Genre Theory: Tom Ryall, John Fiske, Steve Neale and Rick Altman

Tom Ryall in 1978 believed that Genreprovides a framework of rules for structure, in the shapes of patterns/forms/styles and structures, which act as a form of 'supervision' over the work of production of filmmakers.

John Fiske defines genre as 'attempts to structure some order into the wide range of texts and meaning that circulate in our culture for the convenience of both producers and audiences'. 

Steve Neale in 1990 argued that Hollywood's generic regime performs two inter-relate functions:

1. to guarantee meanings and pleasures for audience
2. to offset the considerable economic risks of industrial film production by providing cognitive collateral innovation and difference.

Rick Altman also argued that genres are usually defined in types of media language (semantic elements) and codes (in Western films for example: guns, horses, landscape, characters and stars like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood) or certain ideologies and narratives (syntactic elements) and example would be in a zombie film and the main characters surviving, or two love interests coming together at the end of the film. In some ways this enables the audience to have an idea of what will happen by the end of the film, however when some directors make the trailer look like the genre won't fit or the genre is a mix, some audiences are more interested due to not knowing what is likely to happen.