Genre Analysis of Honest Trailers as a Parodic Film Review

Genre Analysis of Honest Trailers as a Parodic Film Review Arthea Arese Sunico Quesada De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines *Corresponding Author:arthea_quesada@dlsu.edu.ph 1​ Abstract: As the web created a new environment and changed contexts of communication, social media has been a popular venue for different forms of free expression (Morgos & Troffin, 2015). As a multi modal social networking site, Youtube indeed became a new discourse community. With a spike of 300 Million follower’s in June 2014, Screen Rant’s primacy in shaping entertainment commentary has been established. The study uses Miller’s (1998) Genre Theory, to view the purposes of parodic lines narrated through the videos. Transcripts of the ten most popular Honest Trailer videos, purposively selected per film genre, were analyzed in terms of macro structure, microstructure and language features. With a goal to formulate common moves used in this genre, this paper aims to make film critiquing an interesting yet socially relevant genre in society, accessible to all users of the web. Results explored different motives that constitutes a Youtube post, concretized common characteristics of the community of film viewers, and explained the language features used in Youtube and Parodic Film Reviews. Further studies of other trending Youtube channels would give more breadth and depth of this research, as it further classifies Youtube communities into specific groups based on their interests. KeyWords: ​Genre Analysis, Film Review, Youtube Videos, Move Analysis 1. INTRODUCTION The popularity of the internet gave rise to new genre and discourse communities. Indeed social media altered social contexts (Yew & Churchill, 2011) and social networks introduced radical change in communication (Anderson, 2010; as cited in Mogos & Troffin, 2015). A Social Networking Site (SNS) have participants with : 1) unique profiles, 2) connections that can be articulated publicly, and 3) the power to consume, produce, and/or interact with streams of user-generated content provided by their connections. (Ellison & Boyd (2013) as cited in Gabrielle (2016). The proliferation of media available on the internet resulted genre classification issues (Friesen, 2009) and numerous productive inquiries(Ekenel & Semela, 2011). In 2005, Herring and associates labeled the digital genre as hybrid or “bridging” genres since these are they are based on ​antecedent- traditional(Friesen, 2009), spoken or written media (Mogos & Troffin, 2015). Continued efforts of Wang, Xu, and Chng in 2006, Brezeale and Cook in 2008, Heyd in 2009 and Ionescu et al. in 2012; led to frameworks for analyzing and categorizing digital files such as YouTube videos (Mogos and Troffin 2015). It is noteworthy that: “The Web is fluid, unstable and fast-paced; genres on the Web are instantiated in Web pages, which are a complex type of document, more composite and unpredictable than paper documents.” Mogos and Troffin, 2015, p 39 YouTube, the leading video platform, became the venue for commentaries, reviews and critical expression (Ekenel & Semela,, 2011; Gabrielle, 2016). Using Friesen’s (2009) evidence and logic, one can conclude that YouTube is a highly functional discourse community. More than 1 billion people, or 1 in 7, are YouTube users who watch hundreds of millions of hours of video and generate billions of views.(Mogos and Troffin, 2015). Particularly, the popularity of Screen Junkies Honest Trailers to over 300 Million subscribers validated the power of the internet as these critical reviews gave rise to differences in film patronage (Chakravarty, Liu & Mazumdar, 2010). Gabrielle (2016) points out the connection of Genre as a Social Action to numerous video posts. She cited Miller (1984) who highlights the two important aspects of interpretability of a genre: context- the socio-cultural dimension of discourse termed as “conventionalized social purpose” ( p. 162); and social motive, termed as exigence, the intention of creating the message. Using Miller’s theory as an anchor, this paper would try to explain the effective use of parodic film reviews in creating awareness and action among film viewers. As a Genre Analysis Research, it also aims to describe the context of the Internet, (particularly YouTube) as a ‘new’ discourse community. Lastly, the study would attempt to enumerate language features of these viral YouTube videos, which would bring forth interesting implications in media, discourse, sociological and language research. 2. METHODOLOGY For this study, purposive and convenience sampling were used. Ten most popular Honest Trailer videos of 10 different film genres were selected. Transcripts were taken from the site itself, and cross verified manually. Afterwards, these transcripts were qualitatively analyzed in terms of macro structure, microstructure and language features. AntConc Ver. 4.3 was used to create a word list of most frequent words and phrases used. Frequency counts to tabulate the completeness of each microstructure of the genre, were also done. Finally, move analysis of the social motives of most common clause, phrase and word patterns was also performed. Table 1.Sample Genre Characteristics 1 2 3 4 5 6 # of Views # of Words 29801507 29316875 16839061 16599934 15279217 13928958 284 378 551 476 514 415 Film Genre Oscar Winning Modern Animation Classic Animation Franchise Film Comic Book Book Adaptation 7 8 9 10 13179669 11704064 10665647 527 494 428 Comedy Action Family 10472638 499 Fantasy 3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Analysis of the transcripts gave rise to different patterns drawn. For this paper, the dominant microstructure, microstructures, moves presented as well as language features will be discussed. 