QUESTION 1 in What Ways Does Your

In what ways does your media product USE, DEVELOP orCHALLENGE forms and conventions of real media products?

Our opening sequence uses the forms and conventions of real films made, however it alsochallenges them. Our film

Spotlight on Alison (2009

) is based on the themes of teenageromance, love, jealousy and high school life. Some of these themes are visible in theopening sequence. More so than others is high school life as our opening sequence startswith establishing shots of Barking Abbey school outside the leisure centre, although thenon- degetic sound plays over the sound of the students at school the shots are clear enough for the audience to see it is showing high school life. This is similar to

(Clueless1995)

. The film starts by showing the protagonists life and lifestyle and then as thecharacter arrives to school it shows establishing shots of the school and the students thatattend, so it is fair to say that our opening sequences uses some conventions but at thesame times also challenges them in the order that we chose to show things i.e. character life then high school life vice versa.

(Spotlight on Alison 2009)

also involves two young characters falling in love, thereforefor the genre to be acknowledged we had to keep more conventions of teenage romancefilms in the opening sequence. Using a male jock as one of the main characters that fallsin love, is a typical convention that’s used, if we look at a film such as (

High School Musical 2006)

this is instantly visible within the opening sequence as we are introducedto the character doing his main sport. He is dressed in a basketball kit; jersey, shorts andtrainers this helps to magnify the character and the type of character he is.

QUESTION 1

Similarly, in our opening sequence we are introduced to the male protagonist in hiselement this convention used is similar to how we meet Troy right at the start in

(High school musical)

however Ricardo is not playing but he is on his way to a session of basketball, he is wearing a tracksuit and has a duffle bag on his shoulder so that helps toenhance his character, even if the audience cant work out he’s a basketball player straightaway his distinctive height gives away some clues. We are also given slight hints that heis quite popular as on his way to the changing room for his session, he is greeted byanother male friend with a joyous and friendly handshake. Our female protagonist also follows the conventions of a female character that falls inlove in a teenage romance movie, because she isn’t very popular or fuelled by the envy of her friends, she is very independent and prefers to do things alone, we are aware of this inour opening sequence straight away as our first shot is of Alison alone after a longsession practising her dance routine. This convention we used is very similar to

(HighSchool Musical)

Where the female protagonist has her own talent and is driven throughthe own independence.This humility is also visible in the female protagonists in films such as (

A CinderellaStory 2004)

and (

10 things I hate about you 1999).

Both these characters have intriguingcharacteristics about them and don’t rely on their looks to get them noticed which issimilar to our character Alison, however their inner beauty and determination to achievetheir goals is what is intriguing for the audience to experience. Samantha is seen inher work clothes, noglamour involved.Hair tied back and nomake up, in the sameway Alison is insimple clothing in theopening sequence withno make up necessary.This is similar to Gabriellain HSM, a humbledetermined character, notreliant on their looks.

Costume also helps to show the audience the protagonist’s characteristics as Alison isdressed in a simple, plain black costume so she is not trying to draw attention to herself through the clothes that she wears. This corresponds to Gabriella in high school musicalshe is dressed in casual and comfortable clothing.As far as narrative our storyline is typically conventional for a teenage romance, we feltas this was our first film that we have produced we felt it was best our narrative wasconventional because when it came to creating ideas from research it would be a loteasier to gather ideas and thoughts from teenage romance movies to use and developrather than trying to go in a different direction. So, having said this storyline mainly isabout a two young people determined to succeed at their hobbies falling in love, or plot points involve the envy of popular schoolmates trying to jeopardise their love but failcausing the love to grow stronger and in the end the young couple end up together andhappy together. This storyline was developed and inspired from such films such as(

Mean girls)

and once again (

High School Musical 1).

Looking at our opening sequence I still feel that we followed the conventions of teenageromance films as we started off with establishing shots then we introduced the charactersthese can be compared to the opening sequence of (

Titanic 1997),

the film is set on a boatand there are various establishing shots of the boat underwater then the credits appear andwe are then introduced to characters, however we developed this by making our two maincharacters the initial focus rather than having other supporting characters in the openingsequence straight away so we had our female and male protagonist in the openingsequence, we did this as we felt that the audience could engage to them and alsoremember most as they are the first people they see.As we first see Ricardo, our main male character the camera pans and focuses on him for a few seconds this highlights the fact he is an important character as even though he isaround people the camera focuses on him alone. This idea can be seen in (

Pretty in pink 1986)

however rather than the director having panning shots for focus the director uses a