Secondary Research

Genre

This link shows a study researching genres, and their popularity. The research found that the ranking was as follows: action adventure; drama; comedy; romance; musical. Due to limitations it will be very difficult to do action adventure. Also drama is found to be very common and large numbers of dramas have been released which would limit ways in which I could make a unique opening for that genre. Therefore from this research I am going to choose the next two genres of romance and comedy combining to make romantic comedy as this will increase popularity as it targets two genres rather than one increasing the target audience.


Target Audience

Now that I have chosen the genre, Teen Romantic Comedy, I need to start looking at my target audience. I am going to start by looking at secondary to find my target audience before I get a bit more information. 

http://web.calstatela.edu/faculty/sfischo/media3.html

This research also shows my target audience. The study has also found the age differences  in both comedy and romance making teenagers my target audience. This is because although they have the middle values for both together they make the best age range for teen romantic comedies, especially because the characters are teenagers in teen Rom-Coms.


The same study also shows that women watch romance films a lot more than men and this is the most watched genre by females making up 8 in 26 films. No men watch romantic films according to this research and so girls will be my target audience.


Now that I have my age and gender of my target audience I can later look into them with more depth.

Popular Films

This shows secondary research into the most popular films from a list of 50 in the box office movie list. This list showed that the most popular film from this list was in fact a romantic film- titanic. This shows that romantic films have been very popular for a few years as titanic has been published for many years now. Furthermore number 3 on the list contains both romance and comedy also showing that romance and comedy work very well together  and make a very popular genre. This shows that the romantic-comedy genre I have chosen is a very popular choice for many people and is likely to be a success if done properly. This further emphasises my earlier point that Romantic comedy is a popular genre as found in my previous secondary research and this research will be reinforced into my opening.

Secondary research into the code and conventions

To get some examples of Teen Romantic Comedies I watched various teen romantic comedies and put the findings in a table, making a note of the examples along side them. At this point, I paid particular attention to settings present, characters involved, themes expressed, plots used, narratives spoken if any and iconography of Teen Romantic Comedies. I Analysed 'Angus, Thongs and perfect snogging', 'Wild Child', 'Princess Diaries', 'Sydney White', 'Mean girls', 'Juno', and 'Ten things I hate about you'. This research allows me to incorporate any common findings, to follow peoples expectations, into my opening.

The settings found in the films I analysed that were discovered were schools, the city which is busy, shops, and house parties. These settings are associated with the stereotypical environments that teenagers are found, this is a very important link as the characters are also teenagers.

As just stated the characters found in the current films tend to be teenagers, as a result a lot of the films mainly contain their parents alongside, these have been found to be embarrassing and humiliating to the main character. Also, because of the school setting some of the characters involved are teachers, it was commonly found that at least one of the teachers were very strict and there is friction between the main character and this teacher. There is also a best friend that is involved in the film, if this is not just one there is a group of friends. These friends have characteristics that run parallel to the main character (which is usually a girl). A 'dream guy' was found in all films that I analysed and so this character is seen to be very important to the whole plot. In most of the films I annotated the main character had an enemy, binary opposites was used to show this character.

The themes I found and the iconography were highly linked together. I found that in the films I looked at love was a key theme and much of the iconography were love related, such as hearts, red and pinks, kissing, flowers, wine and champagne and chocolates. A key theme found in Romantic Comedies was the 'happily ever after' where the main character ends up with the guy. However, there was commonly found that there was the bad sides of relationships such as lies, deceit, arguments and affairs. This is interesting as they tend to be to show the happily ever after yet they still highlight the bad sides. This will be looked at when filming our opening.

A lot of the narrative is completed by a voice over giving an insight into the main characters thoughts, either about herself, her life or what is currently happening on the screen. This allows the audience to feel included into the characters lives and as a result they feel more connected. This is a technique that I will look into using in my own opening.