This Is Me - Genre

In the first shots of ‘This Is Me’ the semantic codes suggest to the audience that this short film's genre would be of something more serious than what is to come i.e. a documentary. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_film) 

The semantic codes in 'This Is Me' suggest perhaps a documentation or drama. From Rick Altmans theory, we can say that we associate paricular objects with a meaning. And these meanings can portray the genre.
(http://www.slideshare.net/robertclackmedia/genre-theory-7086744) 

The setting of 'This Is Me' shows a hospital room:

• the opening shot is a close up of some sort of pump to assist the patient - from this we associate that somebody is seriously ill and in hospital and therefore we would be expecting to see a film with action or drama. 
• With some sort of 'incident' that has occured, 'This Is Me' is a hybrid film; it contains more than one particular genre.
• Along with the diegetic sound of heavy breathing, the audience are lead to be sure of the genre being portrayed. 

The titles then change our view on the genre. This element almost 'softens' the environment as the text is white (connoting purity) and is rounded and not so bold and alert, which means the viewer may start to question the genre. 

Syntactic codes are conventions that fit into narrative and genre. For any genre these include:

• Themes
• Character relations
• Binary oppositions 
• Narrative endings
• Narrative disruptions

Along with the colloquial voice over, the women's body language acts as a semantic code to let us know that the film is comical:

• Her facial expression is unimpressed and the close up of her setting a timer shows that being there isn't much of a priority. 
• Her nails indicate that she likes to look after her appearance. 
• The focus pull of the two shot shows the two characters binary opposition which in this case can be seen as amusing as they appear so different; the women being quite slim, wearing a lot of make up and sparkling jewelry - and the male character appearing to have quite a large physique. The binary opposition are a syntactic code that portrays comedy.
• The close ups of his feet and stomach at the beginning show the contrasting characters (binary opposition) as he looks less groomed. This is a syntactic code as it works with the semantic codes to help decide on a genre.

Steve Neale's theory of repetition and variation can also be applied to 'This Is Me':

He proposed that each genre film repeats conventions of the genre formula whilst also making new variations. The conventions of this film that make it a comedy are:

• the binary opposition between characters
• sarcastic narration/voice over
• the atypical accident that occurs