Question One

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

When researching the genre of Romantic Comedies it came to my attention that not a lot of titles were used during the film opening, in fact in ‘Friends with Benefits’ only three titles were used: the company, the production and the actual title. Therefore I wanted to take these these generic conventions into consideration with my film opening; it only feature the production name and the title. I think that this would be relevant and effective because it gave the impression that you didn’t need to credit the actor’s names straight away because you should already know who they are. However, other members in my group wanted to include more titles such as: directed by, costume designers, written by etc. Therefore I was out numbered.

Furthermore, included in the dominant genre of Romantic Comedy there is also a sub- genre and hybrid identity of a ‘Chick Flick’ as it is a stereotypical ‘boy meets girl, they fall in love, and live happily ever after’.  I think that this is effective as it matches perfectly with the main genre and fits the codes and conventions.

Although from the first few seconds of the opening it may seem like the stereotypical conventions of a Rom Com, however during the end it comes clear that there is a break of new ground of challenging the conventions due to a twist in the plot.  I took my inspiration of this from the Romantic Comedy ‘Friends with Benefits’, thus this has had an influence on my opening. The reason I did this was because when I watched the film I was so shocked as it was really unexpected therefore I wanted my target audience to have that same immediate reaction from watching my film opening.