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

After extensively studying of the current conventions of real example's of media products I have learnt what is needed to use conventions and develop my own media product, My product is a teen rom com, and as this is a relatively new genre I have been able to follow it very well due to a good degree of knowledge in the genre.


My film follows the key idea of the majority of teenage rom coms with the plot focused around a attractive popular girl and the geeky boy who had nothing going for him and quite often a jock character. I followed these conventions by creating a story staring a Attractive female lead character who is dating a jock character and they is a geeky character who likes the girl but in the case of my film he is too scared to talk to her. I even hired actors who fitted the stereotypes seen in real media products. Apart from the actor of the jock, He was hired last minute due to some problems regarding filming so i wasn't able to find a stereotypical jock character to act in my opening.

The character "Edwin" in my film could be compared to the charater Nick (Played by Michael Cera) in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008)

Promotional poster showing the 3 actors i cast for the parts.
From left to right
Edwin as the Geek, Anna as the attractive girl and nick as the Jock

My film develops these codes and conventions by making the geek good looking, this makes my own product unique and if I went further then the opening would have opened up lots of opportunities of making my own version of the stereotypical "Teenage rom com". I also think I have moved into a market that hasn't been treaded in. In the Cinema they have been plenty of teenage rom coms come out of the US such as  Mean Girls 2004 and Youth In Revolt 2009 but the only decent examples of British rom coms are Bridget Jones Diary 2001 and Love Actually 2003. And all these rom coms use mainly adult casts and are set in southern Britain. My media product breaks into the UK teenage rom com market.


They are many examples of teenage TV programs that involve aspects of comedy and Romance such as hit TV show "Skins" and "The Inbetweeners". These TV shows may be the downfall of the teen rom com which is why a new variant of the teen rom com needs to be created to break into the market.

Teenage audience prefer openings that fast paced and contain issues and ideas that are relevant to them as well as contain references to up to date teenage cultures. This is why films such as "Youth in revolt" and TV drama "Skins" appeal so well to youth audiences. My film managed to use these conventions by addressing teenage issues and also by using current teenage culture in the opening. For instance the fashion and soundtrack used are very popular in current British youth culture.
For example the audio track below is the song "Do You Remember" By Jack Johnson, who is a popular current musical artist, It is the song i covered to use as part of the soundtrack for my opening.
Below is the Jack's version of the song and below that is some footage i took of my brother practising the song before i rerecorded it.