When watching media texts we draw upon pre-defined set of tools and conventions which are categorised. Genre allows media products to be packaged and targeted at a particular audience. Audience preference clearly affects the genres available. Genre works through formal characteristics, which are essentially the codes and conventions which we associate with the particular genre, including stylistic characteristics like camera work and lighting, iconography like signs, mise-en-scene like set design or costume and finally narrative structure which is the plot from beginning to end.
Genre allows us to take the actual world in which we live and transform it into something more controllable. A 'genre world' is one in which there are a limited and predictable range of features, where characters and events are more predictable and where our expectations are more likely to be fulfilled. Transforming the experience of living into a set of predictable conventions and patterns provides us with some basic pleasures.
To achieve a variety of results all genres use conventions like technical codes like camera and lighting, symbolic codes like body language or mise-en-scene, character codes like mise-en-scene, written codes such as captions, narrative codes such as the structure of the story, engima codes such as a sense of mystery that intrigues the audience and action codes which is action that makes us realise where we are in the narrative.
There are many different types of genre:
