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

Our film is a British Drama called "Consequences" which features Matt as the male protagonist (Dan) and myself as the female protagonist (Lucy).

As a group, we made several informed decisions regarding the use, development and challenging of the conventions within our genre of British Drama. Our sequence includes a fairly even balance between the conforming to and challenging of these conventions.

Genre Conventions

As well as movies of the British Drama genre, as a group we found several British TV Dramas which were significant in the research and planning process of our film opening. These TV Dramas were just as inspirational as our movie references when researching genre conventions. I have therefore made reference to both movies and TV Dramas in the mind map below.

Out of the British Drama conventions in the mind map above, we chose to incorporate:

• Teenagers getting into trouble - the protagonist (Dan) is involved in some kind of encounter where Lucy's brother, Ryan, is fatally injured.
• Urban locations - our sequence is set in Walthamstow
• Crime & violence - Dan is involved in violence which is not directly shown in out opening sequence
• Relationships - Dan and Lucy 
• The independence of teenagers - no authoritative figure 

Lighting

British Dramas tend to be naturally lit to create a gritty feel. We wanted to imitate the lighting used in 'Skins' as we found that it best suited the style of our film. 

A scene from Skins

The scene is well lit with natural light

Shot Types

British Dramas contain lots of varying shot types. We mimicked this in our sequence.

The Prezi below shows examples of the range of shot types in our sequence compared with similar shots from other real media products of the British Drama genre.

Titles

Our titles are simple yet effective as they do not draw away from what is occurring throughout our opening sequence. We went with a simple font because, after researching real media texts such as This is England, Misfits, Kidulthood etc. we noticed that British Dramas don't tend to use overly elaborate fonts in their title sequences.

This is England

• The titles are in capital letters which makes them stand out. 
• The font and colour of the titles do not detract from the shots within the sequence.

Kidulthood

• Although the titles are placed in extremely noticeable spots within the sequence, they are fairly small so do not distract the viewer from the animations. 
• The titles are in capital letters and the chosen colour is grey which makes them easily seen but they do not detract from the sequence. 
• The font is simple.

Misfits

• The font colour is white which makes them stand out from the background
• The font is fairly simple and the letters are in capitals

Consequences

(our own titles)

• Each title sequence which we researched used capital letters for their titles so we did the same
• We chose to use white as the colour of the titles as it made them easy seen however this colour does not detract from the shots
• The font which we decided to use is similar to that of Kidulthood as it is simple yet effective and each letter is easily readable

Narrative Structure

One of our options was to follow Todorov's theory:

However, we decided against using this and instead went for Barthe's theory of enigma codes. This theory was much more well-suited for our opening sequence as we wanted to begin with a flash-forward. The use of Barthe's theory resulted in the creation of excitement and suspense within our opening which is exactly what we wanted.

Our opening sequence is a flash-forward which consists of the male protagonist running to his girlfriend's house where she is, at first, very confused as to why he has arrived in such a panic. He eventually informs her that he has been involved in some kind of group/gang related incident where her brother, Ryan, has been most likely fatally injured. 

• The beginning of our sequence is inspired by the opening of the British Drama, Trainspotting. Although our opening is a running sequence and Trainspotting's is a chase sequence, we shot and edited our sequence in a similar way to how Trainspotting is shot; with lots of different shot types cut together using choppy editing.
• Our running scene is very enigmatic as the audience doesn't know what the protagonist is running from. Enigma codes are also present in Trainspotting's opening.

Trainspotting

Consequences

• The disruption in our opening sequence is caused by 'Lucy' discovering that 'Dan' has been involved in a serious crime. British Dramas often include some kind of dispute between two characters. 
• We looked at the way that Skins portrayed teenage couples, e.g. Nick and Franky, arguing and used what we learnt in our argument shots.
• The argument between 'Dan' and 'Lucy' follows the classic narrative pattern of an argument. It begins calm, then 'Lucy' gets very angry and the scene develops into a heated argument however by the end the pace of the argument slows and Dan manages to silence Lucy (even if it is by telling her that her brother has been fatally injured).

Skins

Consequences

• There are only two characters (a boy and his girlfriend) in our opening sequence however these two characters are present in countless British Dramas e.g. Finn and Sam (Waterloo road), Alisha and Simon (Misfits), Effy and Freddie (Skins), Nick and Franky (Skins)