The characteristics “ingredients” of a particular genre and the elements that make it recognisable can be defined as “Codes and Conventions”. For example:
HORROR | ACTION | SOAP OPERAS |
Ghosts | Car chasing | Emotions |
Nightmares | Explosions | Relationship |
Elusions | Murder | Drama |
Strange sounds and Tension music | Guns | Pub in the centre of town |
CODES
A Code is like a really firm rule that is almost never broken. To be more specific codes are systems of signs, which construct meaning.
These can be:
Ø Character codes
Ø Plot codes
Ø Cultural codes
Ø Structural codes
Ø Production codes
Codes can be split into to two main categories and these are TECHNICAL and SYMBOLIC codes.
CONVENTIONS
These are habits or long accepted ways of doing things. Conventions can change a lot as the genre develops but if you change too many or too quickly then the audience may not understand what you are doing.
There are some movies that have cross genre or hybrid genre and these films also have codes and conventions that they follow. Examples of these movies include: Titanic
Titanic is a cross genre of a disaster movie and a romantic movie.
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