storylines. For example, one of the storylines for a romantic comedy would be following a young woman. She doesn't like or trust men, but as the story goes on, she falls in love with the new man in her life, a friend or work colleague, etc. Now, that doesn't mean that this is the whole storyline. A good writer will throw in twists and turns to bulk out the story in different ways, but points A and B are the same. If you aren't really sure what I'm talking about, or want to learn more of the basics of narrative and story, please click the link to my last video on linear and non-linear narratives. After this video, obviously. Hashtag subtle plug is subtle. Moving on. Characters fall into the same boat. You often notice the characters are the same within a genre. For example, in horror films, you often have six characters. The overconfident jock. The attractive but dumb cheerleader. The comic relief nerd or stoner. The token minority that often dies first. The nice guy. And the virgin or the last girl, who is often someone with blonde hair, blue eyes, looks very innocent, and is the reflection of angelic being. So, if you notice your movie has six characters that look like this, chances are you're watching a horror film. Although I suppose you would know that before you started watching it, but still my point stands. Another convention area is set. This is easy to grasp. If it's a western, it needs to take place in the old west, with cowboy costumes and pistols. Or, if it's a sci-fi, chances are it's going to be in space, with aliens of some kind. Easy, simple, done, boom. We are whizzing through this. Right, so, technical. This refers to the technical aspect of film production. Things like the way it's shot, the camera angles, as well as the way it's edited. So, if you look at action movies, they often use shaky, handheld camera angles to make the action feel more energetic and real. You will also notice that in the editing, particularly in action-heavy scenes, they will use a lot of quick cuts to keep the high pace of the scene. The final point of editing is down to colour. A lot of action films will primarily use blue and orange. This was a really big subject a while ago, but the style of grading is a really important part of the genre's conventions, as it determines whether it looks light, dark, what colours show. It all helps the reader determine what genre they are watching. Finally, you have audio. This varies anywhere from the music to the sounds used. In a comedy film, they will often use sounds to exaggerate and emphasise comedic moments. Sometimes this will just be music. But other times, this can be obvious cartoonish sound effects that make the character seem more incompetent. And that's it. Those are the main conventions you can look for when identifying the genre of a film. I know I only gave one genre example for each convention, but I will cover those in more detail in future episodes. Hopefully, this gave you an idea of what areas you're looking for when identifying a genre. But what good is knowing how to identify the genre when you don't know what genres there are? So, here we go. Action, adventure, children, comedy, crime, gangster, drama, epic and historical, horror, musical and dance, science fiction, war and westerns. But that doesn't sound like very many at all. I'm getting there. Just hold your horses. These are just the main or core genres for movies. I haven't even mentioned TV and video games yet. But I like a film that isn't one of these genres, to which I say, seriously, you need to stop interrupting me. Now, there are lots of movies that won't strictly fit into one of these genres. But that's because a lot of films are considered to fit into sub-genre categories. Sub-genres are basically more specific versions of the main and core genres. In fact, most of the movies that I'm going to cover Sub-genres are basically more specific versions of the main and core genres, in order to narrow down their chosen audience. It should also be noted that some genres share sub-genres with other genres. Wow, that was a mouthful. For movies, these sub-categories mainly consist of... But wait, there's more. Alongside these sub-genres, there are also hybrid genres. Now, hybrid genres, as the name implies, is a combination or hybrid of genres and sub-genres. Now, there are almost an unlimited amount of hybrid genres, so instead, I'm just going to list off a few examples. So now, if you need to identify movie genres, you know all the tricks to figuring it out. And you have a big selection to choose from, too. But what if movies aren't your thing? What about television or video games? Well, here at Let's Talk Theory, we have you covered. So, get ready, because I'm going to list both the biggest genres and sub-genres for each. So, television genres. So now, video game genres. Simulations, including construction and management sims, life sims, vehicle sims, strategy games, including 4X games, artillery games, real-time strategy, MMORTS, tower defence, turn-based war games, sports, and trivia. Oh. That was a lot of words. The things I do to keep my video length down. Please note that one of the most obvious conventions of video games is the style of the gameplay. The style of the gameplay is often referred to by the genre itself, so it's normally pretty clear which one it is. But that's it. A foundation-level guide of what genre is and how to figure out what the genre of a piece is. That isn't to say that all films follow every convention, as otherwise, all films would be the same. So, my advice for today's episode. If you have a story, figure out what genre it's going to be based on the conventions you already have implemented. Once you've done that, see what conventions you can mix up. Can you go against the conventions to keep it fresh or think of a hybrid genre? If you found this video helpful, give this video a like and comment down below what genre you think I should cover in more detail first. If you want to learn some more media theory, please subscribe to the channel. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for watching, and I look forward to talking theory with you again very soon. Ta-ta for now. Action-adventure, children, comedy, crime-slash-gangster, drama, epic-slash-historical, hero- Oh, damn it, so close. So close. Action-adventure, children, comedy, crime-slash-gangster, drama, epic-slash-history, horror, musical-slash-dance, science-fiction, war, restants. Ah. Jeepers, this is going to be- Oh my gosh, there's so many. Action-adventure, including stealth, survival horror, action-adventure,