Creative Critical Reflection Rough Draft #1

How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

After re-recording the audio and re-editing the footage together, Marin and I became more focused on the comedy aspect of our film. As the film we are trying to create is a romantic comedy, we realized we needed to resemble our film to represent a entertaining situation through a comedic relationship between two characters. We wanted to portray the affect of petty disputes and use their actions, words, and relationship to convey a comedic mood to the audience. By employing the use of bright colors, sunlit scenes, playful music, and hilarious and flamboyant characters we can encourage the audience the laugh thus fulfilling our goal.

Throughout our film, Marin and I attempted to use popular conventions and techniques employed in other romantic comedy films. We had done research to gather the ideas needed in order to recreate those certain techniques by finding popular romantic comedies and high speed scrubbing through the film and picking apart scenes to find specific elements we wanted to incorporate into ours. For example, within the movie The Kissing Booth we see two main characters, Elle and Noah, sharing a long anticipated romantic moment and sealing it with a passionate kiss. To demonstrate the importance with this union, the camera begins to spin around the pair. As the kiss grows in intensity, the camera rotates faster and faster, singling them out, making it seem they are the only people in the world. Sparks literally fly as the big, illuminated "KISS" sign behind them shatters and bursts its bulbs. We decided to employ this technique in a slightly simpler form to use within our film. As our two protagonists come together in a forced although comedic romantic moment, we filmed as the camera spins around them, symbolizing the union and intimacy as they finally meet in a more peaceful way. By using this tactic, we the filmmakers can communicate to the audience that there is great significance in the kiss between the two.

Overall, our film challenged few conventions. However, the main challenge was the twist at the end. After our two bickering protagonists share a sweet and fleeting kiss while rehearsing a scene for the upcoming school play, Romeo and Juliet, there seems to be a moment of peace between the pair as the two gaze into each others eyes. They seem to find some common ground and maybe even a spark of romance between them. This tactic of using opposing characters who are forced to be civil due to a certain situation and, conventionally, will eventually fall in love or at least become close friends. However, within our film we decided that we would employ an unconventional technique by having the characters continue their dispute as a final twist. This surprise leaves the audiences wondering what happens to the two. This then has captured the audience's attention and will encourage them to watch the film to find out what happens.

Within the our film, the social groups that we chose to represent consists of high school youth and teachers in a humorous light. By incorporating these two groups, we created a silly tone over an comedic dispute as well as being inclusive in representing more than one social group. This not only appeals to teens who enjoy comedy and seeing other teens on the big screen, but older people who also find romantic comedies entertaining and wish to view their social group in a dramatic and humorous way. We hope this joining of two groups will encourage parents to bring their children and vice versa to enjoy a comedic film with characters who can relate to the them as well as connect with their family/friends.