analyse one of our coursework production in relation to genre

In this essay, I am going to write about my foundation portfolio thriller opening, "Mindgames," in relation to genre. My product is a crime thriller about a serial killer who is the most wanted person by the police who comits murders to random people, My group and i decided to classify this movie as a 18 due to the gore and violence. Our target audience consists of males and females aged between 18-29. In order to create a successful product, it is important for myself and producers generally to consider the genre  before beginning the task,as this is key to attract the important target audience.


The first theorist I am going to discuss is Barry Keith Grant. His  theory is that within a genre, you see familiar and recognisable characteristics which indicates to you the type of genre it is. For example, within my thriller i had a slow pan of some drugs on a table, and the shot of my antagonist holding the knife. When the audience sees the drugs and knife they are lured into the direction of a thriller/horror/action genre. A thriller has set generic conventions which include: violence, suspense and tension, suspensful soundtrack and fast paced editing. I included all of these conventions into my thriller for example: the soundtrack which i manipulated to sound more suspensful, the violence with the knife and the fast paced editing and suspense and tension mixed all in one when i used cross cutting and parralel editing towards the end of the opening to show tension building.

 Neale states that genres are made up of not just groups of films, but also audience expectations. In my case, i produced a questionniare asking questions as to what they expect to see in my thriller. The audience already had in thier minds prior to watching my thriller what they want and expect to see for example, the most common answer was violence followed by suspense. Here we can clearly see how important genre is, the audience are coming to see this film knowing that it should include thier fundamental elements.

Another theorist ryall, says that different genres of products are produced to appeal to different target audiences. As i mentioned above, the audience for a thriller have different expectations for a film that say an audience for a comedy. The producers can take advantage of this and specialise thier product according to the target audiences needs. Having included their expectations about the genre they can make thier film much more appealing to ther intended audience.