Evaluate Use of Conventions of 'Real' Media

Title

• We had pink text that appears in a 'girly' photo album which fits our target audience.
• Suits our genre as text font and movement are quite girly.

Credits

• The same font and style as main title.
• They appear as captions in a photo album which helps them fit in with the action. Also suggests a 'yearbook' kind of theme which corresponds well with our genre.

Characters and Themes

• Chick flicks mostly have romance and problems and the dilemmas that come with it, so we made sure that we had that for our characters to deal with.
• Characters usually deliver contrasts between different groups of people. We made sure that we clearly showed the different cliques. E.g. popular and unpopular.
• Generally in our genre there is always on character that portrays some empathy towards the underdog character. In our film that was 'Seth' showing empathy towards 'Rosie'.
• We followed the conventional characters you would usually see in our genre, the geek and the princess.
• Narrative develops out of these character types in our genre. Once the audience have established the role each character has, they will work out the probably narrative arc quite quickly.

Mise-En-Scene

• Chick flick/teen dramas are usually set in a school environment as it is where teens are most of the time - we followed this convention.
• The clothing helped to show the difference between the two types of characters. In our film handbags and pink fluffy dressing gown against a rucksack and blazer.
• We used props to show the difference between two types of characters. Make up against school books.
• The two girls' bedrooms that we filmed in helped to distinguish the difference between characters.
• We had others playing the popular girl's 'pose' which helped to make her seem more intimidating to the unpopular girl as she was on her own.

Camera work

• We used quite a few close ups on our characters in our film because we tried to let the audience know the emotions of characters.
• We used shot reverse shot just to show the characters feelings during conversations.
• We used a couple of two shots. This allowed us to show the difference of characters directly next to each other. In our genre this happens a lot.

Editing

• In post-production we added a split screen to help show the difference in character of the two girls. This also gave us a really good opportunity for the credits.
• We used slight ellipsis in places to keep it moving at a good pace instead of showing unnecessary things that slow down the pace of the film. This is particularly necessary in our opening where little really happens plot-wise so we have to capture interest in other ways.
• We used cross cutting at the start of the film. This helped to compare and introduce the two main characters to show their difference. Also it makes the scene interesting and to speed up the pace.

Sound

• Non-diegetic music is the main sound that plays through most of the film. It helps to get the feel of the film and establish the genre and mood for the audience.
• We went for the same style of music that most chick flick/teen dramas use as it is current and the type of music our target audience would listen to.
• Dialogue in our film helps to portray the character. This helps us to get the audience to feel how we want them to feel towards certain characters. For example, the popular girl says "Move, ginger" to the unpopular girl, which automatically makes the audience feel sympathetic towards the unpopular girl. This kind of overt dialogue is common in our genre.

Overall

We have followed a lot of genre conventions and our audience feedback made it clear that it is easy to work out what genre we are aiming for, so I think we have used the conventions successfully. I also think we have managed to keep to form conventions for opening sequences as we do not allow too much to happen and we establish our characters and a general atmosphere clearly. It would have been nice to add a genre twist, but our genre is so well established it would be difficult to do this in only two minutes, and would be unlikely to happen at the very beginning of the film.