Main post 12.1

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

• Structure of sequence: I believe our structure generally supports the conventions of real media products as it successfully establishes the scene, some characters and reavling important members of the crew in a logical order.  
• Style of presentation: Aimed to be very Americanized conventionally, therefore differing from British film conventions slightly. This was achieved with the use of non-school uniform, American vocals in the backing track and the name of the film being '9th Grade' instead of 'Year 8'. The colour and style of the font within our sequence was aimed to follow conventions of comedy genre films; sans-serif, slightly childish and bright yellow font, connoting a unserious tone to the piece, as opposed to using a font such as Times New Roman. The opening sequences of comedy films which we analysed also used a similar style of font, so we were sure that we were following this convention.
• Style/colour of font: We chose a white san serif font on a black background or blended in to the clip. We chose a soft almost hand written font as it matched best to the requirements of a school based comedy, it would not have supported typical comedy conventions if it was in a bolder much harsher font, as it would not have represented the laid back schooling environment we was looking for.
• Genre: The genre we chose was comedy, a school based one in particular. We chose this because ourselves being teenagers could best relate to that than any other genre and through the results of several questionairres suggesting their is a need for more comedy films. Our piece develops the convention of a comedy as within the clip we incorparated several funny moments, an example being te main character falling over due to her shoe laces being tied together without her knowing.
• Narrative enigma: Our piece is stereotypical to the modern conventions of a school, as within every school there will be atleast one person who is bullied for there appearance or intelligance. The only way ours goes against the conventions as we have over emphasised on what the bulling is like, this was decided to have an impact on the audiance making them feel more for the character and question why she is bullied.
• Introduction of characters: The introduction of the main character is immediate and develops the conventions of a comedy, as she is first shown to stumble in to school late. This resulted in the initial laugh, which is key to any comedy opening sequence. However our piece does challange the modern conventions of real media products based around comedy as we introduce more than one main character and not just focus on the life of one character.   
• Camera: Our piece generally chalanges conventios as we have a large part of the opening sequence filmed "hand held". This was used to help the audience get involved with the scene and make them feel like they was following the main character around the school almost experiancing her misfortunes. Typical comedies would have used a more stable method.
• Sound: Our piece challanges the conventions of a comedy as there is no dialogue throughout the whole opening sequence. The only sounds present are a school bell ringing, a backing track and a scream from the main character can be heard when she falls over. The backing track itself develops conventions of a comedy as it is a stereotypical teen based rock song which works in tandem to a school based comedy.
• Editing & Special Effects: Modern day comedies generally have a quirky way in which they reveal the name of their film, our film also does this as we reveal the film name via pens assorted in a formation imaging the tittle being thrown up by a sheet of cling film, we then showed it in reverse to make the audience think the pens fell on to the floor in the correct order. 
• Mise-en-scene: The opening sequence develops the conventions as the main character being a "geek" is shown to be wearing big glasses, high socks and minimal make-up. The characters personer of being clumsey and eccentric also promote the fact she was developed as a character to be laughed at. The bully also develops conventions as he is big, wearing a leather jacket and generall in dark clothing. This is to make him seem "cool" and to be prtrayed as a "popular kid".