Evaluation

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

You only have to look at our titles to see that our media product uses the conventions of a romantic comedy film. We have gender colored our titles, using blue titles for the male actors as it's a color that is mostly associated with boys and pink for the female actors as pink represents femininity and both are often prime colors in rom-coms for example 'The Breakup'.

The music in which we have used in our film again uses the conventions of a romantic comedy as it is an actual pop song. It suits a film not only because of the buoyant tune and theme throughout but also the title of the song is the same as the title of our film 'Something For The Weekend'.

Our casting and storyline also stick to romantic comedy conventions as it is a boy meets girl storyline, we have not tried to challenge the convention by having a same sex love interest. With having the love interest as being male and female we have also casted the two main characters to be portrayed as easy on the eye and successful. The significance of this casting being that often most romantic comedies are based upon women’s fantasies of the ‘perfect relationship’ and so we are staying true to the romantic comedy criteria.

With the main characters bringing the romantic element to the film, the major characters bring the comedy aspect to the film. By having looks and success in contrast to the main characters our major characters bring laughter and disaster to the film.

We challenge the convention of a romantic comedy in two ways, one being the opening scene is a preparation for a night out and is not a grand stylish opening compared to traditional romantic comedy films such as ‘how to lose a guy in 10 days’ .

Also unlike most romantic comedy the main female character is not blonde in our film, challenging the convention, the reason for this is we did not just want the stereotypical ‘blonde bimbo’ in our film we wanted to represent the modern woman with a great career ahead of her and not just type cast to one certain hair color.

 

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

‘Something for the weekend’ represents particular social groups as all the characters in the film are teenagers. We show the difference in male and female teens in our film through the maturity of the humour in the different dialogues as stereotypically girls mature at an earlier and faster rate than boys and our comedy aspects in the film represent this.


In our representation of social groups we have been fairly conventional. The two boys are both straight and are going out on a night out to pull girls which is a stereotypical storyline that most teenage boys can relate to for a weekend activity. Same as the girls, the fact that they are doing their make up in the opening scene suggests that teenage girls take care in their appearance, however we represent two different social groups between the two girls, as Kate the main character has higher morals than Tina in the film who is of a lower class to her, opening up the theory do people of a higher class have higher morals than people in a lower class?


Like the contrast of class between the two girls in the film, we also have this in our film for the two boys. Harry’s dialogue is a lot more polite and sophisticated to that of the lower class Bug again posing a question, Do people of a higher class have more decorum then those of a lower class?

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

The film studio which would most likely distribute our film would be Working Title Films due to their history of distributing previous romantic comedies.

As our film stays true to majority of the romantic comedy conventions, I feel  Working Title Films would enjoy and therefore distribute our movie. Researching into romantic comedies that they have produced in the past I feel ‘Something For The Weekend’ is very similar to them and therefore they would favour our film and distribute it.

As for our film, I feel it is neither a big budget it venture nor a smaller independent film. Due to the fact there are no special effects needed in our film, or high speed car chases present in it, unlike an action movie a big budget is not needed however I do not feel as if it is a smaller independent film as because of the potential of the storyline with the right funding this film can make big waves in the romantic comedy market, waves that Working Title Films cannot afford to lose out on.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

As the certificate for our film is a 12 the audience for our film would be young adults and upwards. This is due to the audience being able to relate to our film or not, for example a 9 year old would not be able to relate to a 19 year old boy falling in love with a girl from his English class, nor would it be remotely interested. Another factor for our audience to be 12+ is the content of the film, the humour has a very much sexualised tone to it which would not be suitable for children to watch.

We understand that traditionally women tend to watch romantic comedies more than men so we have added factors that would attract women to watch our film for example having a tall dark male to play the main character, as research suggests this is what most women look for in a guy. Also the romantic story line that features in the film will attract our women audience as a love story is what they enjoy the most in a film, however we still have the comedy aspect in their to attract the male audience.

How did you attract/address your audience?

As I already stated previously, we used different ways to attract our audience taking everything in to account. Our main focus was attracting the female audience as romantic comedies tend to be more ‘girly’ orientated as that’s the most popular market for them.

So to attract the female audience, as previously stated, we casted a tall dark male as the main character as that is a major romantic comedy convention and we intended to stick to this. We also took the romantic story line into account as that was a crucial element to attract a female audience, so the script, camera angles, acting and background music were the key ingredients to develop romance.

But we didn’t want to put all our eggs in one basket and so to attract a male audience was important to us even if it is the minority of our target audience. So to attract the men to watch our film we used the comedy elements in the film, especially with the scenes involving the lads in our film there was a strong focus on ‘boyish’ humour and banter between characters so male viewers could relate to it and enjoy watching it.

Marketing wise we were a lot more traditional than most film production companies in the 21^st century, we created posters  to be put on billboards and around cinema venues and even had a trailer in the cinemas so before big movies that people watched our film would be advertised and hopefully they would come and see our film. Viral marketing was very limited for our film, however we had trailers that were available online such as YouTube and VEVO .  

The main advertising technique that we relied on though was word of mouth, as we feel if people are talking about it then they will come and watch our film.

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


Over the period of time in which I have made my short film, I have learnt various new things about technologies.
Just on the blog alone I have learnt how to import pictures and videos on to it. 
Then in filming my film I have learnt how to use the Sony HD camera, learning various camera angles to make my film more effective and then learning how to transfer for my footage from the camera on to the Mac's. Other equipment I used in the filming process was the tripod so our filming could be as steady as possible.
In the editing process I have learnt how to use the software Adobe Premier, so my film can be edited in to the finished article. I learnt how to import music and other files, so they can be in my movie. I also learnt how to use all the different effects on Adobe such as dissolves and fades so my film can flow or the effect can represent a passing of time resulting in it to look as professional as possible. 

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?


The preliminary task, I felt was like a taster to introduce us to filming. We learnt valuable rules and techniques like the 180 degree rule and match on action shot in which we have used in our film.
It also introduced us to the technological software such as the Sony HD cameras, tripods and then the editing software on the Mac Computers, such as Adobe and Garageband. The preliminary task gave us the valuable experience we needed to film our movie.
Since then though we have improved and gained more comfortable in using these devices and therefore our movie has a lot more camera angles, effects and overall professionalism. 
Our choice of music since the preliminary task has got better, as we now understand what type of music suits a certain genre of film.