Genre | Kātū

Whāinga ako: Lesson Goals

To understand how conventions are used to make a genre easily recognisable

Genre =

In terms of movies, genre is the category or type of movie. We put movies into categories and there are heaps of these.

Within these movies there are always similarities. e.g. in a Western movie there is always a "goody" cowboy and a "baddy" cowboy. There will always be a showdown between the two and the goody will win.

 How did movie genres happen?

Movie studios wanted to make movies easier to produce and faster to put out in movie theatres. If they had a movie that was successful they would then make more of that sort of story, ultimately to make more money. A type and copy and paste. 

You may have noticed movies that have very similar characters, story lines and themes. For example in the 2010s, Hollywood had a lot of success with The Hunger Games. For the next few years studios released very similar movies in the hopes of making more money off these types of teen action movies.

What are conventions?

Conventions are what make a movie easily recognisable. These genre conventions can refer to characters, props, themes, plot lines and much more. We will explore codes and conventions more in another lesson.

What makes a movie genre obvious?

Fill in the table below as a class.

So where do the two movies mentioned above sit? Complete the worksheet with the different codes and conventions.