Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our teen drama opening sequence Vendetta uses and develops a variety of forms and conventions previously utilized by real media products. I will be expanding on this statement with reference from four areas of genre, narrative structure, form and style. I have also included a video voice-over of our opening in which our group discuss these topics over the sequence. 

Genre

Our chosen primary genre for Vendetta is ultimately a Teen Drama, but with incorporated elements of Black Comedy as our sub-genre. To make this immediately recognisable, we made sure that we followed the researched conventions set out by our key inspirations, for example Heathers and Thirteen.

We developed our main character Eve from the loose basis of Veronica in Heathers. She is someone who despite being in 'the cool crowd' is independent in her thinking and does not conform to the social 'rules' of her school environment. Another example of this typical character propping up in a Teen Drama is Cady in Mean Girls, who also operates in the same way. Both seek some kind of vendetta against members in their school which is why they are characters extremely relevant to defining the genre of our film.  

Other characters we adopted from previous Teen Dramas include the typical characters of the 'Sleazy Male' (e.g. Tony in Skins) and the 'Stoner'. Both these characters provide immediate links to our key themes of partying, experimenting with sex and experimenting with drugs. We discuss how we incorporated these themes into our opening in detail in our voice-over:

 An example of a film which best epitomises similar themes to what are included in our opening sequence is Thirteen. This can be recognised in the trailer.

We tried to make the setting and mise-en-scene as fitting to the genre as possible. This was mainly in ensuring that our opening sequence looked definitively like a party, which was crucial to the Teen Drama genre. We attempted to make it as realistic as possible, using an actual strobe light to achieve the party effect. This proved to be a challenge when editing, as due to a lack of light our footage became very grainy. However relief came when we used a tool on after effects to get rid of this grain. Our mise-en-scene included beer cans being strewn everywhere, with dubstep music and dancing connoting the party. This was a key element in creating the Teen Drama genre.

We aimed to portray two key events in our opening, those being the overdose and Eve's smile at the end. We believe these convey the desired genre of a merging between Black Comedy and Teen Drama. Firstly, with drug use being such a prominent theme in Teen Dramas, our overdose scene is particularly relevant. When brainstorming our initial idea, we opted for this as the disruption as it was very fitting to the genre. Although an emergency, the fact that our main character Eve smiles at Hannah's misfortune not only provides an enigma code, but also an element of Black Comedy. This is due to Black Comedy being typically associated with treating serious situations in a satirical manner e.g. Eve's smile.

Narrative Structure

After researching the theories behind narrative structure, these proved very useful in coming up with an idea for our film. All films tend to abide by Todorov's narrative theory as a classic narrative pattern. Our opening sequence specifically only features the equilibrium stage and part of the disruption. However, our whole film in terms of Todorov's theory is summarized here:

In order to tell the story we utilized specific narrative techniques in our opening sequence. Here I will exemplify how we used them and why.

Ellipsis - We used this to give the audience a warped perspective on the passing of time. This allows them to recognise that our main character is under the influence of drugs, linking to the party thematic of our chosen genre.

Linear - Our opening sequence begins very non-linear, jumping between events going on at the party with no real perception of time. However, we jump to a linear approach during the overdose scene in order to convey the action in a way that the audience can engage in.

Enigma Codes - We offer many questions to our audience such as 'Who is responsible for the overdose?' and 'Why is the girl smiling after a serious overdose has occured?' This drives the narrative in a way that engages the audience and leaves them wanting to know the answers.

We also included some of Propp's character theory in our opening, although this can't be applied perfectly to our film as a whole as it is ambiguous who victims/villians are. This is due to the theme of revenge that runs constant throughout the storyline. Despite this, both Hannah (the victim) and Eve (the villain) can be applied to this theory. However, the true villain of our film is the creepy teenage boy who plots murder on the girl who rejected him, although he isn't presented to the audience in our opening sequence.      

Form

On learning what was essential in the making of an opening, we tried to incorporate these things into our sequence. I believe that we managed to follow the conventions.

Titles - Here we followed the conventions of an opening sequence as we researched title orders, for example Juno to give us inspiration for our own order. We included the distributor and production company first to follow convention and to also allow the audience to associate our film with other films from the same distributor. These are recognised as important because they are the only ones that arn't super-imposed. We wanted the rest to be super-imposed so we didn't have to cut away from important action, as the majority of our sequence is quite fast paced. For this same reason of not serving as a distraction, we opted for white titles with a simple but fitting font.

For the style of our titles, another influence we used was Thirteen, a teen drama I previously mentioned. Originally, we were going to put the first titles all in the middle. However, with watching the opening titles to Thirteen, we felt we could also put them at the bottom of the screen. This means that more emphasis is put on the title, being bigger and in the middle. They are also white with a black background, a style we adopted in our titles. However, we developed it to suit our party theme by including the effect in the background. 

Engaging the Audience - The audience is unaware of any main characters until we switch away from the point of view shot. This engages them to find out more about this elusive character, and with the enigma code of the smile as well, this urges them to keep watching. At the end of the opening, they still don't know the main character well.

Establishing Genre, Themes and Characters - Special attention is given to Eve, and in her smile her dark side is revealed. This introduces her as one of the main characters in the film, and gives her room to develop into a better person which is typical of a coming-of-age Teen Drama. Themes of sex, drug use and partying are also conveyed to allow the audience to associate the film with the desired genre, and possibly allow them to anticipate what could be coming up. 

Style

I believe the style of our film is one that incorporates many different elements of surrealism to create a style that is original and important to setting our film apart. Here is a voice-over in which we discuss and analyse style fully: 

When carrying out our audience feedback, the words often used to describe our sequence were surreal, creepy and sadistic. As you can see from the voice-over, this is what we were trying to aim for. 

Another teen drama that can be described as 'surreal, creepy and sadistic' is Pretty Little Liars. It has strong themes relevant to Teen Dramas, yet also incorporates a sinister style with themes of revenge and murder. This can be seen in this trailer, where the colour scheme is black and misty, with flashes of colour. We have incorporated this as a background effect in our introduction of the distributor and production company.

However, unlike Pretty Little Liars we use our sadistic-ness for comical effect, reflecting the sub-genre of black comedy. 

Overall, we believe that we created a film that abides by the typical conventions of what we are trying to create - a teen drama title sequence. This heightens audience appeal as they know what they enjoy and therefore somewhat know what to expect from our film. However, our film can bring a little more than expected to give it a rising factor over average teen dramas.