Evaluation Questions

Developing and challenging conventions.
Our film is like many other chick flicks of it sorts in many different ways. Character is one of the main things as our film has the typical boy and girl relationship as well as the rivalary popular girl, and the boy being the typical jock. As well as the girl having a hard story behind her and having a hard life. The narrative like I have said with character follows the typical story line of the jock character being with the popular girl and the hard working girl wanting the boy; then the girl getting him at the end. With camera they use many of the typical camera shots and movements; they also try to use a lot of shots that are point of view shots to make it look more life like.

Distribution.
Distribution is used in many ways by different businesses and companies, it is to do with wat sort of people you would want to advertise and get your film into cinemas and on DVD. Some films may just use the typical posters in cinemas and random location as well as the trailers in cinemas and on TVs. A good example would be of a small British film company an example of a film would be 'The Boat That Rocked'; the production 'Working Title' would use the usual that I have listed above as the advertisement as compared to a large multinational company wouldn't have the money to do this, so would have posters, trailers and website if they had a film such as 'The Boat That Rocked'. This can be compared to a large American production company who would use other big companies who can do advertisment campaigns to advertise the film. An example of this is of 'Avatar' this is the most expensive film Fox have done since Tiatnic in 1997. Some of the advertising campaigns they had include McDonalds, Coke Zero, LG Mobile and Panasonic; these businesses did many different things to promote the film such as create websites and games and special codes that could only be received by for example buying a can of Coke Zero which unlocked games etc.

Technologies.
To create our film we had to use a range of differnet software and technology. For the film we had to use Cameras to record all the film we needed. We then had to use Computer editing to cut and put in place the clips before adding music and titles to create the finish product. The first software we had to use was the internet mainly for research so we could look for different films of the same genre as well as finding out background information and look for music to suit the film to the best it could and also as a group to contact each other. Through the whole process there were things that were easier than others, where as working the cameras and tripods to get what we wanted was far easier than all of the editing as the software was quite confusing and took time to get used to how it all worked.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our film represents young women who have jobs which are filled with drudgery. Our film represents women who are helpless who are trapped in low level employment as a result of their gender. This means they are seen as less than males. This reflects the stereotypical view of women been in low level employment and beneath men.
The rest of the film would be seen as fairytale such as The Ugly Duckling. The audience will see the character growing in a Cinderella style narrative.

How did you attract/address your audience?
We attracted and addressed our audience in our opening sequence by using a young female as the lead character, as our target audience are mainly women aged between 13 -30 who this appeals to.
The main character is a female who lives in a middle class household but is not treated like one. This addresses the audience as our target audience are mainly middle class and could relate to the character.

Evaluation Questions

Our media product would be distribute in a media institution that was mainly aimed at female audiences of a teenager and young adult range as that is the main target audience of our film.

Audience for our media product

The audience for our media product is for females aged from about 11 to 19 but could depend on maturity of the person and the personal preference in terms of what type of films they enjoy watching. Again this could change as families may enjoy watching this as well as groups of friends or children of a younger age as it based on a fairytale type story but with a modern twist but still suitable for an age. If this film was realised it would have a PG certificate as it is rated for children but an adult may want to be present at the time of it being watched. I also think that it is more aimed at families or groups of friends watching it together more than a couple and it terms of education i don't think different eduation would make any difference to the person who would watch it and the same with lifestyle of the person.

What has been learnt in the process of creating the film

In the process of creating the product I have learnt how to use the cameras and the equipment used to film it as well as then learning how to edit and the softwware that has to be used to create the final product.

Comparing final pieces to our preliminary task

When comparing our final piece to our preliminary task there are difference as I knowledge of using the camera and editing suite has improved greatly and know how to do different things. We have learnt more new things in the editing suite than compared to camera use as we have still been using basic camera skills but adapting the way it is viewed in the final product by what we have used in the editing suite. When we had to edit our preliminary exercise we were unsure and had to ask lots of question on how to capture and work all the software to get it how we wanted it. Where as with our final piece we were confident and knew what to do so was easier and we did it in a lot shorter amount of time and were happy with the outcome.
Also when comparing our Preliminary Exercise to out final piece you can see the increase in the sophistication of it as this looks like a proper film not people with a camera trying to. Also with our final piece we increased the about of planning before we started filming so we had an exact plan to make it run smoothly. This also helped with the variety of shots that we used as well as with editing as with a better plan etc it was able to make our vision real.

Stereotypes of chick flicks.

In the usual chick flick film there is a girl who is not that popular and does not have many friends. She is also in love with a boy who is very popular but pretends not to notice her in front of his friends who like to make fun of her. She eventually wins the boy and they live happily ever after.

Women are normally portrayed as a stupid girl who does not have much intelligence; for example in a scary film the girl who is left alone in her house in the middle of nowhere goes to investigate a peculiar noise after watching on the news that there is a killer on the loose. I personally get annoyed with this stereotype as I find myself shouting at the screen as I find what they are doing stupid.
This is definitely expected within a scary film as it sets the film to start if a stupid girl gets killed when going outside on her own in the dark, in these particular films this is inevitable.




Media Portrayals of Girls and Women: Introduction
We all know the stereotypes—the femme fatale, the supermom, the sex kitten, the nasty corporate climber. Whatever the role, television, film and popular magazines are full of images of women and girls who are typically white, desperately thin, and made up to the hilt—even after slaying a gang of vampires or dressing down a Greek legion.
Many would agree that some strides have been made in how the media portray women in film, television and magazines, and that the last 20 years has also seen a growth in the presence and influence of women in media behind the scenes. Nevertheless, female stereotypes continue to thrive in the media we consume every day.
This section of the site provides a snapshot of the issues around the media’s portrayal of women and girls—from effects on body image and self-identity to ramifications in sports and politics. It looks at the economic interests behind the objectification and eroticization of females by the media as well as efforts to counter negative stereotyping. And it provides the latest articles and studies that explore the ways in which media both limit and empower women and girls in society.
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/women_and_girls/

How women are portrayed in films

In films woman are portrayed as the useless female who do nothing in films and are often the people who die first in films. They are shown as the weaker gender and are seen as unintelligent an example would be in a scary film when the female is left on her own a dark spooky forest or woods with someone chasing after them trying to kill them, they usually trip and then end up getting killed as they don’t bother to get back up. This frustrates me as girls aren’t like that and that is how they have been portrayed in most films. It makes us look ridiculous and then everyone assumes that’s what we’re like in real life.

Women are also made to look a certain way making normal real life women think they need to look that way as well. They are normally made to look incredibly thin with blonde hair and with designer labels etc. It is unlikely that any average woman would look like that. By making women look this way it makes real people body conscious on the way they look. They feel as though they need to look the same as the women in films.

Sophie

Time Plan for Creating Film

We first decided to allocate 10 Hours to the actually filming and the preparations needed for the filming, we did this over 2 weeks:
Thursday 14th January- 2 Hours
Wednesday 20th January- 3 Hours
Thursday 21st January- 2 Hours
Wednesday 27th January-3 Hours

After this we already had planned when we were going to start capturing and editing our film to create the final piece, for this we have allocated 7 Hours at the moment but may add another session if it is needed

Thursday 28th January- 2 Hours in this time we captured all of our film for the clips we are going to need for our final piece
Wednesday 3rd Febuary- 3 Hours in this time we did the main editing process where we made the actual film and finally saw our finished product without the add effects and titles
Thursday 4th Febuary- 2 Hours we finished our film by adding effects and titles and finally seeing our finished product.

Narration


A narrator is, within any story (literary work, movie, play, verbal account, etc.), the person that conveys the story to the audience. When the narrator is also a character within the story, he or she is sometimes known as the viewpoint character. The narrator is one of three entities responsible for story-telling of any kind. The others are the author and the audience; the latter called the "reader" when referring specifically to literature.


The usual storyline of chick flick film is normally about a young girl who meets a boy at a party or an event, they end up getting along really well but the boy has to leave. They think they will never see each other again and miraculously they meet again and have a relationship, popular girl usually gets jealous of the relationship as she also likes the guy, she plots against them and starts a rumour which breaks them up. The girl tries to talk to the guy but he doesn’t believe what she is telling him. In the end everything works out and there is a happy ending.
A narrator may tell the story from his own point of view (as a fictive entity) or from the point of view of one of the characters in the story. The act or process of telling the particulars of a story is referred to as narration. Along with exposition, argumentation, and description, narration (broadly defined) is one of four rhetorical modes of discourse. More narrowly defined, narration is the fiction-writing mode whereby the narrator communicates directly to the reader.

Sophie

Melodrama

Melodramas are defined as a women’s genre as the films represents the questions, difficulties and the worries that females face in a male dominated society.
In melodramas can be said to turn the female character into a victim. In the stereotypical chick flicks the main character gets hurt by either her love interest in the film or their friend, turning her into the victim, as she has done no wrong even is she has.
Melodramas often turn moral conflict into there main subject matter. The female characters experience the moral conflict. In chick flicks this could be the main female character feeling threatened or jealous of another female character in the movie. In most chick flicks the female character feels threatened by the women that could take her love interest away from her.
The plot of melodrama consists of twists and reversals in the storyline. In chick flicks this represents the typical storyline if girl meets boy, girl and boy fall in love, boy looses girl, boy gets girl back.Secrets dominate the melodrama storyline. In chick flicks his could be the reason why the male and female character break up in the middle of the film.

