Comparing the opening sequences from The Ring and 10 Things I Hate About You.

The iconography helps you tell what genre the film is. Sound in film can be put into two categories, for the beginning of The Ring I would put it into diegetic sound as the first thing you hear is the rain and  you can see it. When you hear the rain you immediately think that it could be a horror film because its dead silent apart from the rain, it also makes things seem gloomy. In comparison Ten Things I Hate About You would be both diegetic and non diegetic sound because you hear music and see a city and then It takes you to a car which the music is being played from. In The Ring the conversation that the two girls is quite serious, this shows that its not a very easy going film. On the other hand in Ten Things I Hate About You they have conversations about their favourite bags and trainers, this emphasises the teen feel to the film.

The setting can tell you a lot about the type of genre the film is. Ten Things I Hate About You  is set during the daytime which gives the audience the impression that its going to be a romantic or comedy film. In contrast The Ring is set on during the night this makes everything feel slightly more creepy. I think for both films the location is very typical for the genre. Ten Things I Hate About You is set in an average American high school in Seattle. This is typical of a teen comedy because its where teenagers go to school. The opening of The Ring is set at a big isolated house in the middle of no where. This is typical of the horror genre because there’s two girls home alone in a house where help isn’t easily got. To me the weather can give clues to what genre the film is going to be because if its dark stormy and rainy then you get a feeling of sadness or fright, whereas if its sunny you feel in a better mood. Ten Things I Hate About You has a sunny setting, in contrast The Ring has a rainy and dark setting.

I think there are a few props in each film which help you recognise the genre. In The Ring you would associate a large lonely house with horror because you see it in quite a few horror films such as ‘ The Hole‘. Also when inside the house all the rooms are quite quiet and have very little lighting. The costumes that the two girls are wearing give you a small hint in what genre it is because they are wearing school uniforms. This  makes them seem slightly vulnerable because they aren’t that old. In Ten Things I Hate About You the high school is a good prop to show the genre of the film because its busy and you would see a lot of teen comedy’s have scenes with the main characters high school.

Overall out of all the iconography used, the most significant in recognising that The Ring was a horror would be setting of the establishing shot. I think this because as soon as you see a big dark lonely house with just one light on you immediately think that something bad is going to happen in the house. Whereas the major iconography used in Then Things I Hate About You would be the music right at the beginning. This is because as soon as you hear it you instantly think teen film because it’s a pop/rock song that you would associate with teenagers. I think that it could be possible to identify a genre by using one aspect of film language although sometimes it would be difficult. The best way to identify a genre would to use a combination of film language.