Genre and Sub-Genres- Harry Potter and Dream House

Genre and Sub-Genre 

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 and Dream House 

Genre

A genre is a category or type that sorts a film's character in a group. Examples of genres are horror, thriller, rom-com, adventure, drama, chick-flick, action, animation, fantasy and sci-fi. Genres serve a particular purpose to both audience and film makers. For the audience the genre lets them make choices in what film they are going to watch and allows the audience to choose their experience categorically. For the film makers it allows them to target certain audiences, cash in on trends and makes the film making process much easier. 

Sub-genre

A sub genre is a genre within a genre. Examples of sub-genres are psychological, supernatural, action, religious, horror, crime, political, erotic and romantic. Two different films that have the thriller genre but two different sub-genes are The Others (a more horror thriller) and Fair Game (a more crime thriller).    

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 

The audience of a film can always be told from the films theatre release poster. 

The genre of this film as told from the poster is a fantasy. The lighting and the mise en scene of the poster suggests that the movie has some mythical features featured in it.

The target audience of this film is for people interesting in the saga that has been Harry Potter. The audience for this movie can be quite general,  a range from young pre-teens to middle age people interested in action and magical beings in a mythical world.    

The key signifiers that show this are the lighting and the action presented in the poster. The running suggests that they are running from some thing bad and the lighting, the red specs around the title almost seems like the sparks that would come out of a wizards wand. 

Dream House 

The main genre of this film is a thriller and the sub-genre is psychological. The film follows a man who returns to his estranged house believing that his dead wife and children are still living in there, the elements of the film tells us that the target audience is for people interested in mystery, drama and mind playing story lines. 

The key signifier that show the type of target audience, genre and sub-genre are again from the movie release poster. The main colour of the poster is a grainy brown, which can suggest the abandonment of the house. The doorknob shows minimal views of the three main characters, a discrete image meaning there's more to the image and/or the people that meets the eye. There is also two little girls featured with only there faces, arms and legs visible, again reference to the nature of the girls in the film itself as the father imagines them to still be here.

Some thriller sub-genres that most inspire me are psychological and romantic. Psychological thrillers play with the mind and makes the viewer think and increased the depth of the story line of the film and romantic thrillers can give a false identity to the audience, as at one point it may be about love and admiration and the next fear and horror. I feel these two sub-genre's can be really good to play with as both can be very successful.