Evaluation question 1

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

I think you can recognise that our video is an opening title sequence firstly because of the titles. Our titles are shown in a more artistic way than mainstream chick flick title sequences, we used things around us to create them. This is similar to the titles in Napoleon Dynamite.

Also i would recognise our video as a title sequence because we are introduced to each character and we find out a little bit about them and about what kind of person they are. Similar to the opening title sequence of Raising Helen when we are introduced to the main character and we are shown what her life is like.

Our film genre was chick flick, we looked at other chick flick title sequences to find out how the genre was established. We showed our genre by revealing the main characters to the audience,as they were all girls it was very obvious that this film was centred around females and this would show that the film was a chick flick. In the title sequence we showed all the four friends getting ready to go out, slightly showing their life. This is regularly done in chick flick title sequences.

We challenged the conventions by the way we displayed the titles, most chick flicks have simple, formal, 'girly' text but we made our titles from things around us. We did things such as writing on mirrors with lipstick and putting labels on clothes. We thought this would make our title sequence more interesting. So the mise-en-scene in the title sequence was very important. Also we showed all 4 main characters usually you would just see one main character but we wanted to show the contrast in character we felt this made the title sequence more engaging.

Our title sequence does support Levi Straus' theory of binary oppositions. In our titles it is the girls who are popular and pretty vs the girl who doesn't really care and is the outcast of the group and we tried to show this through attitude and mise-en-scene.  We felt it was important that the audience understood the binary opposition in the first scene as this was the main synopsis of the film. We felt this was also what made people want to watch the movie, so if we could establish the difference people would continue to watch to see how it would progress and what would be the outcome.

Final Production

Final title sequence

Response to first draft

The response to the first draft is shown below:

Filming : Molly

This is Molly, she is another one of Julez's followers.  She will receive a text and be getting ready to go to meet her friends.


Prop list:
Make-up
Clothes
Phone
post it note
shoes
grips


Risk assessment:
Clutter in the bedroom whilst filming may be an issue, particularly whilst using the tripod, so the area must be cleared to insure no damage to the camera or tripod will be made.
There is a scene outside where I film  molly coming out of her house, so the obvious risk would be passing cars on the road. To avoid this risk I should keep to the pavement and watch out for passing traffic.


We took out the shot list when we went filming, but we did not follow it exactly as some ideas were more manageable than others.

First draft edit

This is our first draft of our title sequence

Research and Planning: Photos of cast

Juliette Webb is going to be our 'Queen Bee'.

Molly Hall is going to be one of the other girly girls

Laura Turner is going to be the other girly girl.

Jodie Shane is going to be the 'outcast'.

Audience research: Facebook group

The facebook group we set up really helped us in terms of putting ourselves in our target audience´s place.

Most girls were in agreement that the queen bee is goodlooking, popular and rich, and wears nice designer clothes. Alll the girls asked in our facebook group would respond better to the down to earth character than to the queen bee. Some of the reasons for that are that girls watching the film can usually relate to her better, since they are not in the position of the queen bee and the main character is usually nicer.
Many different ideas were mentioned when asked what they expect to happen in a chick flick. Some girls said they would expect a popular girl to fall in love with a geeky boy or an unpopular girl becoming popular. Some girls expect a love story with lots of             drama, but also a bit of comedy.





We asked the invited girls whether they think our mood board represents the chick flick genre well and all of them said they do because there are many typical things in it girls like or expect to be in a chick flick. It also displays a girly girl´s world or ideal world.

We showed a picture of a girl we considered as an actress for the queen bee and asked whether she is typical looking for a queen bee. Everybody said she does, since she is goodlooking and rather attractive.

We also showed opening sequences of two chick flicks and asked for example why they can connect with the main charcater, which character they like the most and what they would expect to happen next.
The audience usually likes the main character the most, because they can identify with her, since she is normal and down to earth.
The answers to those questions help us to set up our own main character.