The document provides an analysis of the conventions used in romantic comedy films, especially those involving teen characters. It discusses character archetypes, locations, costumes, narratives, and other elements commonly found in the genre. The authors created a short film meant to exaggerate these conventions to a hyper-real degree in order to challenge assumptions about the genre. They conducted research on audience expectations and refined their film based on feedback. The goal was to deconstruct notions of truth and reality in romantic comedies.

1. BOYS
LIKE THAT
MEDIA
EVALUATION
BY SOPHIE PROOPS & CHARLIE LAHYANI

2. IN WHAT WAYS DOES
YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT
USE, DEVELOP OR
CHALLENGE FORMS AND
CONVENTIONS OF REAL
MEDIA PRODUCTS?

3. BRIEF
A Romantic Comedy is an extremely established and very popular genre.
Because of this audiences have certain expectations when they go to see
a rom com.
We wanted to play with the genre and over do the codes and conventions
to exaggerate the themes of the romantic comedy genre.
Perfect harmony and fairytale love stories are the norm within this genre so
we really had an opportunity to make a blatantly conventional film.
After researching some post modern products and post modernism media
texts we saw a route for our film to go down.
The constraints under which we worked were that we had to create a 5
minute short film with a beginning middle and end.

4. POSTMODERN MEDIA
There are many media examples of texts or products which deliberately
set out to explore and play with this state of “HYPERREALITY”.
Hyperreality is the idea of a place (or in our case a film) that is a real
physical space but also a clearly fictional representation of the world.
In other words the romantic comedy genre has extreme ideas and
conventions that could be over exaggerated in our film and exposed as
ridiculous.
As a post modern product we challenged ideas of truth and reality. Truth
needs to be deconstructed so that we can challenge dominant ideas that
people claim as truth.
If we were going to exaggerate codes and conventions then we would
have to deeply analyse them.

5. CHARACTERSwhich are similarato
After researching the conventional conventional characters
In teen films/ rom coms there are romantic comedy characters we noticed trend
‘Proppian’ characters.
in the type of characters that appear in them. The world of romantic comedy
consistsaretwo dimensional stereotype characters. Our best way to express this
These of some of the characters used in ‘A Cinderella Story’ which was an
was throughfor ouren Scene to the point that from just one picture of our characters
inspiration Mise film:
you would be able to see the stereotype they fit into as shown here.
The Pize The Hero The Villain The Geek The Helper
We combined the ‘Prize’ and the ‘Geek to create Maddie
We made the ‘Hero’ Aden
The ‘Villains’ were Aden’s friends
We used the dog as the ‘Helper’ which is unconventional

6. SHORT FILMS
These are the conventions we found when watching and researching short films,
we focussed on a film called ‘Post it Love’ which is a 3 minute rom com: As we
wanted to make a film with a feature film narrative but in a space of five minutes we
wanted to research similar media texts (especially romantic comedies) we needed
a way to structure out film into a five minute short. The film we found easiest to
follow was post it love.

7. THE GENERIC AMERICAN ROM COM
We needed to see the american
romantic comedy conventions in high
detail. So after looking at several
examples of blatantly high budget
and high concept romantic comedies
we had our codes and conventions
set. We knew what we would
represent and how exaggerated it
would be.

8. BRAINSTORM FOR CONVENTIONS
With this early piece of development we had few but very straight ideas of
what we wanted to post modernise and put into the section of hyperreality.
Having so few points meant is was easy to put these into a five minute
short and to express them fully within that time.

9. CHARACTER ARCS
MADDIE
Maddie is a 16 year old ‘geeky’ girl inspired by characters such as:
Sam - A Cinderella Story Cady - Mean Girls
Tai - Clueless
Sandy - Grease
Maddie was mainly inspired by the attitude and situation of these girls
rather than the costume. They are oppressed by their situation in a way
and so is Maddie. For our girl protagonist we had to fully express how she
is so deeply in love that she will do anything for Aden. Simililary to these
girls.

10. All of these characters are initially:
Mental
Transformation
Hope for better Physical
things Transformation
Shy & Innocent Confident

11. MADDIE - MAKEOVER
Makeover scenes are very common in teen rom coms. We decided to give
Maddie a physical transformation like:
Sandy - Grease Tai - Clueless
Cady - Mean Girls Mia - Princess Diaries
As far as Maddie’s makeover was concerned we wanted to make her
more “sexy” and “tarty’ than beautiful. All the girls we seemed to research
appeared this way after their makeovers and this ridiculous convention
was one that would be fantasised and blatant in our film.

12. This is part makeover scene scene film
This is the of the makeover in our in Princess Diaries

14. ADEN
Aden is a 17 year old ‘popular’ boy inspired by characters such as:
Troy - High School Musical Austin - A Cinderella Story
Danny - Grease
These characters are the “perfect” boys. They are cool, popular, stylish
and almost too perfect to exist in the real world. These hyperreal
characters inspired us to make Aden. We stressed to the audience who he
appears to be in the world of our film. He looks good throughout our film
and no matter what scenario is clearly the generically popular boy.

15. All of these characters are:
Begin to open up
Lose the girl
Meet a girl
Mental
Transformation
Loud & Confident Kind & Caring

16. This shows Aden before when he was badly influenced by his friends:

17. This shows Aden after he’s changed:

18. MADDIE - COSTUME
To show that Maddie is an outcast, we decided to dress her in a way that is
conventional to the stereotypical ‘geek’ character such as:
Betty - Ugly Betty
Wearing bright colours
and retro clothes
Quinn - Zoey 101
We found these characters very unconventional compared to other girls in romantic
Glasses
comedies. They seem more extrovert and proud of themselves which was great
because in our narrative even this apparently “bold, brave” character will crack under
Hair tied up
the pressure of a boy. This stressed the importance of the point of our film which was
almost mocking the rom com genre.

19. ADEN - COSTUME
To show that Aden is an popular, we decided to dress him in a way that is seen as ‘cool’
like the characters: you can clearly see the similarity between all of these characters.
Troy - High School Musical
Shirt
Jumper
Aaron - Mean Girls

20. NARRATIVE
THEY GET TOGETHER
BOY MEETS GIRL
THEY BREAK UP THEY END UP TOGETHER

21. This is how we showed their conversations. We did questionnaires and
focus groups with peers about this style and they really liked it. The
sound of typing as it comes up works well and it gives the film a nice feel
and pace.

22. LOCATIONS
These are some conventional location used in teen film:
A Cinderella Story
School
High School Musical
Protagonist’s Bedroom Mean Girls
Grease
Date in a restaurant

23. Our locations were more unconventional:
Maddie’s Room
We decided to use this bedroom because it is much plainer and is a better
reflection of Maddie’s personality. The other room is too ‘girly’ and bright.
Courtyard
We filmed in the school courtyard
because it is somewhere that is central
for everyone from all social groups to be.
As we only had a few characters it was
difficult to show this. As our locations
were plain it was easy to concentrate on
the narrative which had to be
understood as it is only a short film.

24. Meeting Point
This was thehave the meeting point in the film set in a park. These are some of the
We decided to final
locationlocations:
potential we
selected:
This wasn’t secluded
This was good because it’s
We like the well but the enough
hidden but it was
bench wasn’t in a good
inconvenient as there is no
place
where to leave equipment

25. FONT
For our poster we chose to use the font called ‘VARSITY’. This style of writing is used on
the jocks clothing which is stereotypical for American teen films and so by looking at the
poster or reading the review the audience can get a feel for the genre of the film . We
stole this stereotypical font, its so obvious and screams “TEEN ROMANTIC COMEDY”
at the audience. The font has represented that since Grease was made and has stayed
strong as the conventional teen rom com font
These are a few examples of the school logos used in American teen films:
Rydell High - Grease
East High - High School Musical
William McKinley - Glee
As you can see the colour red is
also common in these logos

26. HOW EFFECTIVE IS
THE COMBINATION
OF YOUR MAIN
PRODUCT AND
ANCILLARY TEXTS?

27. CREATING SYNERGY BETWEEN TEXTS
FONT
COLOUR
STRAPLINE

28. Our aim was to make a teen rom com aimed at young girls. Our poster
and review clearly show this through the pictures, colours, fonts, wording
and style.

