Laura Mulvey

Laura Mulvey is a British feminist film theorist that believes film are mostly seen from the heterosexual male point of view.

Mulvey argues that the only way to eliminate the patriarchal Hollywood system is to radically challenge and re-shape the filmic strategies of classical Hollywood with alternative feminist methods. She calls for a new feminist Avant- Grande filmmaking that would rupture the narrative pleasure of classical Hollywood filmmaking, she writes; 

'It is said that analysing pleasure or beauty annihilates it. That is the intention of this article"

   

An example of a male view of a film/ scene is Psycho as its degrading view as it shows the character in a vunerable state as she's naked in the shower unable to defend herself. This scene is a classic look in to showing how they use the women figure to shock and excite the audience as the director manipulates the girl and her body to add excitement, terror and thriller in to the scene and film which was shocking and unseen at this time. 

 Laura Mulvey's, 'Male Gaze' theory says how the camera lingers on the curves of the female body, and events which occur to women are presented largely in the context of a man's reaction to these events. Relegates women to the status of objects. The female viewer must experience the narrative secondarily, by identification with the male.

Foley sound experiments

Based on the Iconic coming of age sounds and crime sounds we decided to do Foley experiments of our own to see how we could use sound to convey typical conventions and meaning in our trailer

Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida believes that a "text cannot belong to no genre, it cannot be without...a genre". This view shows that all texts have at least one genre, many have multiple genres, or sub genres. "There is no genreless text."

A hybrid genre is a genre that includes elements of two or more genres combined, for example romantic comedies and thriller/ horror. This shows Derrida's theory well as it shows that there are a lot of examples of films with more than one genre.

The examples below show how more than one genre can be given to a particular text.

E.g. romantic comedy

E.g. thriller/ horror

Derrida's theory is something we will be able to show in our trailer, as we are using a hybrid genre in our trailer. However, Derrida's theory is one that is easy to relate to any text, as it is true to all texts, with them having at least one genre.

Theorist: Steve Neale

'much of the pleasure of popular cinema lies in the process of "difference in repetition"'

'genre is constituted by specific systems of expectations and hypothesis which spectators bring with them to the cinema and which interact with the films themselves during the course of the viewing process'

There would be no pleasure without difference.

We derive pleasure from observing how the conventions of genre are manipulated, and seeing how our expectations shift.

Example of when expectation is defied:

In Django unchained, a hard hitting Action Western, comedy is used to portray the KKK.

 

This engages the audience because it surprises them and challenges their expectations of the genre.

Example of when conventions are repeated:

Also the typical Western style is exploited, and the audience enjoy seeing the typical opening credits and setting, this is made more satisfying for the audience because it is very similar to the original western films.

 

Because we are only producing a trailer, we have decided not to include a strong challenge of the genre as we felt it will be impossible to establish the main genre (crime) strongly enough in the course of a short trailer for it not to be undermined by the challenge of another genre within it (e.g comedy).

So we will use repeated conventions of the genre as shown in both the crime iconography research and the iconic sounds of crime research

Audience Expectations of Crime Genre

By carrying out primary and secondary research I was able to see what things our target audience would expect of the crime genre.

A lot of the things that the audience would expect to see from the crime genre are things that we will be able to include in our trailer, however due to the plot of our trailer, filming restrictions and time constrictions of the trailer length, we will not be able to include all of these.

Looking back at my AS coursework, I found this post showing the conventions of a crime film and the things you would usually see. In comparison to what I have found from the audience research, to a degree what the audience would expect to see and what the below mind map shows, is similar. However, the below mind map is more specialized into a certain aspect of the crime genre such as camera shots, character and mise-en-scene.

From this we have decided we are going to include a villain who is mysterious and whose identity remains unknown within the trailer. We have also decided that our 'victims' will be everyday people, we have also decided to have three main protagonists who are the 'victim' characters, to provide a variety of character roles. Something else we have chosen to use based on the audiences expectations is tracking shots, including some CCTV shots (as shown in our test shots post). The sounds of screams and gunshots will be used within the trailer to create the effective of the crime genre, some of this will be sound recorded during filming, whereas other sounds will be added in post-production. Sound is something we have already experimented with in our Foley sound experiments, allowing us to see how best to record the sounds we need.

Iconic sounds of coming of age

We have decided to combine genres so we have also research the iconic sounds of coming of age

From this we have decided we will use the diegetic sound of the traffic as our trailer will be set in mostly urban locations, as we think this will help build tension and give the impression of a fast pace of life.

 

We would also like to include the diegetic sound of doors slamming and footsteps to highlight both the characters emotional turmoil and symbolise their journey throughout the film.

We will now conduct some foley sound experiments to see if we can replicate these sounds. Pleas click here to go to Foley sound experiments

Genre Theorist Research - Carolyn Miller

Carolyn Miller is a genre theorist who suggests that 'the number of genres in any society...depends on the complexity and diversity of society'. She also believes that new media genres develop and formalise quicker than traditional, written genres and therefore genre theory should change for more modern media as the theory no longer applies. Carolyn Miller created a piece of work on the socio-cultural approach to genre theory and argues in her 1984 book that 'rhetorical criticism has not provided firm guidance on what constitutes a genre' and exposed some of the difficulties of applying genre theory to new media.
'rhetorically sound definition of genre must be centred not on the substance or form of discourse but on the action it is used to accomplish'

Taxi Driver from 1976 shows a character who has a military past, and will therefore appear as a hero to much of the audience. This is however proved incorrect through the subsequent actions of the character, on the other hand, in The Place Beyond the Pines, the main character is depicted as someone who would fit a stereotype for a criminal. The protagonist in Taxi Driver is an honourably discharged U.S Marine so he doesn't appear as an obvious threat to the country however the climax of the film sees him trying to assassinate the President. The Place Beyond the Pines released in 2013 shows two main character, one a working class traveler turned bank robber and the other a police officer who is hailed as a hero. The similarity between the two films is that the characters who have served their country get away with their crimes, however the characters are not of the same background, Taxi Driver shows the person committing the crime go free while the opposite happens in The Place Beyond the Pines, resulting in the characters death.