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

In order to answer this question clearly I will be splitting my answer up into sections: genre, narrative structure, form and style.

Genre

Our chosen genre was ‘chick-flick’. We as a group decided on this genre as we are all familiar and passionate about it, having each watched many chick-flicks ourselves. Therefore we were keen to take this genre on and create our very own of its kind. 

Here is a table showing some of the key conventions of the genre we found in our research, and how we either incorporated or challenged them in our opening sequence: 

Here is a table showing the conventions of opening sequences we learnt from our research, and how we have either followed these conventions or not-

Narrative Structure

From researching the narrative structures of chick flicks such as 'Wild Child' and 'St.Trinians', we found that many followed the structure of Todorov's narrative theory. Therefore we decided to apply this to our own film:

Equilibrium (our opening sequence)- Lauren and Scarlett go about their normal daily life and morning routine, getting ready for school.

Disequilibrium/disruption- Scarlett arrives at school for the first time and purposely targets Lauren and strategically 'ruins' her life; making up lies to turn her friends against her, she flirts with her boyfriend and eventually steals him, and spills secrets to her parents to get her into trouble. 

New Equilibrium/resolution- Lauren realises she is better off without her boyfriend, and Scarlett happily settles down with her new life. Both the girls make thier peace with each other, go off to university and never see each other again (possible flash forward). 

As mentioned above, our opening sequence was the part of our film which represented the equilibrium state. Straight after this the disruption took place, quite early on the film like most other chick flicks such as Wild Child and St Trinian's for example. We used the narrative device of ellipsis, and a lot of cross-cutting to convey this as we did not want to bore our audience and felt all aspects of the characters morning was not vital to include. 

Form and Style

• Here is a commentary video myself and my teammate Arianna made, in order to reflect upon some aspects of our opening sequence's style and form. We mainly discuss pace, editing techniques and mise-en-scene.

• We used an upbeat soundtrack to create a fun and girly mood for our sequence. I feel this was successful as many people commented on it during feedback, saying it 'fit the piece well' and was 'lively'. 'Full of Mesh' was the name of the track and it has no copyright so we were able to use it without asking permission (found on www.freeplaymusic.com). 

• We used many CU's (light blue) and MS's (green) in our sequence to show specific objects and expressions, but not many LS's (dark blue). Perhaps our establishing shot could have been wider (maybe a VLS) to give our audience a better sense of location. We also could have widened other MS's such the girls walking into school and Scarlett leaving her house to create the same effect. We did however include other types of shots such as OTS's (turn on shower shot) and used high and low angle shots where appropriate. 

• Looking back at our opening sequence I was worried there was not much that actually 'happened', our two girls merely got ready and arrived at school. However looking back at other opening sequences from our genre, most do not tell much of a story and have a similar narrative content to ours. For example the opening to 'Legally Blonde' (shown above) where a letter is received  Therefore I feel our sequence serves its function and purpose and follows the correct format.

Overall I feel our opening sequence is quite conventional for its genre as a majority of it shows the typical 'getting ready in the morning routine', however we have broken a few conventions, the main one I feel being that of having two main female protagonists, instead of just one. No chick-flick we researched had two female protagonists. 

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The only social group represented in our opening sequence is that of teenage girls, around the age of 16. 

INSPIRATION

Below are two of the characters we researched from chick-flick films to try and help us create and develop the characters of our own opening sequence- Lauren and Scarlett.

The characteristics of Tracy Turnblad from Hairspray symbolise the typical heroine in a chick-flick and so we tried to emulate these in Lauren's character. Lindsay from Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging conveys the complete opposite, as shown below, and so these were the personality traits we decided to portray through Scarlett.

In Wild Child, Poppy started out as a spoilt and rude child, but developed into a caring woman, and with this change came a change in her hair colour. Blondes are typically stereotyped to be dumb or mean in chick-flicks , and brunettes are represented as more friendly and mature. This is something we wanted to address and challenge in our film, and so we decided our 'good' girl (Lauren) should be blonde and our brunette would represent the 'bad' girl (Scarlett).

