Rick Altman
(b. 1945 - )
(Charles) Rick Altman is a professor of cinema and literature.
What is Genre?:
In his book "Blood Money", Richard Nowell defines genre as:
"a system of communication comprising two components, the label and the corpus. A name is assigned to a number of films because they are considered to share similarities that distinguish them from other films, thus bringing order to relative chaos."
The term was revised in Altman's 1999 book "Film/Genre". In short, genre is categorised through "similarities and differences". While consuming a media text, and audience has a repertoire of elements, or expectations of the film depending on its genre. If a film is too similar to others they have seen they will be dissatisfied, but they cannot be too different and stray from audience expectation.
Altman lays out 4 criteria a film pattern needs in order to be categorised as a genre through the film cycle; the producer (blueprint), the distributor (label), the audience (contract), and the student (structure).
The producer (blueprint): With the producer, genre is used to minimise risk of film production, through analysing popular films and trends (film cycles) of the time. This is known as the blueprint for a production.
The distributor (label): To communicate what is being sold, the label uses genre codes and conventions within the marketing of a film to easily communicate about the product with the audience.
The audience (contract): The audience signs an unseen contract, using their understanding and conventions/codes of the genre to set their expectations for a film. This is used to understand the text, but if it subverts expectations, the contract is broken and audiences are left ungratified (UGT).
The student (structure): The student compares various media texts in order to identify and study a film genre. Using the repertoire of elements, texts are grouped and defined as a genre.
What is the Repertoire of Elements?:
The repertoire of elements is a structure allowing for genre to be identified. This is seen through; iconography, camera, editing, sound, narrative, values, performance, colour/lighting, fonts, wording, and representations.
Regarding the repertoire of elements, in his book "Blood Money", Nowell says:
"only by treating film-types (genre) as complex networks of elements designed to provoke diverse types of audience engagement and fulfill different commercial objectives, can the conditions underwriting production and the mobilization of content be identified."
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