Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My film opening sequence uses the conventions of romantic comedies in style and form and also develops and challenges the conventions of rom coms in narrative and genre. It has taken inspiration from 5 main media : John Tucker Must Die, The Inbetweeners, Superbad, 22 Jump Street, and the Big Bang Theory.

Plot

The Life of Guy is about the life of a student named Guy who is nerdy, socially awkward and has no luck in his love life. We follow his home life and school life as he gets rejected on his first blind date and then befriends a girl at school who guides him on how to interact with people and how to dress. He goes through many experiences such as social events and ends up in a relationship with the girl of his dreams.


1. FORM - Please watch the first 2 minutes of John Tucker Must Die

2. GENRE:
Typical characters/behaviour
In rom com films there is a typical group of characters:

• The main lead - could be a princess or hero
• The side lead - comedic character
• The love interest - girl or boy
• The lead's opponent for love interest or the villain
• Another villain

Mean Girls

The trailer

• Lead - Cadey Heron
• Side lead - Janis Ian
• Love interest - Aaron Samuels
• Opponent for love interest - Regina George
• Another villain - the plastics in general and mean students

Life of Guy

• Main lead - Guy
• Side lead - Lindy
• Love interest - was Bella, becomes Sophie
• Villains - boys at school who make fun of him

Typical events
Rom coms usually contain light-hearted, humourous events centred on the ideal that true love can help people overcome any obstacle.
It would start with an argument/falling out with current love interest or having no luck with love
Then boy meets girl or vice-versa who are meant to be for each other but are kept apart by differences.
They overcome each obstacle, getting closer despite a few fallouts
Finally they can officially be together in either a relationship or marriage.

Pretty woman is considered the most successful film in the romantic comedy genre.

Typical themes

• Love
• Friendship
• Betrayal (light-hearted/for comedy)
• School/Work
• Personal journey

Themes wise the Life of Guy is very conventional - it follows his love life with girls such as Bella and Sophie, his friendship with Lindy and other guys, the rejection/betrayal of Bella and how he changes by the end of the film.

Typical mise-en-scene: 

Setting: usually in the city or a town, an urban place. Set at school or workplace.

Costumes: usually each character is dressed to represent a social group but generally do not try to follow up-to-date trends. Appearances are low-key unless the characters are fashionable. Examples of fahisonable characters are found in Mean Girls, Clueless and GBF.



Lighting: high-key, clear, natural looking, warm












3. NARRATIVE GENRE
Our film's narrative follows the classic conventions of Todorov's Theory. In the middle column is the Mean Girls narrative and on the right column is Life of Guy's narrative in comparison.

Specific narrative techniques we used:

• Flashback - our opening is not edited as a flashback but shows the past events of how Guy met Bella which is also explained through the voiceover. Guy looks back on himself and reflects on what his life used to be like. 
• Narrative Ellipsis - we cut out certain unnecessary scenes such as him walking back to his room from the bathroom to cut out potentially boring scenes and in order to speed up the pace - the audience can fill in the gap themselves.
• Enigma Code - The audience will be left with wondering: What will happen to Guy after? How will he handle the break up? Will his life ever change? Who will he meet next?
• Cross Cutting - We used cross cutting from Guy running down the street to Bella waiting outside the take away for him and then back to him running.

Role of characters and how they move plot along Propp's theory

Biggest breaks in conventions
Guy being a male lead who is a victim at first but becomes the hero.
Guy having a female friend who he does not end up going out with.

4.STYLE
We used the Life of Riley as our soundtrack.Not only did we like it because of it's similar name to our film opening, we liked it as a happy, upbeat song which is often used in comedy films to set a light-hearted mood. It also emphasises Guy's happy-go lucky personality in the opening.
We also employ a voiceover like many comedy films such as 500 days of Summer and Easy A do. Similarly Guy reflects on what he used to be like and tells us his story from his future point of view.
Please watch the first 5 minutes of Easy A.

We've decided to go with bright warm colours and achieved this using spotlights and natural sunlight.  This warm colour palette and high key lighting is a conventional style of comedy films.


We have gone with white funky font for our titles as they are simple and informal as if they could be written by hand. This appeals to our target audience of students and teens as it creates a youthful, informal style to the opening. Simple titles are used in John Tucker Must Die and funky titles are used in She's The Man.