REPRESENTATION

Gender, Age and State of Mind-

These snap shots from our opening sequence show that we made applying make-up a staple part of every girls morning routine. Even though both of our girls are very different and apply their make up differently- for example Lauren wears a nude gloss whilst Scarlett opts for a bright red lipstick, both are still doing the same thing. This shows both girls care about their appearance and we are assuming all girls this age will want to look good and have a similar interest in make-up, clothes and appearance. 

Possibly the fact that we have made this assumption may put off girls that fit this age bracket, but do not share these interests with our protagonists.

SCARLETT                                                                                LAUREN

Since we were focusing on one social group, having two protagonists allowed us to represent this group from more than one angle- we represented teenage girls in a good light through Lauren but also showed them to have their negatives, through Scarlett. 

• Lauren, being the conventional and stereotypical girly girl has pink as her representative colour- her room is pink, covered with pink books, stationary and products, her walls plastered in posters as most girls her age do. She is shown to enjoy wearing girly clothes such as her heels, and satchel school bag. 
• Scarlett on the other hand has red as her representative colour- her room is bright red, along with her jacket, shoes and various products such as lipstick. She is more sexualised with her short skirt and the fact that she uses her phone as her alarm conveys the typical technologically obsessed teen. She is reluctant to get out of her bed and her room shows no sign of books, schoolwork and photos of friends, unlike Lauren's. 

Our use of split-screens really allowed us to highlight these differences and show the contrast between our two protagonists. 

RELEVANCE TO TODAY'S SOCIETY

When considering our characters we were very aware of the responsibility we held- many teenage girls can be easily influenced by what they watch and so we had to be careful with how we represented our protagonists. 

Many teenagers are given a bad name, with youth crime and bullying being the center of attention for our age group within the media, and so Lauren is a slightly unconventional teenage character in that sense. Scarlett conforms to this stereotype of a 'dangerous' teen more.

IMPROVEMENTS

1. Enhance the use of technology. We did have a shot of Lauren posting a facebook status however it was of poor quality and so we could unfortunately not use it. We could have instead had her or Scarlett texting, showcasing the importance of technology to our audience. 

2. Include Lauren's boyfriend (shown on right) in person in our sequence. We originally did have shots of him greeting Lauren at the school gates but there had to be scrapped after we changed our location for school. Using a male could have broadened our representations.

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Distributor: Studio Canal, Est. 1999

After extensive research, we found a new film 'Fast Girls' was being distributed by Studio Canal. The film is relatively similar to ours, being British and having female protagonists. 

They company have distributed critically acclaimed films such as 'I Give It A Year', 'Attack The Block', and 'The Awakening'. None of which are too similar to ours and so would allow the company to branch out with their films and yet still stay true to their style and allow us to reach our target audience. 

We felt they would be an ideal match for our film and also, have been said to have an 'innovative' approach to distribution, which is what a film like ours would need to gain attention. 

Other options:

• Entertainment Film Distributors (Hairspray, Sex and the City, 17 Again)

• Ruby Films (Tamara Drew, Jane Eyre)

• Working Title (Bridget Jones' Diary, Hot Fuzz, Atonement)

 Production Company: 

We created our own production company- Seagull Productions and created an ident to go with it which features at the beginning of our opening sequence. Creating our own production company allowed us to cater it to our specific film:

It is an independent British company, aiming to produce fun, universally appreciated films such as 'Pretty Popular', aimed at teenagers and young adults.

Hopefully one day Seagull productions could be as big as Ealing Studios! (An inspirational British production company for our group who created St. Trinians)

Distribution and Exchange

I feel our film has a wide enough appeal to be screened in mainstream cinemas in the UK such as Vue, Cineworld and Odeon. An ideal time for our release would be the Summer holidays, perhaps in August, when school children will have plenty of free time to visit the cinema and the themes featured in the film can relate to what they are expecting in the coming September month. Fast Girls was also released during summer, of the year 2012. 

