3) In what ways does your media products use, develop or change forms and conventions of real life media products? (i.e. of film openings)

How the characters are introduced.. 

In these screenshots you can see one way we have challenged the conventions. Even though the two girls were best friends we decided to make them have completely different. For example they had two different fashion styles, got too work in two different ways and as we find out later, have two different jobs. This therefore connotes that they have two different lives. I think this challenges the conventions as it shows they have two different lives and are completely different whereas friends are usually quite similar. (see image 1 & 2)

Costumes & Props.
From these two images you can see the difference in characters between their costumes. You can see the Ellie is dressed in a coat, dungarees, leggings & converse. This is quite a childish outfit and breaks the conventions because of this. Then on the top image we can see Jessica who is dressed in heels, tights, skirt & blouse and is dressed quite smartly. This again breaks the conventions of rom-com as these sort of characters are rarely humorous and therefore, rarely have a lead role in a romantic-comedy film. (see images 1 & 2)

Story and how the opening sets it up.. 

 The main relationship in our rom-com was between the two girls, Jessica & Ellie. This challenges the normal convention of rom-com's as the main relationship is usually between the man and the woman. Even though the narrative revolves around romance and the troubles of the two girls and this one man, the main storyline revolves around the troubles of the two girls, which is one way we broke the conventions. (see images 5 & 6)

Title font and style. 

- we chose to challenge the conventions of typical Rom-Com by having many different fonts & styles in our title. We wanted it to be something that audiences would remember for the way it looked. For example, in 'Love Acctually', the colours and font continue the whole way through the title. I think we broke the conventions of the title. (see image 4.)


The title of the film. 
We first thought of the idea for our film from our focus group, when we asked for suggestions from them at the end of the interview,  A girl in it called Katie suggested the name 'Two can play at that game' and all of us (including our interviewees) agreed it fitted the narrative and was a catchy one. (see image 4) This title stuck with the conventions of Rom-Coms as it was a catchy slogan that people say alot. Other examples of this are in 'Just go with it', 'Just Married, 'You've got mail' and 'Employee of the month',

Setting & Location. 

 The first setting we used was my bedroom. We decided to use my bedroom as i have a single bed which will connote the character to be living at home. We also decided to have her in this room as my room is quite childish and reflects the personality we decided for Ellie. I think changes media conventions as the main character is usually quite developed and knows what she wants with her life, whereas Ellie doesn't. (see image 5)

This is our second setting, which was filmed in Kirstie's mums room. We decided to film it here so as to connote that Jessica is a mature adult. We felt this room was very mature yet still showed Jessica's personality as very pink and girly- referring back to her costume choices. We thought this broke the conventions as we used it as a comparison to Ellie's life and it showed how different the girls are, whilst usually two friends are quite similar. (see image 6)





Camerawork & Editing. 


Throughout the whole film we use editing to introduce our two characters. The whole point of our opening was to show the audience the difference between the two characters. We done this by cross-cutting our shots to compare the two. Again, this helps us to demonstrate how the girls are both so different- which is what we chose to break against the typical conventions. Also, in the bathroom scene with Lucy (see image 8u) we tried to use the camera to communicate the genre of comedy. We did this to portray Lucy at a humorous angle which shows her disorientation in the mornings, again which portrays her as the comical character and breaks against the conventions.


Genre and how the opening suggests it? 


Our opening sequence gives lots of hints about our genre to the audience. The first way we did this was through the amount of comedy elements. For example, Ellie falling over, toothpaste round her mouth, the kids throwing things at her, the girl on crutches and Lucy's comedy run. Another way we define the genre is through the characters personalities and their differences. For example, when Lucy is portrayed to be very clumsy and dorky helps to define the genre. Another way is through the voiceover, as Lucy's tone of voice is very clumsy and 'cheeky', which again shows off her character to be comical.