Genre

Genre

For your coursework- be absolutely sure of the following
• What genre is your production?
• What are the codes and conventions of your production?
• How did you establish genre in your production (CEMS) and why?
• What is the role of the specific elements of the mise-en-scène?
• Have generic conventions been adhered to or subverted?
• How will the more generic elements of production appeal to the audience?

Music Genre
• Genre – classification of a text according to its style and content. Pop music is dependent on genre although easily the most nebulous as genres are being invented, crossed and revisited. The process of categorisation is an important one for both producers and fans.
• Some categorisations are just wordplay ("Dannii Minogue describes her new sounds as "futuristic retro pop/electro pop") and others have a complex set of definitions that are rigidly enforced by aficionados (club music scenes).
• You should be very clear about what genre your piece is (and if you crossed/combined genres) and how did this – being as descriptive as humanely possible).
Music Genre is more related to image
• Image – The artist’s visual look represented on CD covers, posters, promotional material, music videos, press releases. Expected visual effects can often be subverted.
• Genre is also a cornerstone of music retail because customers often restrict themselves to a certain style of music (eg hiphop, R'n'B) and are not interested in buying outside that genre. Although many artists resent being pigeonholed into a particular genre niche in this way, there is little doubt that retailers and customers rely on genre to make their buying choices.

Theorists
Duff - "a recurring type or category of text, as defined by structural, thematic, and/or functional criteria."
Reid – “How something is categorised is determined by who does it, for whom, where and when. The same is true for films.”
Shuker (2001) suggests three common approaches via:
1. the music industries' own categories drawn from music history and marketing
2. ideological analysis of lyrics and music styles relating to 'truth', 'authenticity' or 'artifice'
3. exploration of the fluidity of genres and the creation of new forms.
The genres identified then tend to be re-classified as 'meta-genres' (e.g. 'world music'), 'genres' (e.g. blues) and sub-genres (e.g. 'country blues')
Fowler - An individual text within a genre rarely if ever has all of the characteristic features of the genre.
Fairclough - suggests that mixed-genre texts are far from uncommon in the mass media
Frith – “musicians, producers, and consumers are already ensnared in a web of genre expectation.” – genres are used by record companies to integrate both music and marketing together – musician and audience are considered simultaneously.

Introduction example
The production being discussed is my A2 Advanced portfolio music video “Walking on Sunshine” from the genre of mainstream pop.

Paragraph example

Duff calls genre a “recurring type or category of text” that is governed by a certain set of rules and criteria. With regards to our A2 production, the initial choices we made were very governed by genre conventions. The use of close ups on the artist looking at the camera were a necessary part of that genre that we complied and we incorporated this along with the pop expectation of a female artist dancing, achieved through a series of cross-dissolves and quick cuts.

However, as Fairclough argues …