This document discusses how the media product conforms to and challenges conventions of real teen movies and high school dramas. It uses typical upbeat pop punk songs in the opening to set the tone. For costumes, it mostly conforms by suggesting stereotypes but challenges conventions by making the cheerleader character less "perfect" with braces and a unique haircut. It focuses on typical cultural topics like cliques but challenges norms by implying drug use. The settings of schools and girls in bathrooms conform to codes, but the portrayal of the alternative character as a drug-using outcast challenges expectations.

1. Evaluation Question 1: In what way
does your media product use,
develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products.

2. Music Choice
A lot of teen movies and high school dramas
have upbeat songs in their opening
sequences, often of the pop punk genre. This
sets the tone of the film and lets you know
that it is based around young people. An
example of this is the introduction to the film
10 things I hate about you, which has a song
typical of most teen films, it features Bad
Reputation by Joan Jett. You can see this
here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc_UUofTKag
This is the type of music that we chose so
the audience knows what to expect from our
film and can identify the genre from the
opening sequence.

3. Costume
Costume is also important because it is typically
the same, but varies slightly to suggest different
identities of characters. We used costume to
suggest our characters stereotypes. However,
with Tee's character we also challenged the
forms and conventions of real life media
products. The cheerleader trope usually is a
perfect looking female, with long hair and a short
skirt, an example shown here from John Tucker
Must Die. In a lot of ways we conformed to this,
but Tee also has braces, showing she isn’t quite
what the audience would perceive as perfect.
Also, her hair is blonde but it is a very white
blonde, and she has what you could call a more
masculine hair cut, very short and choppy on one
side, and this challenges the forms and
conventions of typical high school movies, for
example the characters in Mean Girls shown
here.

4. Cultural Topics
Another typical convention of teen dramas are
the cultural topics of the film. These often
include:
● Proms (Example in A Cinderella Story)
● Parties
● Alcohol and Drugs (Example in American
Pie)
● Relationships
● Social Groups and Cliques ( Example in St.
Trinians)
● Coming of age
We focused mainly on the different cliques,
with the contrasting characters, and we also
touched on drugs, with the implied drug use
of Jenni’s bathroom shots.

5. Setting
Most of the characters in high school dramas
are teenagers. For this reason they are usually
set in schools. We used corridors to conform to
these codes and conventions, so you could tell
what our films narrative is going to be about.
Also in teen movies you tend to get the girls
hanging out in the bathroom. We conformed to
this and showed the cheerleader character
doing her makeup in a bathroom. Also, we
showed the alternative girl in the bathroom, but
we decided to challenge the codes and
conventions by implying that she is an outcast,
and to emphasize this we suggested use of
drugs. Shown are some examples of corridors in
Mean Girls and John Tucker Must Die, and a
bathroom in Easy A.

6. Setting
Most of the characters in high school dramas
are teenagers. For this reason they are usually
set in schools. We used corridors to conform to
these codes and conventions, so you could tell
what our films narrative is going to be about.
Also in teen movies you tend to get the girls
hanging out in the bathroom. We conformed to
this and showed the cheerleader character
doing her makeup in a bathroom. Also, we
showed the alternative girl in the bathroom, but
we decided to challenge the codes and
conventions by implying that she is an outcast,
and to emphasize this we suggested use of
drugs. Shown are some examples of corridors in
Mean Girls and John Tucker Must Die, and a
bathroom in Easy A.