Marcelle- Evaluation: Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

We used the conventions of a parody film which is in effect, using the conventions of the dance film genre but exaggerating them and making them humorous. Therefore, we challenged and developed the conventions of a dance film but used the conventions of a parody.

As a form, we mostly used generic conventions of trailers, film magazine covers, and film posters, to give it a mainstream appeal, to allow the audience to easily recognise what form it is, and force them to focus on what the content is opposed to the layout. This also then links to the idea that we are simply exagerating the forms of dance films, not completely subverting them.   

Forms: Trailer, Film Magazine Front Cover, Film Poster
Genre: Dance/Drama Parody (Dance films have become a subgenre of the Drama genre. They are often listed as hybrids on websites such as imdb.com and apple.com, listed as Drama, Romance, Dance/Music. This implies that by making our film a parody of Dance films, we have created a hybrid of a subgenre)

Trailer:
Formal conventions
-According to Todorov, all narratives are split into three parts: the equilibrium, the disequilibrium and the new equilibrium. This is also true of trailers where there is an introduction to the characters, a problem then occurs and then a hint at a resolution, as they don't want to give the ending away but instead aiming to wet the audiences appetite.

We followed this convention of a trailer by establishing the norm/stable society within the world of the trailer. We did this by introducing the main character as the geek looking at the poster and then later introducing other characters during the audition scenes. We also highlighted that the geek often gets bullied through the voice over/title slates and bullying scene, presenting this situation as the equilibrium.

Then we introduced the disequlibrium where the characters try to change their situation by getting 'revenge the only way geeks can...in the hood', upsetting the social norm/equilibrium. This is shown through the main character changing sartorial codes, and the introduction of auditions for the competition.

Lastly we hinted at the new equilibrium where we implied that there will be a postive ending where the characters could possibly win the competition. However, we did not express this explicitly because the aim of a trailer is to advertise the film, encouraging the audience to go and watch it, and not to give away the ending.

We used Todorov's theory about narrative structure because it is so engrained in society that it is naturally how we (as both the audience and producers) make meaning of a narrative. This means it's expected by the audience and so in order for them to understand and enjoy the trailer, it demanded that we use this structure.

We also used the trailer conventions of title slates as seen above and a voice over to link the title slates to the narrative of the trailer. These title slates give the audience the expositry detail they wouldn't have gotten from the video on its own and the voice over demands the audiences attention, making the trailer seem more interesting and action pact. We also made sure we had the conventions of the release date of the film, the film title and the audience rating at the end as its often presented clearly in most trailers. We found out about these conventions through our research.

Other films these title slates are seen effectively in to create drama, give expos. detail and draw in the audience:

Dance Flick: the only already exhisting Dance film parody which also uses voice over and graphicallt interesting title slates to create a dramatic effect aslike ours. 

Take the Lead: a dance film that also uses a voice over to create a sense of drama but also to give expos. detail without the title slates. 

Generic conventions:

Used

-We used the generic conventions of a dance film by using the common narrative of the underdog wanting to overcome thier problems by winning a dance competition. This is a common feature in most dance films E.g. Honey, Take the Lead and Step up 2, where there is an 'outsider' character who attempts to become professional dancers or win a competition. In our trailer there is also the introduction of Vladamir Propp's theory of generic character roles involving the 'Villain' and 'Hero'  characters; the villains being the bullies and the hero being the geek, which is also seen in dance movies where there are opposing dance teams who are placed in the villains position. We used this 'exhausted narrative' because a literate audience would already be aware of this storyline and would easily be able to address the changes to the narrative.

The top characters are the villainous opposing team, the bottom characters are the heroic dance team in You Got Served

In our trailer

-We also used convetional sartorial codes of dance films such as dance attire consisting of hooded jumpers, trainers and casual bottoms, to explicitly imply it is a film is about dancers. We used generic settings of a school and locations that looked relatively run down, which is also a common feature in dance films. These are often used to give the sense that the underdogs come from an urban or underpriveledged community and schools are often the setting for them because the narrative is commonly about troubled teenage youths. Therefore, to create the same sense of deprivation we used similar sartorial codes for the latter of the trailer and also set our narrative in a school with exhausted walls.
-As dance films are mostly based on the progression of Hip Hop dancers and Hip Hop/ dance music, we also incuded a generic Hip Hop sound as our main theme tune for the trailer. This is often used to create a fun, exciting and fast moving feeling for the audience when watching the trailer, encouraging them to go and see the film and so we felt we should reflect the same atmosphere. The music, having a voice over and informative title slates also increases the drama of the trailer, making it more appealing and making it look more action pact.

Developed
-However, we also developed this idea of the outsider by making all our main characters geeks and giving them a lack of ability to make that transition into the successful dancers they aim to be. This was to create a humorous response as the characters are seen to try and fail and are then ridiculed by the audience. We did this by exaggerating the sartorial codes regarding their costumes: making the actors wear thick black geek glasses throughout the entire trailer despite their transofrmation into the 'gangster/cooler' streetdancers they aim to be.
 -We also developed the idea of dance films incorporating different genres of dance and music into their Hip Hop style, by using styles that are both used and have yet to be used in dance films. For example, we introduced headbanging, bollywood dancing, ballet and swing dance into the trailer, to explicitly emphasise the generic convention of dance films merging genres together inorder to create a better final dance. However, this is ironic because the dancers we feature do not result in improving their dancing with the addition of these genres, they get worse evoking humor and making the trailer more of a parody.

.V.S.

-We also took the idea of teenagers generically being portayed as ignorant or uncultured in dance films and developed it for a dramatic and humorous effect. We did this by exaggerating thier conventional lack of knowledge on more westernised dance styles such as swing dance, by having our characters completely misinterpret what the style is. We therefore included a dance sequence that made a pun on the literal meaning of 'swing' and featured the actors dancing on literal playground swings, to imply the film is a parody.

Challenged
-We challenged the generic conventions of a dance film by making the characters incapable of dancing well, completely subverting the point of inspirational dance films. This is exemplified by the poor choreography of the swing dance scene, the bad dancing in the ballet scene and the exaggerated editing attempting to make a simple flip around a bike pole more exciting. However, this is an example of where we challenged the conventions of a dance film but by making it humorous and subverting them, we are then using the conventions of a parody, which exaggerates the conventions of films.
-Similarly, another way in which we challenge dance film conventions but are fullfilling parody conventions, is when we subverted the idea of characters dancing dramatically in the rain (as seen in Step up 2 and You got Served) by first implying that the main character is but then revealing in a zoom out to a wideshot, that she is actually in the shower. (From 1.20 secs in trailer)

You Got Served rain scene toward the end of clip

Rain scene in Step Up 2

Our rain scene:

-We also changed the soundtrack into a pun at the end, ridiculing the elaborate names of Hip Hop artists, making us directly using the conventions of a parody but going against a dance movies original aim of trying to attract the audience, because of the music artists in the film.

M&M= Eminem

Snoopcat= Snoopdog

60p= 50 Cent

End Buds= End Dubs

3 Pacs= 2 Pac

-We also only featured female actresses and had a wider range of races then dance films mostly include. This was both because of the restrictions of having to use actors from the school in order to get the trailer filmed on time, but also mostly to appeal to our target audience.

Film Poster:
Used
We used the typical layout of a dance poster, where there are multiple pictures of the characters from the film and they are seperated by the writing to make it look more dynamic and interesting to look at. We did this on our poster by featuring three different images of our actress and placing our film title logo in the centre of the poster to break the images up. We used the stereotypical layout so it emphasises that we are creating a dance film but we are parodying the genre.

-We also incoporated formal conventions of having the credits, the release date and the film certificate at the bottom to make the poster look conventional. Even though our film is independent, the genre we chose is mostly done for a wide mainstream audience and so we used mainstream aspects so that the literate audience would recognise it's a dance film poster. 

-We also used the formal conventions of an independent film poster by including a review. This is still there, despite it's mainstream layout because the film is still independent and won't be as widely publicised as mainstream films.

Generic conventions:
-Generically, dance posters use graphics to enhance the appearence of the poster, making it look more exciting and dynamic. We did this by incorporating Photoshopped water/ink patterns to create a sense of movement and to link to the urban, underprivileged characterisation, as the ink patterns look like spray paint and water.
-The crowd and the dancer at the bottom of the poster is conventional because it implies there will be an energetic, fun and high energy dance battle in the film, a narrative convention of dance films.

The same techniques are used to make it explicit that there will be exciting dances in the films: water effect, crowd, orange and blue; we simply added pink to appeal to our mostly female audience more.

Developed
-We developed the colour scheme by incorporating the generic orange used to imply summer time and excitment, but we also used the complementary colour blue to imply it's not the typical dance film and make it stand out aginst other posters. The gradiented background makes the poster look more dramatic because of the contrast and draws the audiences attention to the middle where the typography is.

Challenged
-We challenged dance poster conventions by making the dancers featured on the page look more humorous than dramatic. Our character is instead pictured with comedic facial expressions and poses, and her dancing at the bottom is Photoshopped to make it look as if she is break dancing but instead is defying gravity, similar to that on the Dance Flick poster:

These aspects make the dance poster look less realistic, therefore challenging the dance genre's intention of creating suspense and drama through the images on their poster. However, his does mean we are using parody conventions as we are subverting and exaggerating dance film stereotypes to make it humorous.


Film Magazine cover:

Used
-We used the conventional layout of a film magazine of having a central image, having the masthead at the top and any additional pictures at the bottom. We also kept the convention of having the actress in character which is generic of a mainstream film magazine. We used these mainstream formal conventions because our magazine is meant to replicate a mainstream magazines' special issue on independent films. Dance films are generally mainstream films aswell, suggesting that most of our target audience would be more likely to see the film advertised in mainstream mediums such as TV screened trailers, big billboard posters and mainstream film magazines, so we used mainstream conventions. We also adapted the colour scheme of the originally just yellow, black and white colour scheme to link with the colour scheme of the featured film (Geek to Street). This is often seen on film magazine covers because they are often advertising the magazine through the film on the front (the content the product is based on), therefore we had to link the two products by adapting the colour scheme by adding hot pink (similar to the addition of pink on our gradiented corporate identity graphics), to appeal more to our mostly female audience.

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Hyperbolic language was also used to advertise the magazines content when saying, 'set the movie world on fire', 'best  independent issue ever and 'awsome comedy overload', which is conventional for film magazines inorder to create excitment around the contents of magazine.

Actresses are all in character, are all the central image and all adapt the colour scheme of the magazine cover to fit the film featured on the front. The image on the front of all three reflect what the genre and feel of the film is; in ours, our actresses comedic and exaggerated pose, along with her juxtoposing geek glasses and urban clothing, present that our film is a comedic parody. 

Developed
-We developed the idea of using a puff, which are normally used to just simply advertise a topic in the magazine, but improved this by trying to appeal to a new young and growing market. This new market are the young online downloaders, who often download illegally, and have added to the 30% rise in illegal downloading from 2011 and are costing producers £170 million a year. So inorder to appeal to the widest audience possible and appeal to blockbuster film producers, we incoporated a prize where the audience can win a free subscription to one of the up and coming online film services, where it allows people to watch movies 2 weeks after box office.

Challenged
-We challenged the cconventions of film magazine covers because we incorporated aspects that resembled women's gossip and fashion magazines to try to appeal to our female audience more. This is through the use of the colour pink, a colour not often seen on the cover of film magazines. Also, it was through the use of the grey background; not only was it used to give the sense that the magazine is a stripped down, raw issue that is focusing on independent films, but the simplicity of the background also forces the reader to look at the central image/actress like in women's magazines. This is common in womens magazines such as Glamour, Elle and Teen Vogue.

Bright colours, (pink, yellow, blue) and plain backgrounds are often seen in gossip and fashion magazines to appeal to their younger, female audience, similar to the use of it in our magazine. However, it does still look like a film magazine despite being among all these magazines because it still uses the generic layout of a film magazine where it has boxed images along the bottom, the magazine selling line ontop of the masthead and featuring a memorable masthead as part of the visual branding of the magazine.

     

This deceiving colour scheme and background is used to attract more female buyers as it resembles both women's gossip and fashion magazines and a film magazines, channeling a hybrid like our movie.