In what way does your Media Product USE, Develop or Challenge forms and conventions of real media products.

I have researched several opening sequences such as American Psycho, Sunset Boulevard, Spiderman 2, Lady Hawke and haunted mansion. We done this to make sure that we followed the codes and conventions that a real media opening sequence follows. The characteristics that I found that were most dominant in the opening sequences I found were that:
· Music is an important feature of the opening it is used to create atmosphere such as suspense, seen in American psycho or fear present in the haunted mansion.
· Establishing shots
· Setting the Theme of the film
· Credits
· Establishing Main Characters
· Giving hints to narrative

All these elements are present in our op0eing sequence.

Our opening sequence follows the codes and conventions of the genre of a teen film and also has elements of a rom com, like love actually.

Teen films are usually set in secondary schools or high schools and themes consisting of popularity: seen:, social groups: where Ben is seen as a geek , young relation ships: Bret and Tiffany, friends circles: Tia , Amy and Tiffany , Alpha males/ jocks , plastic girls, superior and inferior characters ect.

These characteristics are present in other teen dramas such as “Mean girls” , “Porkies” “Nepoleon Dynamite” , “ Super Bad” and “High School Musical” all these films I have used as a reference to help me when following codes and convention of this particular genre.

As seen in our sequence the whole narrative is based in barking abbey secondary school, which follows the codes and conventions of most teen films where they are set in some type of schooling institution such as secondary school (Waterloo Road/ Inbetweeners).

We established our main characters in our opening sequence this is done to help the audience recognise who the narrative will be about and introduce these characters to the audience.

The main specification of our task was to take a Fairy tale and modernise it. So we chose beauty and the beast. To complete our task we had to research many fairy tales from many different cultures such as: Beauty and the beast ( French Fairy tale), The Bird of truth (Spanish fairy tale), Cinderella ( Greek fairy tale), the Enchanted pig ( Romanian fairy tale, the girl without hands ( German Fairy tale) and the boy who cried wolf ( Dutch Fairy Tale). Researching these fairy tales help us underline the key factors that are present in most fairy tales.

Family connections
Royalty
Death
Marriage
Quest / journey
Natural elements of nature
Helpful Characters
Ultimatums or a ban on action
Elementary colours such as gold and silver holding significant importance
Special Objects
Magic
Enchanted creatures
Human to Animal interaction
Mystery and secrets
Love - Falling in love Fast
Morals
Birth Rights / Inheritance
Justice for bad deeds
Supernatural
Good vs. Evil
Time Periods




A ban on action: Where Tiffany is not allowed to go home and must go book club

Royalty: Tiffany is seen as royalty in the school as she is above and respected by everyone else
Happy ending: This is seen in the end of the narrative

These are just a few of the codes and convention of Fairytales that we have featured.

However our narrative also challenges these elements of a fairy tale because we do not have no magic or any enchanted creatures or a quest.

In our opening sequence we see the clear social difference between the two main character Tiffany and Ben by the way they interact witch each other and camera angles use, i.e. high camera angles looking down to Ben and low camera angles looking up to Tiffany.