R+P Post 6: Our chosen genre and how we plan to connote this

Chosen genre: Teen, Coming of age
Sub genre: Comedy, Indie
How we plan to connote this:

When searched on Google "Funniest teen comedy movie", Mean girls came up as the second suggestion.Therefore most of the genre conventions we include will be inspired from this film, also mainly because it has a very similar plot to ours. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has been reviewed as "funnier and more smartly written than the average teen comedy", giving more impetus as to why we're using it as a guide.

Conventions of teen genre implemented:
Cliques: "they are acknowledged greatly in Mean girls". Types of cliques consist of jocks/cheerleader, geeks/nerds, emos/goths, loners, stoner, artsy people, populars, people who aren't in a clique (usually the protagonist)
Settings: locker room (jocks/cheerleaders), dining room (where you sit defines your status), hall/corridor (where all the students congregate and are equalized), house of characters (for house parties/sleepovers/ where the family come together in the kitchen)
Teen issues: to conform/to not conform, peer pressure, hating life, outcast (definitely shown through the loneliness of the character as he walks down the hallway full of students in groups in our opening)

. 
Conventions of Comedy genre implemented:
The kind of humour used will be slapstick comedy, just not so vulgar and violent like in the Inbetweeners.
Technical code: a lot of handheld camera in the 'getting ready' part of our opening that follows our main character and point of view filming to film his perspective of the school and its students
Iconography: Bright colours across all the students outfits. Iconography for specific characters (e.g.the Goth of the school would wear all black, heavy eyeliner and have piercings and tattoos)
Character types: The main character would be a regular person who doesn't fit in with the usual system of the school, so the students in the school to him would seem wacky and weird. Making him also look socially awkward to them.
Setting: British High School and the main characters house

R+P Post 5: How we plan to attract/address our target audience

Our Target Audience:                 How we will attract them:

16-24 year olds                          - Familiar setting of school location

- Relatable storyline: the popularity struggle that all teenagers go through in that type of school environment
- There are many races represented in the school, which would also represent a British audience as Britain is a multi-ethnic country.

British audience                          
- Set in a British school with British accents, acts as a USP
because not many of these types of coming of age, teen comedy films are British.
-The script, because I read in a very interesting article up on British audiences saying "the British (and i say this as an american) are more literate and verbal and appreciate the emphasis on spoken language in the theatre in a way that Americans, a visually oriented people do not" 

Comedy fans                                 - The script
                                                      - the unbalanced framework of the school&nutty                                                                       characters are in themselves unusual and therefore                                                               funny.


Also the fact that it's set in a school and involves the stereotypical kinds of teenage social groups, would appeal to even older age groups because many have gone through school and would find the plot of the film relatable as it brings them back to when they were younger. Like Superbad is reviewed to be "a film for any age group who are happy to share in its reminiscences of the past, and in particular of the teenage life", we also aim to attract older audiences with this quality in our film. 

References: http://www.slideshare.net/JazBro11/how-did-you-attractaddress-your-audience-12763099

R+P Post 4: Representation of Social groups in our opening sequence

Since our film is a teen comedy and is set in a North London school, the social group we will be representing is British teenage boys and girls of relatively middle class.

- We decided to break the stereotype of school uniform in a British high school by having our cast all in non uniform, mainly because it would to difficult to organise for our large cast.

- We're grouping our cast into the stereotypical teenage groups you'd see in high school in order to create the stereotypical 'cliquey' atmosphere you would find there (as exampled in the mean girls clip below); for example, the "chavs", the "nerds", the "populars" and the "druggies".

-Teenagers are portrayed in all teen/coming of age films as loud, busy socialising (either through parties, gossiping etc.), fighting (boys mainly), disrespectful to adults, sex crazed and everyone has their place in the hierarchy of high school. These stereotypes will be adhered to in the opening through the different groups mentioned above in our opening.
-The desire in most teens to fit in with the crowd and be accepted by the social elites, usually called "the popular crowd", from the films we've researched similar to the genre that we're doing (like Mean girls, 21 Jump street and Super bad) will be symbolized through the movement of our main character in the opening.
-We have decided to comply to the British accents shown in "The Inbetweeners" and "St Trinians" since the actors we will use will be British and have the accents already.

R+P Post 3:Our production and distribution institutions

Production company: E.G.A (original name that compromises all our names)
Nationality: British
Specialise in: Indie Comedy films
Located in: London
Industry profile: Independent
We're going to operate under Zodiac Media (an independent group of independent film and TV companies that create, produce, and sell content across all key genres and broadcast platforms) specifically the Zodiac Media UK, Belgium and Netherlands which is compromised of 9 production companies that concentrate on the genres factual, factual entertainment, entertainment, comedy and scripted.We decided to be under this specific UK group instead of their other company groups, not only because they specialise in Indie movies and the Comedy genre we're basing our film on but also because we wanted our studio to be in close proximity to where we're shooting our film (North London). Also one of the companies in the group have produced 'The Inbetweeners', one of the films we're using as inspiration for our film.
Distribution Company: Universal Pictures UK (A subsidiary of Universal Pictures)
Industry profile: UK based Hollywood studio arm

Why: -Located in the UK in order to learn more about the British market which means they can concentrate on distributing and appealing to the British market, our target market, in order to bring as big a British audience to our film. 
-They cater for releasing films for British companies, like ours. It even has its own special section dedicated to distributing Indie films; for example, "The Knife that Killed me".
Films released under them: "The theory of everything", "The Knife that Killed me", "Role models"

R+P Post 2: Our target audience

Our primary audience will be:
Fans of coming of age/ teen comedy and indie type films
Films of these genres that we researched, all have a similar storyline to our proposed film. Focusing on fans of the comedy genre, specifically, will widen our primary target audience because comedy fans are people of all ages, nationality and gender. This is because it is human nature to laugh and provides an audience pleasure. 
Our secondary audience will be:
British young adults (aged 15-24 specifically) of both male and female.
The age group is inspired from the fan base of the films displayed. Although with "Easy A" our TA is British instead of American and with" The Inbetweeners" our TA is slightly younger due to the fact we aren't planning to have such crude comedy in our film like in theirs. 
Our tertiary audience will be:
Males and females over the age of 24
Our film has the potential to reach older audiences because of how it will be set in a school, depicts the stereotypical social groups one would see in any other high school and tells the story of someone trying to fit in with the crowd and in the process discover themselves (who they are as a person). This is a very relatable storyline to even those who are not in education anymore,because a large majority of the population has gone through "school" and know what it's like. 

References: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0377092/reviews
http://www.alternatetakes.co.uk/?2007,10,182

R+P Post 1: How we intend to work as a group

Weekly meeting times:
We intend to meet every week for 2 hour sessions with a two week rotation on our meeting schedules.
In the first week- every Monday 4:00-5:00pm
                                  Tuesday 3:15-3:45pm
                                  Friday 12:30-1:00pm
In the second week- every Monday 4:00-5:00pm
                                       Friday 12:00- 1:00pm

Communication between lessons and meetings:
This will be over Facebook and we've created a group on Whatsapp as well.

Group Sessions:
-Session plans for the next meeting are made during the end of our previous meeting or if not done, meeting agenda is communicated over Whatsapp
-Work that is unfinished will be divided between members and the next meeting used to catch up over work we've done individually
-We will all be on time to meetings
-If we are not able to make a meeting it is imperative we communicate this to the rest of the group