Genre- 1B

Genre

In this essay I am going to be writing about genre and how I linked my film opening “On Track” to genre. The genre I have chosen for my film is sports.  I conformed and subverted certain things throughout my film opening and genre. An example of my film opening subverting the sports genre is using two females as the two main characters. This subverts as in a stereotypical sports film it is a male main character in a male dominated sport.

We chose to do a sport film as it is different it also allows us to expand our ideas on other films that also share the sporting genre. When researching we was inspired by the film “fast girls” we used this film as a structure as to how to make a sports film. We used the research idea of having the settings, camera, mise-en-scene and editing all being very similar. An example of how we made the films very similar so that we could link “fast girls” to our film is by using similar locations such as an athletics track, a gym and a swimming pool. All of the settings we used link to a sports film as they are all stereotypical sporting venues where people will train and perform overall for sport. Another film we looked at for research is “Rocky” we used this for the narrative as to make a film link to sports as a genre the story line will have to be similar to how you want the film to be. “Rocky’s” over all out line was to train, the main character to get knocked down, get back up, train harder and then win a competition. We linked this to our film opening as our story line was to train, main characters to have a rivalry, one loses a competition, on trains harder than the other, another competition where the other girl wins and the audience then feel for the winner. This links overall to the genre of sport as it shows competition and determination which was seen throughout “ROCKY”.

In my film we chose to use sport as the type of genre, as in Daniel chandler’s theory, genre is a type so I chose to use sports as my type for the genre of the film this theory was also conformed throughout showing that it was always a sports film. Another theory that was linked to my film opening was Steve Neale’s theory as my genre was repeated throughout my film but it also showed differences so that it can link back to sports as a genre throughout the film. My film was similar to a sports film as it conformed with all of the stereotypes of a sports film such as the mise-en-scene as I chose locations that have been linked to sports such as tracks and gyms but also the props as a key icon within the film are the shoes, this links to sports as a genre as the type of shoes where trainers but one pair was worn out so this shows the genre of spirt and hard work. I also subverted the sporting genre showing differences such as the characters as they are female this is not a stereotypical sports film mise-en-scene.

within the film we also used camera to show the genre of sport, this would include shots where it builds suspension such as a low tracking shot. we used this shot before the race scene to show  make to scene more intense. this shot was a tracking shot going across the competitors hands showing there starting stance as they was just about to go. we also used mine-en-scene, the costume used was to show differences between classes within our genre, to show the sporting difference between to people we used different shoes, as one pair where scuffed trainers while the other pair where clean white shoes. this would portray the sporting genre as a money driving genre. 

conclusion-