Genre Theory

Within media there are a number of theories about different Genres, Auteurs and Iconography. These are what some famous theorists have said...
John Fiske said "Any programme will bear the main characteristics of its genre, but is likely to include some from others; ascribing it to one genre or another involved deciding which set of characteristics are most important." This statement is basically saying that he accepts that there are hybrid mediums of media however there will always be one dominant genre of that particular medium. For example Lord Of The Rings, in the trilogy there are aspects of different genres for example; comedy, thriller, action and adventure but the main genre is fantasy. This means that even though a film may claim to be a 'rom com' or 'action comedy' it will always represent one genre more than the other. In summery a hybrid media product will never contain a even balance of the two genres.
How This Relates To My Project
The majority of music videos contain two main things, performance shots and a narrative. What makes the video comply with the genre of music is things like, how the characters dress, show emotion, what kind of environment there in and so on. This theory is relevant to our project because there is things in our video which would also fit into other videos from different genres.

Richard Maltby and Ian Craven claimed that "The success of Hollywood is reliant on the combination of predictable elements with variation." What they were saying is that the only reason Hollywood is a global success is because we as the audience go into a film with an idea of what to expect and prefer to to be able to predict what is going to happen. There theory suggest that the audience don't like surprises in regards to not knowing what to expect. Personally I disagree with this theory because over time, as we watch more and more films, we build a natural bank of information containing repetitive aspects of genres. For example if you go to see a film which you know nothing about, 9/10 you will be able to tell what genre of film it is within the title sequence.
How This Relates To My Project
Although we have made our video from scratch, we have followed certain vital conventions necessary to make it obvious to the audience what genre of music video we are creating. For example our narrative is based around a boy and a girl. This is very typical of  an "indi rock" video. We also wanted to challenge the conventions in places which i feel we have done.


Auteurs and Iconography-
Auteurs are a group of film makers that were considered to be particularly influential and artistic. What this means is that particular names within all platforms of media incorporate certain personal techniques into the majority of there workings as a sort of signature to show that audience that its there film or music track. An example of this is this Steven Spielberg films there is normally a hue on screen which helps give a better sense of atmosphere. This is how a lot of people identify Spielberg films from others.
How This Relates To My Project
I'm sure you can imagine that this is a very difficult thing to achieve, particularly if only one video is being made. If this project was going on for years and we had to make several video's then there would be a possibility of incorporating a type of 'signature' to our work.


Rick Altman was a strong believer in that people shouldn't categorise films or another platform of media into genres. He said that;
"Genre theory's presumes that viewers pre-read text." "Viewers become passive voyeurs" "Genres are therefore restrictive" "I do not acknowledge of allow for the hybrid"
What he means by this is that by putting media into genres they go in with an assumption of what to expect. He also claims that because of this we as an audience don't fully engage with the media but do nothing more than drift in and out making it impossible to have a proper story line.
How This Relates To My Project
I think it would be impossible to make a music video that doesn't give away the genre of music its covering. If there's no evidence of genre then how do you appeal to your target audience? For this reason we will follow particular conventions of our chosen genre.