I have been doing research into genre theory to support our evaluation of our Advanced Portfolio, and to include in section B of the exam where we have to discuss our productions.
In particular, I have looked at theorist Steve Neale.
"Genres are instances of repetition and
difference"
"Difference is absolutely essential to the economy of genre"
Steve Neale's theory is that a film and its genre are defined by to what extent it
conforms to a genre’s conventions and stereotypes, and to what extent it subverts
the genre's stereotypes and conventions.
The first point means that a film needs to conform to conventions to some degree for it to fit in the bracket as a film of this genre. The second point
is that the film must also subvert these conventions enough that it is not a copy of an existing film and that it is unique and original.
At first i thought that this was a contradiction, however I realised that this relates to our Advanced Portfolio production as we
conformed to the genre conventions of a western style film through our use of
colour grading, the scene with the stand-off at the end and the antagonist.
However, we also were forced to subvert the conventions as we were filming in
England and we did not use cowboy-type characters in the film. We subverted the
conventions through having a female as the most dominant and fearless protagonist, and through our use of British dialogue rather than traditional Western American dialect.
