Our opening sequence uses the normal codes and conventions of any rom-com but in some sense we've developed these codes and conventions to make them our own.The main focus of a Romantic Comedy is the boy and the girl characters because it has to be made clear that these are the characters you will be following throughout the film. The title of our film is Naive City and we feel this is a good title for a Romantic Comedy because love can be very naive at that age and we also felt it had a nice ring to it. As a group we decided we wanted the opening to be editied as a split screen, this was the element we were most scared about because we didn't know if it was going to look right we developed this idea to fit our genre because normally split screens are found in Action Films but we really wanted it in our sequence and I think it worked really well.
The mise-en-scene of our film is another way we have developed the codes and conventions because in most Rom-Coms you expect to see sunny weather,large houses and expensive cars but with ours we have made it very urban and the weather is quite grey (much to our annoyance) but we think it works very well and it fits more with our generation.
The actual titles of our opening are the part of it that are regular in Rom-Coms, we decided to make the titles gender specific we decided that the colours would be pink and blue and as a group we thought this worked really well in our opening.The titles appear on the screen and fade off and this was the element we wanted to be like a regular Rom-Com and I think worked really well and made our piece look more like a genuine Romantic Comedy. When it came to the song for our titles we became increasingly worried the reason for this is because we couldn't use the original song due to copy write restrictions so as we started to look around for solutions we decided to record our own version of the song and we think it fits with the regular codes and conventions of any Rom-Com, the song we recorded features a soft guitar riff and I think it creates a happy positive mood to the piece. Overall I think our opening sequence developed the codes and conventions of real media products but it has elements of regular media products.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The social group our product uses is teenagers, we embedded the teen element of the film by the two main characters getting ready in the morning and by setting up enigmas like photos of friends and guitars in the corner, this element was really important for us to get right because we didn't want anyone to get offended.As a group we feel that people in the age bracket of 15-19 Will relate very well with these two characters whether it be saying they like the outfits or saying they recognise the place we shot in we feel as a group people will relate to the characters.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
After many discussions we decided that Nickelodeon would distribute our film. The reason we have decided on this particular distributor is because they have distributed films like Angus Thongs And Perfect Snogging,Yours Mine And Ours most of Nickelodeon's films are targeted for teenagers we felt this would suite our genre and target audience really well and we think they would do this for our film.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
We decided the audience for our film would be 12-19 year olds, the reason we decided upon this age group is because we felt we wanted teens as well as young adults would want to come and watch our film. We also decided on this age group because we didn't want to create a film that we wouldn't go to watch so we catered it to our own individual taste.
How did you attract/address your audience?
We addressed our audience by taking them on a journey through the two characters daily routine we feel that this will grab the audience's attention because we feel the audience will recognize part of themselves in the two main characters also we've used places where most teenagers go on the weekends e.g. Shopping Center's and taking the bus so we've really used place teenagers will relate too.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
When editing our piece we came across all new editing programmes the main one being Final Cut Pro, because none of us had used this particular editing programme before we were all abit overwhelmed, but as we edited a few scenes together we eventually got used to it. Another programme we used for the first time was music maker, this programme helped us record the song for our titles, this was by far the easiest element to produce because it took us the shortest amount of time and it only required one of us to manage everything. During the editing process I learnt alot about myself and I learnt that you need to take your time especially when using new programmes.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
From the preliminary task I have learnt how important storyboarding and organisation is key in producing a good media product. For the preliminary task it took us a very short amount of time to edit and film and we underestimated how many obstacles we would have to face when completing the larger part of the coursework. We also had to rely on a lot of things on the actual day of shooting for example, the battery not running out on the camera, the group turning up on time and the actors being ready on time. We also had to count on memebers of the public wouldn't run in front of the camera and causing us to re-shoot. We also had to overcome the fullness of the editing sweet because there were some days our mac was in use we had to re-work our plans but we managed to edit our overall product in two weeks and that left us time to file out any rough edges and re-work the song and the title.
Overall I feel we have created a very realistic opening sequence and it does a good job of telling a story.
