Genre is essentially a system of repetition and variation

“Genre is essentially a system of repetition and variation “

Our AS coursework was a drama based movie, it was how youths are stereotypically in this day and age, we represented them negatively as a majority of the youth is based nowadays, we was able to establish this through mise-en-scene through the location we allocated to shoot in and through the clothes we offered them to wear i.e. hoody and baggy jeans.

In our AS piece, Repetition was a key factor, which allowed us and gave us the chance to enhance what genre we were intending to do, our AS piece was based on stereotypical British teens, the above statement is true on the sheer fact that in a genre you have to keep emphasising on the theme to give the viewers a clear and accurate point on what genre the movie is and what is intended through the shots.
Once genre has been picked, you need to stick to the genre through repetition of the shots and emphasis through the actions of the characters to embed in the minds of the viewers what genre it is, as our AS piece was based on action/drama, we had scenes of youth harassing one another, starting on each other and having fights, which is fairly stereotypical and we also had to see where we could shoot to enhance the realism so we shot in a near by park, where we used of variation of shots to show where the chases took place etc, coming back to repetition, this will mostly be done through the characters, for example in our movie we tried to make them look like a thug, so he had his trousers low, his hood up and gave him the sense of attitude that he didn’t care what anyone had to say or do, so we had to keep at it throughout the whole movie as we needed to keep to his character and also keep him at the point where we didn’t fall out of our genre, also through repetition we are allowed to interact with our viewers, as our target audience was a niche market & they would also very likely fall into situations as our characters did.
Variation helps in movies like ours because we have a very simple genre and the actual concept of the genre has many simple takes and shows, of course you can make more shots seem more drastic than others, but you don’t only need variation of shots to show different angles but also to keep the viewers keen, because with drama movies, majority of the time you will get a very similar story line with a twist in the ending so through this we will of needed to keep the viewers keen.
Through our AS coursework we believe that genre is a system of repetition and variation as it shows that these are key aspects which we need to apply to be able to get our point through to viewers, which has a major impact through repetition.