Genre research and intertextual links

Our media product uses the form of wearing uniform to anchor age and put across pre-conceived thought of teenage girls, from the films; 'Kidulthood' and 'ST Trinians', it further develops this by changing the pre-conceived thoughts of the central protagonist as shes not loud and outgoing continually sexually active care free teenager as first thought but a quiet introvert loving teenage mum which unknown until the end of our film opening.

We also intertextually used the theory of narrative enigma by Levi Strauss from the film 'Collateral' as at the start of the film its unclear to the genre of the film, other than the suspicious 'bag drop', this incorporated into our story by the audience not knowing that Shannon is a teenage mum until the end of the opening apart from the conversation between her and Linda where Shannon says 'Oh, i was just tired, been up a few time the night before'.Our genre (social realism) needed simple low key lighting which is more plain and mundane, as oppose to Hollywood which is high key lighting so more glitz and glam.

We saw this convention of lighting in 'Wish you were here', so tried to mimic the same lighting effects in our own film and did so successfully, using various lamps.

Another form used intertextually linking to 'Wish you were here' is the character name as (Sarah Jepson) as named Linda as the central protagonist in 'Wish you were here' is called as they have very similar personalities in the sense that they're both sexually active, confident and outgoing.
The location of the bedroom where the girls are intertextually links to 'Donkey Punch' where a group of girls are getting ready to go out together drinking etc in a bedroom, we therefore had our location in a girls bedroom with similar events taking place.

Our media film also needed the correct shoot style which is often more like documentary as oppose to Hollywood e.g. having shaky movements emphasises the realism as the audience can relate t it as if they were there as if it were them, our shaky movement were taken using a handheld camera as the she walks up the stairs in the second shot.

We then then use a headcam when the character Shannon is picking up toys a magazine etc which helps to connote and reflect her struggle as a teenage mum to do everything never having a spare moment for herself, this works well as the shot is seen by the central protagonists point of view.

We considered the possibility of making our film opening into a hybrid genre however decided it wasn't suitable for our particular story within this genre but could be moulded into a hybrid of social-realist/horror as carries on.

Genre Research: I felt that to be able to understand the genre of realism and to be able to use it effectively in media studies i had to do some research on the genre. For this i have used 'The Media Student's book, Third Edition' By Gill Branston and Roy Stafford. There is a huge chapter in this book and it focuses on realism's alone. 'Realism is a concept which writers and producers fight over- a politically charged term with an apparently obvious meaning, but also a long and varied history, which needs to be understood if it is going to be used effectively in media studies' Many reality TV programmes have developed from realist film, TV shows such as the channel 4 Big Brother. For genre research we also watched and analysed some social realist films, most of which were old so it was slightly difficult to link them to our film because our film is actually set in the 21st century but we did manage to pull out some links. One of the Films we analysed was 'Wish you were here' and one of the links we pulled out of this was that in this film there was a teenage girl who ended up having a baby and the same happened in our film, one of the teenage girls has a baby at a young age. Another one of the films we analysed was 'Bullet Boy' this had a link in with our film because it was actually set in a council house and our film was set at a council house. As well both our film and 'Bullet Boy' are aimed at a working class audience (C2DE).