This time of year is the most popular for cinemas, with the months of July and August having the highest number of cinema goers compared to all other months: http://www.launchingfilms.com/research-databank/
Releasing our film during this time will also really ensure we maximise profits.

If successful in cinemas, I would expect the film to then have a Blu-Ray, DVD and possibly a TV release, along with possible contracts with online movie streaming sites such as Netflix and LoveFilm. This would be similar to the distribution and exchange of 'Fast Girls', which is available on DVD, Blu-Ray, and has a contract with Netflix. 

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Originally, these were the profiles I created of our target audiences for our media product:

Core Target Audience Profile

Age: 16-24

Gender: Female (typically 'girly' females) 

Class: Middle Class, British

Interests: Clothes/fashion, watching films, socialising with friends, shopping, social networking sites, boys 

Cinema viewing: Visits local cinema once a month or more, Cineworld, Vue, Odeon etc. 

Main media useage: Social networking sites, magazines and radio.  

Secondary Target Audience Profile

Age: 16-24

Gender: Male

Class: Middle Class, British

Interests: Sports, watchig films, socialising with friends, soical networking sites, girls. 

Cinema Viewing: Visits local cinema once a month or more, Cineworld, Vue, Odeon etc. 

Main media useage: Social networking sites and TV. 

From looking back at our final product, and from feedback from those who have watched our sequence, I feel our core target audience has stayed the same, but we may have lost our secondary market:

   Quotes from feedback session, girls aged 16 and 17:

 Do you feel as if this film is aimed at you

                            and why?

    'I think it is because the opening clearly  

           shows it's about girls my age'

      Do you feel as though the film would

                 appeal to anyone else?

    'Maybe women that are a bit older, and

       younger girls too; any females really'

What about to males?

'No, it seems far too girly'

Do you think this film could be appreciated abroad?

I definitely think it could be, in countries like America or Australia perhaps, where they speak the same language and girls share similar lifestyles. 

We may have lost our secondary market since we have no male appearing in our sequence and we had originally planned to do so. (1st pie chart). Perhaps featuring a male could have opened up a new audience to us and increased their appeal (2nd pie chart), therefore broadening our overall audience. 

However, we do seem to have acquired a new, possibly more niche audience of pre-teen girls aged 8-13, and also widened our appeal to elder women and girls too, who can enjoy reminiscing about their school days, and the younger girls can watch our film and look forward and be excited by their school days to come.

WHY THIS AUDIENCE?

This audience is worth targeting as they make up a key proportion of cinema goers. 

As shown on the left, females visit the cinema considerably more than males, and our targeted age range is significant of the total percentage of all ages which visit the cinema. 

This means we are targeting a worthwhile and wide audience. 

Source: http://audiences.visualdna.com/mirror/audience/entertainment/cinema_goers

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

One way in which we attracted our audience was through the use of enigma. We did not give too much away so as to leave our audience guessing and wanting to watch more in order to find out answers to their pending questions:

• Who are the two girls? 
• What is their relation and how well do they know each other?
• Why did she barge into the other girl?
• Why do they not get along? 
• What happens next?

Another way we attracted our audience was by making our two protagonists aspirational to our target audience. Here are some traits our characters posses which some girls will desire and look up to:

A final technique we used was Katz and Blumler's Uses and Gratifications theory:

1. Personal Identity. Our female audience can easily relate to our girls (similar age) and their interests and perhaps appearance (hair colour, clothes, friends, make-up). This can be reassuring and comforting for our audience.
2. Entertainment. Our media text is here to be enjoyed, and we feel we created a fun and engaging opening sequence with catchy music, and our audience will then hopefully want to watch on.
3. Information. 'Pretty Popular' provides an insight into modern day British teenage girl's lives unlike any other film, as we ourselves are living this role in society and so can give a true perspective on it.
4. Relationships. Viewers can observe how characters interact with each other and compare this to their own relationships in real life. For example the friendships between Lauren and her two friends, as shown above. 