3.1 Macro Structure Table 2. Macrostructure of Sample Review Part Function I. Introduction II. Details III. Setting IV. Plot V.Characters VI. Commentary VII.Closing Comments Catch Attention Inform Critic/Humor, Critic/Humor, Critic/Humor, Critic/Humor, Humor, Call for Action Frequency 10 10 9 10 10 10 7 Major parts of the Honest Trailers Film include the abovementioned. Evidently, It is rudimentary for film reviews to include the most essential elements of the film which are Setting, Plot and Characters. While it is necessary, the highlight element of a film will be different from another, giving less emphasis on less important elements, somehow deleting the element in the review altogether. And while some would always have conclusions, it is observed that only seven would have closing one liners, as other samples already met their objectives even without the conclusion. 3.2 Microstructure Table 3. Microstructure of Introductions n n 4 2 Film Outfit Actor 7 Director 5 Others Introductions in this sample primarily served to catch attention. As such, the most striking or memorable part of the film is highlighted, and given a very creative presentation to ensure the audience will watch to the end. Sometimes, it is all encompassing and encapsulates the review all together (ie: From Joss Whedon, God of the nerds, comes the blockbuster that finally unites the world’s greatest superheroes… that Marvel still has the rights to). Table 4. Microstructure of Setting N (time) N (place) 7 5 Reality 1 3 Allegory 7 2 Costumes 7 2 Devices 5 3 Others While one film did not describe setting, it is important to see poignant details in a film setting. It is common to compare movie settings to real life time periods or notable places (ie. A virtual reality simulation of the late 90’s).. Reference to other literary and pop cultural ideas are also rampant (ie. where the rich dress like Lady Gaga).. As production design used costumes and props, critics are bound to see such highlights (ie. “Where technology seems to be frozen in the 19th Century). Table 5. Microstructure of Commentaries n n 5 Script 10 Technical/ Editing 2 Acting 8 Other elements Direction 8 The heart of a review are commentaries. Occurring in the entire sample are commentaries about the writing, be it something wrong (ie. If magic is so secret, why is their door at the busiest...), missed out(ie. Not starring, these important parts of the book), or not given the right emphasis. As the proof of the pudding comes with acting, directors and actors will not be unscath in film reviews (ie. Starring Rupert Grint’s dumb face). Table 6. Types of Closing n n 5 3 Joke Spoiler 5 4 Ad Suggestion 1 2 Credits Quote 8 Loophole 5 Others To summarize everything and make an impression enough to cause stir to its audience, Honest trailer writers use different types of closing (see Appendices). 3.3 Move Analysis From the corpus, three Social Acts were seen in the combination of words and phrases: Criticizing, Giving Humor and Showing Realism in films. Below is a table further classifying these three Acts, which are also the primary goals of film reviews. (Gabrielle, 2016; ​Holland, 2010; ​Yeap, et. al, 2014) Table 7. Common Moves in Film Reviews Function Critic the Craft Using Humor Realis m in films Sample Boredom “Witness the excitement of Iron Man repairing a spaceship for 20 minutes” Obvious “From the studio comes a feature length music video for the song: Let It Go” Comparison “The most original sci-fi film since Star Wars” Interpretation “Where child endangerment is totally no big deal” Suggestion “Not starring the important parts of the book like Katniss’ hearing loss,...” Euphemism “A G-rated film with all sorts of domestic abuse” Sarcasm “Watch as he yells his way to an oscar nomination” Exaggeration “This child who shows signs of becoming a sociopath” Ripoff “3D so real, you can feel J.C. steal money from your pocket” Disappointment “You used to be cool,... Part IV I II III VI I V IV VI VII Coinciding with the basic purposes of film reviews, the moves used in the sample showed the goal to affect box office performance, as well as production of succeeding movies (Ballard, 2016; Buckland, 2012, Koschat, 2012). Critical reviews have strong impacts on viewership (Koschat, 2012) 3.4 Language Features Table 8. Most Commonly Used Words the and a of Function Frequency déterminer coordination déterminer 242 117 107 preposition 101 preposition 88 to modification 72 that pronoun 61 you preposition 58 in pronoun 47 I preposition 43 for The corpus has 1672 unique word types and 4776 tokens (TTR:). It is interesting to note that the most frequently occurring verb is “like” at 20 tokens, while the most frequently occurring noun is “film” mentioned only 16 times. Word type numbers 556 to 1672 all occurred only once in the sample, showing vast lexical diversity in this kind of genre. Determinative functions predominate, as the definite article “the” merges with the idea that certain things used in the films are unique to them alone. 