Homework 3 (BLK): Conventions and Cultural Codes

Film Making Conventions (technical codes and genre conventions):

·         Set in a teenage girl’s bedroom; wardrobe filled with clothes, girly furniture, etc – typical for a teenage rom-com.

·         Also partly set in a clustered school corridor, near the lockers (iconography always seen in teen rom-coms)

·         Voice over

·         Feisty soundtrack

·         CU of Olive’s smug expression – protagonist’s victory in a rom-com

·         ‘Oh rats’ and ‘ohh buurrn’; typical high school, funny language

·         Stereotypical rom-com father character; quite young, attractive, wears glasses, very ‘hip’ and ‘down with the kids’

·         Pan up from the ‘A’, past the pearl necklace, to her smug face and Ray Bans (the big reveal of the transformed protagonist in a rom-com)

·         Her appearance causes heads to turn

Cultural Codes:

·         Ray Bans; fashionable, rich, etc

·         Stereotypical rom-com protatognist

·         Pearl necklace – classy and sophisticated

·         ‘A’ sewn onto clothing – branded an ‘Adulterer’

·         Olive kisses the air – queen B?

·         Shopping bags – ‘Guillaume’s Fine Lingerie’ – rich, girly

·         Cutting up red clothes; red is a colour of love or anger

·         Olive chews on the end of her glasses; a sexy gesture