Primitive: Earliest and most pure genre form where iconography, themes, and patterns develop.Genres typically go through 5 distinct stages throughout cinematic history: If a traditional genre has been reinterpreted, it may be called revisionist.

Genres provide a simple way for movie-makers to produce within a framework and provide an easily marketable product, but may become cliche-ridden and over-imitated.

Music and Audio: Using sound to enhance or emphasize different characteristics, plots, or create a mood (danger, laughter, adventure, feature, excitement, sensual, etc.).

Costuming: use of blood, masks, special effects.

Editing style: Length of edit, use of jump cuts.

Lighting: High-key or low/dark lighting.

Shooting style: hand-held, POV, stationary, or “found footage”.

Sci-Fi: interstellar travel, “space operas”, doomsday, and apocalyptic tales.

Romance: different stages of “falling in love” with a subsequent break-up and reconciliation, true love, fairy tales, forbidden love.

Melodramas: a self-sacrificial maternal figure.

Horror: urban legends, ghost stories, the “final girl” survivor, paranormal and occult, survival-horror, ‘found footage’.

Crime: whodunnits, capers, rival gangs, robberies.

Comedy: Slapstick humor, witty dialogue, rites of passage, gross-out humor, fish-out-of-water, cross-dressing, mistaken identity.

Action: Chase sequences, extended fight scenes, guns, races against time.

Subject Matter: Storyline, plots, or themes similar to other movies in the genre.

Westerns: Cowboys, outlaws, the Sheriff.

Sci-Fi: Aliens, monsters, or superheroes.

Horror: Zombies, serial killers, or ghosts.

Crime: Detectives, gangsters, criminals, fugitives, or inmates.

Comedy: nerds, jocks, token minorities, or friends.

Westerns: Cattle, stage coaches, saloons, ten-gallon hats, the frontier, or revolvers.

War: Different vehicles such as tanks, planes, or realistic battlefields.

Sports: Sports arenas, teams, athletes, and sports equipment.

Sci-Fi: Outer space or futuristic items like spaceships or laser guns.Horror: Dark places and unexplained things like forests, graveyards, castles, abandoned structures or buildings, locked doors to remove rooms, blood, gore, or killing instruments.Setting or Period: When and where the movie takes place including certain stereotypes, props, or icons.The word “genre” comes from French, where it means “type” or “kind.” We define a particular genre as a type or kind of category of movie or film that has its own recognizable conventions and character types such as:

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