Genre Theory
In 1984 Rick Altman set out to end the contradiction and vagueness that had prevouly been around when there was a study on film genre. He had said how genre was almost always discussed in wither an 'inclusive' way or an 'exclusive' on, meaning that people had been only pointing out, for exaple, if a film is not of the action genre or not, there was no discussion into the points. This is why Rick Altman proposed the semantics/ syntactic aproach to film genre.
Semantics
The idea behind the semantics approach is one that was a lot like what previous critics had used prior to Altmans theory. It's basically the generic converntions of a film; what the audience can expect going into a fim. For example, in a western film, the audience expects the film to be set in the American west some time between 1840 and 1900. They expect to see horses, gunfights and cowboy hats. This is where we can identify the 'stock' characters, setting, props, etc. Its the basic things that the genre will use to help the audience identify the genre of the film they are watching, and allows the director/scriptwriter to use this as a base of creating something original whilst still being original.
Syntactics
The syntactics part is Rick Altmans main point of his theory, it deals with the realtionship between the generic conventions we see in the film (semantics), and what makes the film unique - the story, structure and componts of a film. For example in a zombie film we will see the same basic story (there will be an outbreak, hero will have to find a cure) but what sets films apart and makes them them different to one another is the whole point behind the syntactics theory. For example, World War Z is very differnt to Dawn of The Dead despite them both being in the same genre. Yes the film has to has some basic structure and story line elemnts that stay the same other wise it will dismissed by the viewers, but the film is still allowed to bring i some new elements as long as it fits within the genre conventions.
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