3.5 Discussion Film reviews have noteworthy parts which includes the introduction, film details, summaries of the characters, setting and plot, commentaries about the film, and closing commentaries/ conclusions. These are parts include the movie elements and are the normal patterns of analysis (Foot & Dowdy, 2013). Introductions and Closing commentaries serve hook and summative purposes respectively. In the most creative ways possible (Buckland, 2012; Foot & Dowdy, 2013), these video reviews appear to primarily entertain, but in reality persuade and educate at the same time (Gabrielle, 2016). Evidently, microstructure analysis would reveal specific evidences that would further describe the film elements. Looking into these elements, Honest Trailers contain different sentences which either critic, invoke humor, or covertly educate on film realism. As reviews serve as experiential endorsements (Koschat, 2012), these analysis, evaluations, narrations and descriptions (Buckland, 2012), give viewers a taste of what is to come Yeap, et. al, 2014). In Miller’s (1984) view that genre is a social act, we see parodic film reviews as an intentional posting (Gabriel, 2016) with social implications (Ballard, 2016). Moving beyond retelling the movie in spatio-temporal order (Buckland, 2012), film reviews, especially from credible and informative sites, are game changers in the box office (Yeap et al, 2014), be it filled with negative criticism or positive appraisals. By looking into details, critics are able to find folly and use psychological progressions to tackle realities foretold in movies (Ballard, 2016; Buckland, 2012). As words have power, basic rhetorical patterns of description abound, to stimulate vivid and imaginative processes, as well as critical thinking (Ballard, Foot & Dowy). With the prevalence of determiners comes a semantic goal of modification. Manipulation of voice, formality and attitude also attracts viewers and establishes stronger emotional relations with them (Buckland, 2012). All in all, the text, plus other characteristics of the video were utilized to send the message, the YouTube poster directly or indirectly states (Friesen, 2009; Gabriel, 2016; Mogos & Trifin, 2015). 4. CONCLUSIONS Thorough analysis of online parodic film reviews gave answers to recurring questions. For one, move analysis showed the true purposes of the genre. Through the detailed look at all complements of each macro structure, we have seen that having a keen eye into everything is the ultimate driving force of of critiquing (Koschat. 2012). The movie industry is a huge business (Chakravarty et. al, 2010; Yeap, et. al, 2014) and we need reviews to maintain films as an art form, and not mere propaganda devices. Adding humor to its language makes effective use of writing techniques to send a message (Ballard, 2016; Holland, 2010). It is the critic’s style that would speak to the audience, and ensure effect be it as immediate as box office returns, or improvement of the quality of films produced in the long run (Ballard, 2016). Second, the power of a multimedia discourse community opened a venue for creative expression that appeals to varied audiences bound by a specific interest. As reviews serve both a product and process (O'keeffe, 2014), the social situations where reviews are published allow participant access and reaction (O'keeffe, 2014). As means of analyzing an industry, as a communicative event with receiver response, and an area of cultural production, YouTube made its mark in becoming a discourse community (Friesen, 2009 ; Yew & Churchill, 2010), capable of social merit. Lastly, analyzing language features of these viral YouTube videos allow us to understand the varied communities and participants in this social networking site. Looking at the form and substance of YouTube videos, be it voice overs in impulsive, incessant or explosive manners; in goals of informing, justifying, persuading and entertaining; or in adding all other visual and cinematic elements, unique properties of viral videos which interest the readers still dictate its tendency to be spread across the globe (Gabrielle, 2016, Friesen, 2009). Truly, simple videos circulated in social media say much about today’s society, its art, culture and people. 5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To my Genre Analysis Professor, for all the input and guidance, Dr Sterling Plata, this space is not enough. To a Research Team in its own right: Adeline, Nar Luis, Ana Carmela, King, and Alia; our inspiration: Matthew, Miguel, Marcus and Edrene, all my works would include you. 6. REFERENCES Ballard, T. (2016, Spring). YouTube Video Parodies and the Video Ideograph. ​Rocky Mountain Review​, 10-25. Retrieved June 7, 2017. Buckland, W. (2012). Solipsistic film criticism. Review of The Language and Style of Film Criticism. ​New Review of Film and Television Studies,10​(2), 288-298. doi:10.1080/17400309.2012.672128 Chakravarty, A., Liu, Y., & Mazumdar, T. (2010). The Differential Effects of Online Word-of-Mouth and Critics Reviews on Pre-release film Evaluation. Journal of Interactive Marketing,24​(3), 185-197. doi:10.1016/j.intmar.2010.04.001 Ekenel, H. K., & Semela, T. (2011). Multimodal genre classification of TV programs and YouTube videos. 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