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

Our opening sequence both uses and challenges the forms and conventions of both rom-coms and opening sequences to try and create a recognisable but interesting opening to a rom-com film.

Plot
'The Life of Guy' is a rom-com following our main character 'Guy' who happens to be a university student. The film is a flashback which features Guy talking about how he used to be a social outcast, we see how he changes and how by the end of the film, he is integrated. This is with the help of new and soon to be best friend, Lindy, who teaches Guy how to act. The film opens with an awful date attempt but ends with Guy walking with the girl of his dreams.

Form
Please watch the opening of our chosen example up to 3:40 for the whole opening.

• Our opening was very typical in the form we followed with very little challenges to the typical features of an opening sequence.

 Our opening is clearly very similar to that of John Tucker Must Die:

• It has plain white titles varied in placement around the screen, like John Tucker Must Die does
• We have production and distribution titles at the beginning in the same style
• The main character Guy is introduced in a similar way to how Kate is introduced from John Tucker Must Die
• The Genre is clearly shown in our opening by the fact that Guy is talking about his date and is seen to go on it at the end, this is also done in John Tucker Must Die where Kate talks about her love life

The titles in our opening

Challenges to Form

• The major challenge we made was introducing the title at the end of opening rather than the beginning as is seen in John Tucker Must Die and also in most films. We felt it fit better to have the title at the end though.

Genre (Rom-com)

In a Rom-com there is a standard character list which is common to most Rom-coms, this is:

• Hero - the male love interest usually
• Princess - the female lead role who is the other love interest
• Sidekick - the confidante of the protagonist who may be quite funny or offers good advice

E.G. 40 Year Old Virgin:

• Hero - Andy
• Princess - Trish
• Sidekick - Jay/Cal/David

E.G. Thor (Romantic Element)

• Hero - Thor
• Princess - Jane Foster
• Sidekick - Darcy

In our film, we have Guy as the hero, Bella and then Sophie (his future love interest) as the princess and Lindy (his friend) as the sidekick.

Typical themes include:

• Love
• Friendship
• Betrayal (often for comedy)

Our film follows this as it's the journey of Guy's search for love but it also brings in the friendship of Lindy along the way. 

Events

It is important to highlight the genre focuses of the film in the opening events in our genre. So for us, the main ideas are romance and Guy's current way of life i.e. failing.

This is very similar in She's The Man which features the focus of the film (love and football) in the opening as the main character is seen to be kissing her boyfriend and playing football at the beach in the opening.

Mise-en-scene

• Setting - is usually in a place of work, education or just somewhere in a City although this is not exclusive, The Life Of Guy is set in a University so this follows conventions
• Lighting - is usually warm to portray the sense of love in certain shots and is generally high key as these films are often light-hearted unlike an action film
• Costume - Pretty casual depending on where the film is set but the comedic or weirder characters often have a strange dress sense, this is very true with Guy in our opening
  

Breaks in Convention

• The biggest break in convention we have is the fact that the film is set from Guy's point of view, this is uncommon in rom-coms but what makes ours even more different is the fact that Guy almost starts off as the princess because he needs to be saved, but from himself because he isn't getting anywhere. Eventually, he turns into the hero though
• We done this to target more men and achieve a gender neutral audience

Narrative Structure

• Like many films, we used Todorov's theory of equilibrium, disequilibrium, resolution, new equilibrium to move the plot forward. This is a table comparing The Life of Guy to the Inbetweeners showing how:

Specific Narrative Techniques

• Ellipsis - Boring and unnecessary scenes such as Guy walking between rooms were cut out to speed up the pace
• Cross-cutting - We cross-cut between Guy running and Bella waiting in order to connote how long she was waiting for
• Flashback - Our whole opening is a flashback of what Guy used to be like anchored by our voiceover
• Enigma Codes - The audience will be keen to know how Guy reacts after being rejected at the date like that

Style

Soundtrack

• We found that many films in our genre use a happy or upbeat soundtrack in their openings such as 'The Other Woman', so we followed this and used 'The Life of Riley' as our soundtrack:

Colours

• We wanted to go for warm colours as this was common in our genre, this meant that we used spotlights on the indoor shots to get the desired effect and the sun on the outdoor shots

This is very similar in Pitch Perfect which uses very warm colours when the main character does the romantic gesture of singing her love interest's favourite song.

Our opening has the mixed dialogue of a voiceover and speech which is uncommon in openings but we feel it is necessary otherwise the plot may be a bit unclear without the either of those. This is similar for John Tucker Must Die which does the same thing.