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

Very early in the planning process, the group concluded on creating a media text in the 'British Indie Drama'' genre as it was a genre of films which we all consumed, so we knew how to include conventions but also were aware of constant themes and ideas which we could challenge. 

MAIN STORYLINE

We decided on Todorov's Narrative Theory ( Equilibrium - Disequilibrium - Resolution) when constructing the storyline of our film.

Equilibrium - The families of the protagonists are separate. They don't have to act upon their prejudices because they have nothing to do with each other.

Louis skating from a more middle class area

                                                 

Vivian and Friend walking through their working class council estate

Disequilibrium - The teenagers from the two families meet and eventually fall in love. The racist views of both their family surface, particularly from Melissa's older brothers. Melissa's brothers are then involved in a fight, which Clem steps in to help and unfortunately gets stabbed.

Resolution - Both families come together to support Clem in hospital. The families reflect on their views and realise they were wrong. Clem gets better and their relationship continues happily.

COSTUME CONVENTIONS:

Shaniqua:

Unable to embed multiple vokis,
watch here:
http://www.voki.com/pickup.php?scid=9627320&height=267&width=200

<--- Costume as described in the Voki.

Character References:

• 'Naz' from British Drama Short 'Flea
• 'Alisha' from Misfits Series 1

Melissa:

Unable to embed multiple vokis,
watch here:
http://www.voki.com/pickup.php?scid=9631760&height=267&width=200

<-- Costume as described in the Voki

Character References:

• 'Jane' from the film 'A Bronx Tale'
• 'Shakes' from British Film 'Sket'

Clem:

<--- Costume as described in Voke

Character References:

• 'Freddie' from skins

SETTING:

Since we aimed to create n urban drama, we thought it was only appropriate to have an urban setting.

We worked within the same conventions of having a stereotypically presented estate that looked dirty, dull and disused as presented in the 'Summerhouse' estate in the Channel 4 British Drama 'Top Boy.' 

We used the idea of two teenage girls talking with the estate as a backdrop that we see in the British Urban Crime Drama, 'Ill Manors.'

We developed the idea of having a predominately urban setting by juxtaposing shots of the estate with shots of Louis skating from a more affluent area. This contrast in settings also helped us further communicate the differences in the characters lifestyles.

TITLES:

In order to maintain the focus on the drama unfolding in the sequence, we placed static simplistic plain white text in the corners of our screen, this is seen in a lot of British Indie Films:

Titles in the Opening of 'Ill Manors'

Titles in the Opening of 'Sket'

We particularly like the use of titles in the British Indie Drama 'Somers Town' and therefore conformed to the convention of minimalist small titles, drawing heavy inspiration from Somers Town.

GRADING

We wanted to have e an urban gritty washed out colour to our film. We were therefore inspired by the TV Show 'Misfits' who colour grading is what we envisaged ours to look like.

The bright colours appear slightly dull and faded and therefore reflect the more sombre atmosphere we tried to create.

THEMES AND ICONOGRAPHY 

We developed the typical 'love' theme into 'forbidden love,' looking to Romeo and Juliet for inspiration. However we challenged Romeo and Juliette's stereotypical presentation of forbidden love by making the couple interracial as opposed to using a single race. This has a stronger appeal to our target audience and makes our film more unique.

In the film we plan to challenge the conflict and gang violence conventions by making the white indie male (Clem) get stabbed as opposed to the black 'chavy' older brother characters.

iPhone - convention of young people to always have technology
Cheap Juice - we used the convention of young people buying cheap snacks but by giving the snack particularly to Shaniqua it helps create the idea of someone from a working class background with minimal money.
Bus Stop - semiotic code for the journey (their relationship) Clem and Melissa are about to take. Also conforms to conventions of young people always going out.
Skateboard - typical of an 'indie boy'



We used Levi Straus' theory of Binary Opposites to make our film interesting:

• Female vs Male
• Working Class vs Middle class

We used Barthes' Theory of Semiotics in our opening

To summarise, our group used conventions where it was appropriate because certain pieces of information about the characters needed to be planted strongly in the mind of the audience and the clearest way to do this, in places, was to simply adhere to conventions. We used them to increase audience and appeal and not at all to create a conventional film. If we felt a convention was heavily repeated and there was room for us to build upon it, we developed it. Although, sometimes we found it necessary to challenge conventions completely as we either felt they weren't actually that correct, or to create unique selling points for our film.

