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

I decided upon a romance genre for my two-minute opening. Romance films challenge the audience’s emotions and require emotional involvement and attachment to the characters. My film opening does this as the audience hears Ben’s non-diagetic monologue which gives the impression that he is confiding in the audience, conforming to the conventions of a romance genre film.

However, to create a more unusual film I decided to have a conflict of romance (which is typical of the genre) by having one of the main characters suffering from a mental disorder (atypical of the genre).  

The titles in a romance film tend to be quite understated and I chose to include this in my opening by having simple white text on a black background. The advantages of designing the titles in this way means that the audience is not distracted from the characters as for a romantic film to work, the audience need to believe in the story. To do this, the film needs to be kept as close to realism as it can. To build upon the realism, the majority of the film would involve continuity editing. However, the opening of the film is made up of memories so that the audience is introduced to the background of the characters and story. To separate the memories from the linear storyline, I decided to have the film title at the end of the opening in order to create a divide.

‘The Notebook’ is a film which is quite similar to my film as it involves a romance which has been separated by a mental illness: dementia, in this case. It also involves memories. However, my film flips structure of ‘The Notebook’ on its head. This is because my film begins with memories, and is then a linear storyline, whereas ‘The Notebook’ is more involved with past memories with only snippets of the present.

I chose to not stray too far away from the conventions of the romance genre as the typical conventions are there to make the characters believable and play on the audience’s emotions. Therefore, I feel that if I were to challenge these too much, the emotion would be less powerful.