Genre

Our project is focusing alot on the genre of music that we have chosen to use. A major part will be looking at the codes and conventions of existing media texts, and to not only use them, but to challenge them, twist them and change them to fit how we like.
There are a few theories that relate to genre that can be used in the pre-production stages of our video.
-Rick Altman said that genre is a set type and a group in which any medium can be classified within. When applying this to music, examples of which are reggae, jazz and drum 'n' bass etc. In each case the acknowledgement of genre depends on the acceptance of the generic conventions. Genre can change over time, and become to mean something completely different, it's open to manipulation, it's not set hard. Altman also said that viewers pre-read media texts, and they become passive viewers which ultimately restricts genre.
-Richard Maltby said that the success of Hollywood is dependent on the combination of predictable elements with slight variations. This suggests that as producers we should follow the codes and conventions of our chosen genre, but also add some variation within our piece so that the audience does not become bored, and so that the media text is not predictable every time.
-Jon Fiske said that any one type of media will display main characteristics of it's genre, but it is likely to include some characteristics from other genre's. Categorizing a media text into one genre would mean deciding which characteristics are more important. This theory can be applied to our project. Our genre of music is pop, but because pop music is such a wide spread genre there are alot of characteristics from different genre's such as R&B and soft rock. When looking at existing music videos and media packs we will have to consider focusing our research on artists that are very similar.