29. The colour scheme we chose COLOURS
appeal to our audience
The colours we used are also
because they are considered
typical of teen film posters
to be young vibrant colours.
and so you could tell the
Although our main audience
genre of our film without even
is young girls, we tried to use
seeing it.
darker colours which would
appeal more to boys.

30. When looking at film posters for rom coms, we noticed that the two
protagonists were on the front but they were divided apart by something
vertical like text. Here is some examples:

31. WHAT HAVE
YOU LEARNED
FROM YOUR
AUDIENCE
FEEDBACK?

32. Pre Production
Before making our film we wanted to find out about our audiences
knowledge on short films as they aren’t commonly seen by people who
aren’t in the industry. We constructed a small questionnaire which was:

33. Example of an answer sheet

34. Results
Age Gender

35. Results
Favourite Genre Time spent on YouTube

36. Results
Have you heard of future
Can you name a short film?
shorts?

37. Pre Production
We then also constructed a questionnaire about Romantic Comedies to find
out what the audience expectations were and the sort of conventions which
we needed to include. The questions were:
Rom-Com Questionnaire
• Do you like watching teen films?
• What do you like/dislike about them?
• What is the appeal to teen films?
• Who is your favourite character in a rom com and why?
• Do you like ‘predictable’ endings?
• Do you think a rom com should have a happy ending or a more realistic ending?
• Do you prefer unique characters or stereotypes?
• Do you find it easy to relate to characters in rom coms?
• Would u prefer to be surprised or do you like a conventional rom com storyline?
• If you were going to watch a teen movie what would you expect it to be like?
• Is the look of the characters important to you when you watch a rom com?

38. Results

39. Production
During the production process of script writing, we held several focus
groups amongst peers as well as with professional film makers to see the
reaction as to how our film was developing. Things that were discussed
included:
• The character representations
• The narrative
• How to overcome problems such as character transformations in such a
short space of time
We ended up producing 6 drafts of our script before finalising it.

40. These was one of the changes we made:
This scene was set in a park when Aden’s friends spot Maddie and Aden
together. We had to remove this scene because there wasn’t enough time as
we only had 5 minutes and there were better alternatives.

41. Audience Feedback
After the first draft of our film was made, we asked some people to watch it
and to give us their opinions so far.
A main feature which stood out this: the writing for ‘football_boy’ was too
We then changed the colour to was
dark:

42. Audience Feedback
After our film was made, we created a survey to find out our audience
feedback to see their reaction to our film. The questions were:
• What did you like and why?
• What didn’t you like and why?
• Did you find the characters realistic?
• Did you like the ending?
• Did you notice continuity?
• Do you like the narrative?
• Did the film engage your emotions? Which parts?
• Favourite scene
• Least favourite scene
• Did anything stand out?

43. Results

44. Results

45. Results

46. The audience in general really
enjoyed our film. The most popular
part that people noticed was the
opening scene.

47. HOW DID YOU USE
MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES
IN THE CONSTRUCTION
AND RESEARCH,
PLANNING AND
EVALUATION STAGES?

48. Research and Planning
Textual Analysis
Institutional Research
- Youtube
- Wikipedia
- Future Shorts
- IMBD
- BBC Short Films
- Google
- Channel 4 Films
- Cultural Voiceover
- DVD
Internet (Planning)
- Blogger
- Survey Monkey
Numbers & Keynote
- Questionnaires

49. Construction Free Music Archive
Logic Soundtrack Pro
Quick Time
Celtx Animatics
Screenflow
Image Ready
Garage Band Slideshare
Final Cut Pro Indesign Microsoft Word
Live Type Photoshop MSN Messenger

50. Using the Technologies
Soundtrack Pro
InDesign Pro
Final Cut
Photoshop
Celtx

51. Additional
Information

52. MAKING A FILM
In our film, we followed the conventions of film making in general. This
involved using things such as:
180 degree rule
Different camera shots
- Extreme Close Up
- Medium Long Shot
- Point of View Shot
- Reaction Shot
Editing
- Continuity
- Fades/ Dissolves
Camera Techniques
Non Diegetic Sound
e.g. Whip Pan

53. We were inspired by the virtual relationship used in ‘A Cinderella Story”

54. THE END