hi and welcome to my easy-to-understand guide to Steve Neal's genre theory steve neil is a theorist that could pop up in the educast a level media specification so you need to be aware of his theory and you also need to be aware of how to apply it to your set texts there are two main parts to Steve Neal's genre theory the first part is that he thinks that genres are made up of repetition and difference what that means really is that he thinks that genre is often made up of things that are repeated those conventional elements that we're really familiar with so in a horror film we might get the repetition of conventional elements like dark low-key lighting atmospheric tense music jump scares abandoned buildings forests everything happens at nighttime so these conventions these common features of a horror film are repeated in lots of different films until they become something that we're really familiar with as an audience and audiences we often like the repetition of those elements because they're very familiar to us and they are easy for us to recognize so they make the genre easy for us to identify straight away if we see those things as well as repetition of familiar elements often genres are notable for anything they do that's different to other media products within the genre so for example when I saw the film cabin in the woods I was expecting it to be a typical horror movie because on the DVD cover they had repeated a lot of the familiar conventions of horror films that I knew I could see the doc forests the abandoned cabin the group of teenagers it looks like a typical horror film and that's what my expectations were but actually if you've seen the film you all know that they do a lot of things that are very very different to a typical horror and it was those elements that were completely different that I was really engaged by I was really shocked by it and I really enjoyed it because I found it so original and different to the other films that I had within that genre so it's this idea of repetition and difference and audiences enjoy both of those things for different reasons we enjoy the repetition of conventional elements because it's familiar to us it's easy to understand and it's what we expect and sometimes we enjoy the different elements the things they've done differently or unconventionally because it's it's unusual it's strange it's odd it's engaging and it makes us sit up and take notice to apply this to your a level texts you're going to need to have a look at some of your products and have a think about whether they are conventional have they repeated lots of elements of the media in that typical genre or are they being different have they done something that challenges those typical genre conventions so if you have a look at your kiss at the vampire film poster there are lots of elements that are repeated from other vampire horror movies from the 1950s and 60s we have the bats we have the moonlight we have the castle we have the colors red to signify blood that we have the mention of the word vampire and we have an image of a man wearing a black and red suit and a kind of damsel in distress these elements these repeated conventions Steve Neil would say that an audience would find them engaging familiar and it would help us to understand immediately that this is a vampire movie but there are different elements to this poster there are things that the directors and producers have done which may challenge the conventions of a typical vampire movie the fact that there is a female vampire is quite unconventional for a movie in the 1950s and 60s the fact that there is a male victim on the floor at her mercy is unconventional and so it's these elements that perhaps an audience might be intrigued by you know the audience is the time I find this very strange very unusual very different and that's perhaps why they might choose to watch this film