Research: Codes and Conventions

Your brain is a clever thing and you should be able to identify whether or not you are watching a drama, a news broadcast, a game show, a reality show, etc quite easily. The reason you can do this is that you recognise the codes and conventions of each of these genres of television programme. For example, you expect a game show to have a host, contestants, an audience, a set that is personalised for that show, a theme tune, lighting that illuminates the contestants, close up shots of contestants as they answer, shot-reverse shot between the host and contestant(s) if a conversation is taking place, so on. The same applies to genres of film; every genre of film has its own codes and conventions that help us to identify it. As an example of this, we can identify the poster's genre just by observing their codes and conventions.

We can tell that this poster (Psycho 1960) is advertising a horror movie because the use of colour, like the red, defines danger or blood since murder is involved in the movie. Black is there to form the fear of darkness, or worse, isolation. The wooden house looks abandoned apart from its owner standing by its side. Both subjects look like they're watching at the viewers, perhaps looking down on them. The text in the bottom left corner shows what movie it is, who its been directed by, the cast and so on, but the effect on the text, grunge to be exact, makes it look like it's suffered a lot and gives it an eerie mood to the atmosphere. 

What are codes? 

Codes are elements that can be decoded by the audience to prove meaning. These can be divided most easily into 2 groups: technical codes and symbolic codes,

Technical codes include the 'technical' aspects of creating a piece of moving image media. This includes things such as camera shots, angles and movements, editing, sound, titles and lighting. 

What are conventions? 

Conventions are the expected rules that, as an audience, we expect in a specific genre. For example, in a horror film we expect to see conventions such as a killer stalking a victim, a character being placed in a position of peril, a mobile phone running out of battery or losing signal at a crucial moment. 

Summary

An easy way to think of codes and conventions is to view them as being the necessary ingredients to create a perfect generic film recipe. If you are given the task, which you will be, of thinking of an idea for a teen horror film you can start by creating a list of essential ingredients. 

You can, of course, choose to challenge conventions rather than use of develop them. This doesn't happen as often in film as it can disorientate the audience. A convention of most thriller films, for example, is that the hero always prevails. How would you react if a director chose to challenge this convention and killed off your hero letting the villain win?