MARKETING

If our film were to have a marketing campaign I think it would be very important for technology to be at the forefront of it. Our audience is generally very tech-savvy and enjoy using their phones, computers and gadgets and devises and therefore an interactive, perhaps viral campaign could attract our audience most effectively. 

We could have a website as our central hub and then use Youtube to upload clips, interviews and trailers to spark an initial interest. We could also have a Facebook page and Twitter account to form a fan base for our film and update them on new releases and events related to our film.  

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Throughout this process, the use of technology has been a major component. There are some pieces of equipment which were familiar to me from studying media at a gcse level, however there were many new programs and technologies I have learnt about this year, as explained below.

When filming:

• Canon Legria HV30. This was the same camcorder used for our gcse studies so I was familiar with how to use it and we had no problems with overwriting footage or changing film. However this time, we did have to get a bit more creative. For example when shooting our panning shot of Scarlett's feet as she steps out of bed and walks to the door, we used a skateboard in order to get a smooth pan at the level we needed!

• Lighting. This was a new piece of equipment for me, and took some getting used to. Firstly, safety was quite an issue here as the lights would heat up extremely quickly, and any metal components would therefore become hot to touch. This required us to use thick gloves when handling the equipment. We also learnt not to keep lights on in-between shots because as well as getting hot themselves, they would heat up a room quickly and we once had to take a short break from filming in order to cool the room down. The lights were also quite bulky and heavy, and so I would not recommend taking them on public transport as they are not very portable. 
• We also used a tripod to get steady still shots and tracks, and a microphone for picking up sound in shots when needed (sink shot), as well as a clapperboard.  

When editing: 

• Adobe Premier Pro. This is the program we used to capture and edit our footage. 

 ^The left shot is cropped 50% from the right, and the right shot is cropped 50% from the left. The shots also need to be overlapping to create a split-screen.

In order to grade our shots we used Procamp to adjust brightness and contrast, and three way to add some 'pinkness' to our shots. We were aiming to create very bright and colourful shots.

BEFORE

 AFTER

 PROCAMP

THREE WAY COLOUR CORRECTOR

Problems

When editing some of our shots, we found some where of better quality than others, depending on wether or not we had positioned the lights properly, or used them at all. If a shot had the light pointing directly at the object or person, it would look very unnatural, whereas a shot which did not have any lighting on it ended up looking a bit grainy and dull (for example Lauren's draw shot) compared to the rest. We realised later on it was vital to use the lights for all of our shots to ensure continuity with our shot quality. We overcame this slightly though through our grading.

Shown above was our first 'school' location, we filmed outside a park hoping that when it came to editing we could create a school sign and symbol 9shown below) to create the look of school gates. However, we soon realised this would not work, and as you can see above it looks a bit tacky. We were all not happy with how the location had come out and how the symbol looked on the brickwork. We decided to re-shoot outside our own school and are much happier with the outcome!

• Livetype. This is the program we used to create our titles. We could change fonts, effects and colour of the text here. After doing so we would need to import them onto Adobe Premier Pro and here we could edit their running time, scale and position them accordingly to fit their shots.  

Here are some of our titles in which we used a 'motion' effect on LiveType to create movement of a title. 

1. The title spirals down the sink
2. The title gets blown away by the hairdryer
3. This title does not move, however we tilted it so it appeared to be stuck on the wall.

Staying organised:

As well as schedules and lists printed on paper, we also used technology to help us plan meetings, shoots, and generally keep in contact with each other on a day-to-day basis. We found using technology helped us immensely in ensuring our project ran smoothly.

 If we had hard copies of documents we all needed to refer to, such as the two shot lists shows on either side, we would take pictures of them and upload them to our school intranet so everyone could have the ability to view them.

Below is a schedule we kept showing the times each member of the group was free to edit; during lunchtimes, after school or in free periods.

Another way we kept in touch was through our Facebook group, shown below. 

Overall, the use of technology played a huge part in our project, especially during the editing process I feel, as this is when we could use all of our technologies mentioned above in conjunction with each other, to create a much more professional looking piece as amateur film makers.