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

1. The title of the film
The title of the film was suggested by Katie who took part in the focus group we conduced. Katie fitted in with our target audience and her coming up with this idea, rather than '2 can play that game' like we first suggested, made it feel like our film was getting involved and catching the target audiences' eye just by the name. We agreed that fitted our story line and it was quite catchy and allowed us to be creative with it when producing the titles.


2. Setting/location
We used many different settings within our opening sequence. Firstly we used Becky's bedroom for the character of Ellie as it has a single bed with comical duvets which could connote that our character is still living at home, and is quite childish still. This is the kind of character we was trying to portray when we decided on location. This could challenge the conventions of the opening sequence of a romantic comedy as they mostly open with a tidy, mature well developed character which can set a mature atmosphere for the rest of the film.

Another setting we choose was a more mature bedroom, with a double bed, tidy room, which connoted that Jessica was more of a mature adult compared to Ellie. Although it was very mature, it still allowed the audience to reflect and become aware of Jessicas personality due to the pink decor. We made the difference between the 2 characters go against the conventions of a romantic comedy as usually in films like ours, the characters have very similar personality's and lead different lives, where we have made them be very different and also lead very different lives.

In the screen shot, the image I have chosen shows the location in which Ellie works. It shows that she is dedicated to her work and by the looks of the colourful room, she is a very happy person. The children in the classroom and their actions show the stress which she has to go through during her work days. This goes with the conventions of a Romantic comedy as we are letting the audience have a insight to the life of the character rather than just focusing on their social life and the romance side.


3. Costume and props
From the two images, there is a clear distinction from the characters costumes showing their differences. Ellie is waking up from her sleep wearing novelty Disney pyjamas, novelty slippers, in a sponge bob bed quilt holding a teddy. When she decides to get dressed she dresses in a casual way wearing dungarees, leggings, converse and a coat although she is going to work. On the other hand Jessica is wearing a skirt and blouse, tights and heels. The use of the novelty props and costume for Ellie shows her childish personality, we chose these as we wanted to create humour from the start of the sequence. We decided to dress Jessica in the way we did as we wanted a lot of controversy between the two as the shots change between them. 


4. Camera work and editing
To make sure we got across the two different personality's to our audience in the opening sequence we used editing to cross cut our shots alternating between the two characters. It was also hard to choose an image which would show the best use of camera work and editing in our piece. When Ellie was choosing clothes in the wardrobe, we filmed the shot from inside the wardrobe and outside of the wardrobe to show the audience what was happening along with using a variety of different shot types and angles. When we are filming outside of the wardrobe it allows the viewer to see the setting which she is in and also the clothes which she has taken to wear. When we filmed Ellie in the bathroom we filmed her looking into the camera which we felt would give some communication to the audience by adding some humour. We filmed her after brushing her teeth with toothpaste round her mouth looking into the camera as if it was a mirror, this goes against the conventions of a Romantic Comedy as there are mid shots and establishing shots which help develop the characters.
We also used editing to speed up a clip of the clothes being chucked onto the bed. We sped this up along with changing the colour of the clip to match and fit in with the other clips rather than showing a big jump in the colour. This clip gives the audience an idea of the type of style Ellie has which could represent her personality.


5. Title font and style
We challenged the Romantic Comedy genre with the title font & style which we chose. We decided to choose the colours and style based on the personalities of our characters. We used 3 different font styles, the first which says 'two' represents Jessicas personality and the word 'Game' was written in a colourful happy way representing Ellie. In other romantic comedies like Love actually there are the same continuous font styles throughout the title whereas we used a range of different ones in different colours.

6. Story and how the opening sets it up
Our opening sets up our story by alternating between the characters giving the audience an insight to their lives before the main story line and the male character is introduced. The relationship between the two main female characters challenges the conventions of a Romantic Comedy as we usually see the relationship between the Male and the Female.

7.Genre and how the opening suggests it
Throughout our opening sequence there are alot of moments where humour is being introduced. The actions of Ellie is mainly what introduces comedy through her having toothpaste round her mouth, falling out of bed and tripping up the duvet, falling down the stairs, dropping her keys, the children chucking things at her and the girl running on crutches. All of these give little hints to the audience making them aware of the genre. Although there isn't a huge romance element revealed by a male and a female character, the voice over indicates a relationship between the two best friends.


8.How characters are introduced
We decided to show the characters as they have just woken up so that the audience can relate to them in the morning. We first see Ellie as being very childish identified through the costume and props and then we see Jess with her cup of coffee, putting it down and making her bed nice and tidy. It reveals through the voice over that they are best friends but they have had their differences for a long time as they have grown up together. The use of the different costume and settings connotes that the characters both have very different lives.

9.Special effects
There wasn't a lot of special effects which we used in our opening sequence. We sped up many clips to make them fit in with the time limit but making sure that it didn't ruin the effect we was going for. One example of this is when Jessica is sitting down in her office and we sped part of the clip up and slowed part of it down so that the typing still looked real and it fitted with the music. This went against conventions of a Romantic Comedy as there isn't usually alot of sped up clips but we used them in a way it still was effective.