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

Script:

The highlighted vocabulary are our very specific use of slang as to not over-load it and make it look fake but incorporate some of the slang we as teenagers used every day.

Addressing each other with "Oi" and "Man" and using curse words like "fuck" and "dickheads" represents the stereotypes of working class girls being loud, inappropriate and at times anti-social and impolite; we see this in Kiddulthood.

Extract from conversation between two girls in kiddulthood. Talking openly about inappropriate things, using slang "proper ghetto" and "buff"

Behaviour:

Misfits 'Alisha' rolling her eyes conforming to rude mixed race girl stereotype

Shani conforming to this stereotype 

Film 'Sket' Showing youth, particularly working class girls, loitering on someone elses wall, smoking, putting there feet up - being antisocial.

We developed how working class females were stereotyped so although they are loitering, they aren't doing anything antisocial.

Relationships:

(Click image to enlarge text)
Shows young working class teenage girls involuntarily influence each others styles

(Click image to enlarge text)

Our representation of young working-class teenage girls influencing each others styles

In this variety of ways, I think our social group is represented accurately - blending stereotypes with challenges to the stereotype.

3. What kind of media institution is likely to produce your media product and why?

PRODUCTION COMPANY: PIGEON PRODUCTIONS

As a group we decided to make our own production company "Pigeon Productions."

The pigeon is a bird which immediately connotes London due to the vast population of pigeons found everywhere around London.



Pigeons by London Underground

Pigeons riding Boris Bikes

We therefore used this clip in our film for Pigeon Productions:

By placing in enigma code of "Why are the pigeons walking backwards?" in the first few seconds of our film, we are already setting the audience up for a thought-provoking unique British film.

FUNDING: FILM 4

"Great Films You Know, Great Films You Don't"

Film 4 are renowned for funding films that tackle taboo subjects such as racism and then progress to offer a moral thought-provoking experience to the audience at the end of the film. Our film follows that structure exactly and so would be very suited to be funded by Film 4.
We were pretty certain they'd fund our film because films they have previously funded films which tackle similar themes ours: 

Incorporates themes of young romance



Incorporates themes of youth

Ideas of unlikely relatiosnhips



Incorporates themes of racism and violence (more extreme)



                                     

MAIN DISTRIBUTOR : REVOLVER ENTERTAINMENT 





We chose Revolver Entertainment because as well as distributing films similar to ours, they are said to be "experts in youth entertainment exploiting both physical and digital home entertainment distribution channels." Since our primary audience are 16-24 year olds, who are very active mostly online and particularly on social media, Revolver have the skills to target them specifically and therefore make them aware of our film.
They use below the line methods such as

Revolver's Twitter - has a strong following, they can tweet about our film and it will appear straight on our audiences twitter timelines.

Revolvers Facebook - whilst marketing our film, they can post clips and other short-form content which will generate hype across our primary audience. People can then share these clips and awareness will naturally grow

Films with similar themes to us, like Kiddulthood, had a four week limited theatrical distribution and then it was put on to DVD. I think Revolver would be ideal because this sounds like the perfect distribution plan for us. It was well received in the cinemas, making £400000 but it wouldn't last long, due to its lack of things like CGI and SFX its not necessary to be viewed in a cinema. Piracy would therefore become a huge limiting factor on the amount of people watching it start to eat into profits very quickly if Kiddulthood was available in cinemas any longer and I think this is exactly the case for what could happen to our film.

Collage of films they have distributed that have urban, thought-provoking and 'unlikely romance' themes similar to our film, meaning they would be likely to take ours on boards

Our film would be released in cinemas like :
Enfield Cineworld - inner north london, accesible by lots of our target audience
Angel Vue - close to lots of our target audience
The Aubin Cinema - indie and in Shoreditch for our alternative audience


We expect it to thrive on DVD, Film 4 and on platforms like 'Netflix' because these are platforms where young people consume a lot of their films.

Netflix has a British Drama category which our film could do well in.

'Fish Tank' a film with  similar themes to ours, extremely well received on Netflix - reinforcing the fact our film would do well on Netflix.

 iTunes would also be a good platform to watch our film:

iTunes Top 100 Chart - Variety of films from different genres, Hollywood and Independent Institutions both doing very well; our film stands a chance here especially as a lot of young people have iTunes.

Choosing to produce and distribute our film in this way would ensure it reached the correct audiences and would therefore be very successful.