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

Our film opening begins with an extreme longshot of the buildings around and of the college. This is a shot to establish the general location (setting) of the film. Many romantic comedies use this shot to open the film such as Pretty In Pink (1986). The role of our opening is to introduce the audience to the two protagonists and to give a brief but clear idea of what their characters are like. In our opening we see Poppy (Ella Barraclough) running through a corridor to her art lesson. Once she arrives, she dances to the music from her headphones whilst painting a picture. From these two shots, we see that Poppy is outgoing, and up-beat, maybe a little unorganised (as she is running because she is late). We then see the other main character Eugene (Brad Dinnall), who walks orderly, dresses smartly and is seen in the library working, sitting down in one place. Already there is a massive contrast between the two characters which is very common in romantic comedy film. An example of this is Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds characters in The Proposal (2009) where Reynold's character Andrew is rushing to work after waking up late to bring his boss (Bullock) her coffee. On the other hand, Bullock strolls in to work orderly as she is the boss.

In creating the two main characters, we had to stereotypically choose their identities. Poppy is clearly the popular, it girl of the college who isn't very academic, but her creativity, beauty and personality attracts many of those around her. Eugene is clearly what we would stereotypically call a nerd/geek. He's socially awkward and totally dedicated to his studies compromising any chance at being 'popular'. We set the two characters in different locations as they walk/run to their lessons. Poppy runs down a hallway with red walls, Eugene walks down a hallway with green walls. This also connotes their differences.

Typically of every romantic comedy, the two characters involved in the romance need to meet. Just like when Richard Gere pulled up on the street corner and was approached by Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman (1990), or when Kate Winslet opened the door to Jack Black in The Holiday (2006). These meet-cutes vary in the events that happen, they can be simply 'cute' meetings where you can see signs of love at first sight, they can be awkward encounters where you'd think the two would never speak again, or their first meting could involve them being totally against each other and cause them to almost hate each other to being with. But we had to chose carefully of how we would introduce the characters to each other, because a boring meet cute won't make the viewers want to keep watching.

As it is set in a college environment, and both of our characters aren't particularly focused when they're walking (Poppy listening to music, Eugene reading a book) we chose for their encounter to involve them bumping in to each other. Because they're both not looking where they are going, the collision isn't really either of their faults whilst being both of their faults at the same time, this automatically brings them together on some sort of level.

The lighting of the film is high key throughout. This is typical of a romantic comedy film as the theme is positive and upbeat. The upbeat music and high key colour and lighting suggests tot he audience the genre of the film. We also have subtly followed a theme of red and pink throughout the film, this connotes the romance that is about to occur between the two protagonists.

The title of our film is 'Love Levels', we chose this title because it links in to the fact that both of our romantic characters are studying A-levels at college. The title also connotes that you can find love on different social levels as they are form two very different social groups. We used the font 'Courier New' for the opening titles as it is a formal font that resembles the font of a typewriter, which is linked to education and learning.

What was not so typical of a modern romantic comedy is the costumes we used. The outfits the protagonists wear are all 60s inspired, usually the characters in rom-coms are dressed in modern clothing if not the latest fashions which shows the time period, however we wanted to exclude the element of time to create a new time and space zone for our film.

Female characters in rom-com tend to have more prevalence, this is because females are more likely to watch this genre of film, and therefore will identify more with the female character. We have followed this typical theme because we found form our own personal research that romantic comedies are more popular with females. Poppy is the first character seen and has more screen time than Eugene, this was an intentional plan to allow the viewers to see the film more through Poppy's eyes than Eugene's. Both characters are mostly in the centre of each shot, this draws a focus on the characters giving the audience the idea that the film is mainly about them and that they are the two characters to pay attention to.