Portfolio Project Genre #1

Sci- Fi

Typical target audience of the genre

The typical audience is teens to adults from 14 to 28. The audience started out as mostly male, becoming 50/50 in recent times. Sci- Fi tends to attract educated, technically well-versed men receiving a higher education, making the demographic younger. Certain franchises can have grown adults consuming all the forms of media in which their franchise takes place (books, films, and games). Dispersing the franchise across different forms makes the reader more experienced with consuming new forms of media and forces the reader to follow along and buy everything.

Genre conventions with content

The film often takes place in a fictional futuristic world or on Earth in the far, far future, making it look unrecognizable regardless. The fictional world is usually in very close contact with space, intergalactic wars between planets, or a parallel/alternate universe that happens to be just like ours, except there's one disturbing difference that makes them feel less than human to us. The plot in these would usually consist of someone getting attached to someone in that parallel universe, not knowing their "secret" yet; this secret will consist of something that's immoral and wrong to the main character, no matter how close they are, it can't be excused. The main character will then go through this existential crisis, thinking they were actually incredibly selfish to want to save the world and have a friend while doing it. They'll feel blindsided but also guilty that they've had their suspicions but purposely didn't further investigate, then that parallel universe character will die and somehow contribute to the greater meaning of the movie and life, somehow saving the world through a "poetic" death and providing commentary to our "dystopian" society or the society it can become. To go further, the fandom will mourn this character and think that their redeeming qualities made up for the fact that they committed unforgivable acts, and if this is a franchise will almost certainly come back to blackmail the main character, his only true friend throughout the series. This friend will be referenced and held against the main character in the franchise enough times to create a second movie on that character, despite not feeling that deep in the moment.

The technology is years ahead of our current tech, featuring spaceships, virtual reality, and time travel. Much of the genre focuses on space travel, alien vs human worlds, and time travel. The themes revolve around ethics, good vs evil, and humanity's future, as well as a commentary on our future dystopian society. Ethics will usually be used in an alien vs human scenario where the humans are doing experiments on aliens or good vs evil, in which multiple human space organizations are at odds. Humanity/Commentary often is someone living their average government-mandated job in a dystopian society until something goes horribly wrong or a rebellion starts, and they have freedom.

Genre conventions with techniques

Sci-Fi films often feature grand scale high pitched soundtracks with futuristic electronic sounds and tension-building portions. They have extensive world-building with hierarchies, social norms, and rules used as the backdrop for something more dystopian or war-focused. CGI is heavily used to create these elaborate space action scenes with very detailed costume design, usually tying back to the hierarchy, visibly showing their place in society. Extravagant props will be made to accompany these outfits with futuristic weapons with near-impossible features. The narrative is hero/villain, but ends up more anti-hero and villain because no one really ends up the hero in these incredibly complex and elite societies in space unless it's a movie about breaking free from society in general, in which most hero/villain movies aren't.

Institutional conventions - narrative image, marketing, etc.

Future exploration in sci-fi often features extremely technologically advanced societies in the future or parallel universes/other worlds that are about corrupt space societies, providing commentary on today's political climate. The social commentary is about how much the government controls our lives and how much they surveil us, and something will happen that allows all these people to escape, either overthrowing the government or just running away. Another premise is AI robots turning against humanity, and we have to fight our own creations. This shows what can happen in the future if we keep advancing technology at this pace, eventually killing ourselves with evolution.

Two film/tv productions that represent the genre

The Matrix (1999)

The Matrix is a dystopian setting where humans are "batteries" for machines. The entire point is to question the meaning of life, that life is "not real". AI surpassing and taking over human worlds is a recurring theme in the sci- fi genre and the idea that humanity is going to be its own demise. The matrix also blends genres such as film noir and action with its dark visuals and Hong Kong-inspired fight scenes.

Dune Part One (2021)

Dune is set in the distant future where intergalactic politics exist, leaning into a "space opera" subgenre. Dune features spaceships, force fields, and extremely powerful weapon but and huge restriction on the usage of AI because of the war. The society, while being very advanced, resorts to fighting a lot, drawing similarities to our reality. Its generally unusual for a sci- fi movie to be so avidly against AI but seeing as this is because of a war contributing to the overall space opera lore, it makes sense.

Citations 

For Dune: Part One (IMDb page):
IMDb. (n.d.). Dune: Part One (2021) [Film]. IMDb. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1160419/

For The Matrix (IMDb page):
IMDb. (n.d.). The Matrix (1999) [Film]. IMDb. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/