Iconography& Iconography for Chick Flicks

Iconography is the branch of art history which studies the identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images. The term is also used in many academic fields other than art history, for example semiotics and media studies, and in general usage, for the content of images, the typical depiction in images of a subject, and related senses. Sometimes distinctions have been made between Iconology and Iconography, although the definitions and so the distinction made varies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iconography


Iconography for Chick Flicks.

In chick flicks there is iconography such as mobile phones and blackberries as the technology is up to date as chick flicks these days try to relate more to the teenage age group. Normally in the end of the chick flick the girl and boy end up together and maybe get married, iconography for that would be the rings to symbolize the marriage. The fashion in the film is also iconography as in the film the characters are trying to stand out and be noticed by others. Nice cars will be iconography as it is a symbol for the audience to indentify which characters are the wealthy ones and who are not. There will be a lot of laughing in the chick flick as they are a comedy genre of film.

Iconography also includes all the things that enables the film to be seen as part of a specific genre. This includes the setting which gives you a real idea of the film and what it is going to be based. Mise-en-scene which is everything you can see on the screen as well as use of camera because to get a film to its full potential it is required to use a range of different uses with the camera to get the most out of it. Editing styles like use of camera can make a big difference to the film as it can change a plain shot into something a a lot more interesting by using different editing styles.

Target Audience

Chick Flicks are mainly aimed at teenage girls and women aged between 18-40years old. Women tend to be interested in this genre as the most common storylines are aimed around finding love and a relationship. Many of the women who watch the films may be single and looking for love themselves so they comfort by watching these films. They will be searching for the stereotypical “the one” that features in many of the films in this genre

Chick Flicks Film List

This is the list of the films we have watched to get ideas etc of our chosen genre of our film. I have the gone and put them into more sub sections to do with character and settings.

These following films are about strong female characters who learn something or change in some way:

Miss Congeniality (2000)
Charlie's Angels (2000)
The Wedding Planner (2001)
Mean Girls (2004)
27 Dresses (2008)

These following films are about weak female characters or female character with not much importance who lifes get changed around or become different women:

Bridget Jones's Diary (2001)
The Holiday (2006)
The Princess Diaries (2001)
A Cinderella Story (2004)
The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Maid in Manhattan (2002)
Bend it like Beckham (2002)
Freaky Friday (2003)
The Wedding Date (2005)

Films About Relationship and the typical girl, boy situation:
Dirty Dancing (1987)
Titanic (1997)
Freaky Friday (2003)
The Notebook (2004)

Settings of Chick Filcks

Chick Flick films are set in a range of places but typical are set in a school or work place and also at a flat/house etc. As the lead character in a chick flick tends to be female so the location is based where they are or the connections in the film, the female character often go to school or have a job so a lot of the films are set in these location or where they live. There are acceptation to this in films like Titanic and Dirty Dancing where it is set on a holiday etc which is more often becoming a trend of Chick Flicks.

Characters in Chick Flicks

The stereotypical characters that appear in nearly every chick flicks is the typical boy and girl in love. All of the other characters in the film are based around these two people.
In chick flick films the two main characters both have a group of friends that may or may not like the person their friend is falling in love with.
Most of the characters are young, as the films are aimed at the younger generation. There are many chick flicks that are set in high school, meaning that the characters still live at home. In the majority of films they have embarrassing parents who show them up. In the movies that are set in a high school they main characters tent to be the popular crowd who are cheerleaders or the star of the sports team.

Pooja

The History of Chick Flick

The history of chick flicks


“ Chick Flick” is a slang term to describe movies that appeal to females rather then males. Many of the films that fall under the “chick flick” genre are films that are heavy with emotional or relationship based story lines that appeal to females.

Movies designed to appeal to women have been around since the early days of cinema.
Many of the early movies that appeal to women such as Brief Encounter, Now Voyager and Mildred Pierce and the 1950’s Melodramas the tone and content of these films has be argued to be seen as a sub-genre of women’s film.

Some film critics have argued that the modern chick flicks are very different from the women films of the 1940’s and 1950’s, the modern films now “sing another tune” says film critic Molly Haskell. She feels that the womens films of today are “post modern and post feminist”

Many of the recent chick flicks have been based on fairytales such as Cinderella. Chick films that have a similar story line to old fashioned fairytales are films such as The Princess Dairies, Ever After and Pretty Woman. Some films are even based on Shakespeare’s plays for example She’s the Man. A large number of films are based on numerous best selling novels for instance The Devil Wears Prada and classics e.g. Little Women.

Hollywood started to produce the pradticable story line “boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy loses girl and finds her again in time for the credits to roll’

Pooja