(1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

1.  Location and lighting:
Musicals are usually shot in major cities. For example, A Chorus Line was set in Broadway, Chicago was set in Chicago and Hairspray in New York/LA. We decided to shoot in Piccadilly Circus as there are a lot of theatres there and it is on of London's main attractions.

Piccadilly Circus

Our spotlight

 A stage or rehearsal area is also very common in musicals. Chicago uses a spotlight to make the character stand out. We also used a spotlight as we thought it was very theatrical and showed that the character was about to begin singing. We also shot in our drama studio to show she was auditioning or rehearsing. The spacious room was similar to the one in A Chorus Line which they used to rehearse for their show.

Our influence for a spotlight from Chicago.

2.  Characters and costume:

 Costumes are very important in musicals as they often stereotype a character and set the mood. Although men in Hairspray are wearing a suit, they still stick to bright colours. In A Chorus Line, all the dancers wear primary colours and this is what influenced the costume for our opening. I wore rich colours that would 'glow' when I used colour corrector during the editing process. Even though most musicals use colourful clothing I noticed that Chicago did not. The characters are mostly dressed in dark colours such as grey and black to set a more serious and mysterious atmosphere.

From A Chorus Line the characters are all enthusiastic about music and dancing. Just like in Hairspray the character of Tracy Turnblad shows her interest in music and the Corny Collins Show. Our characters facial expressions where used to show her excitement, so we made sure she smiled throughout. We also showed that she was nervous about preforming near the end just like the characters are in A Chorus Line.

3. Music:

In many musicals (especially Grease and West Side Story), the songs are part of the films narrative. We did not follow this convention, instead our character was to preform on stage and audition to be part of a musical similar to A Chorus Line and Hairspray. In our opening there is no dialogue, the music goes on throughout. We used an upbeat song that we downloaded from the 'Musical' section on a copyright-free music website. We chose an upbeat song to reflect the characters mood as from research, whatever a character sings represents their feelings. The song is sung by a teenager which can relate to our youthful character.

4. The shots we used:

Low angle shot of Corny Collins in Hairspray.



From the research we conducted before shooting we saw that high and low angle shots were very commonly used. I took screenshots of Hairspray and A Chorus Line as they used a wide range of low and high angle shots. Low angle shots were very common in musicals when the character was standing on stage with a microphone whereas the high angle shots were more common when the character was preforming and running around.

Our high and low angle shots in Big City.

We used the low angle shot at the start of our opening to show the character is powerful in the city. It also helped showing her facial expression. We used the high angle shot when she is on stage as it showed she is nervous and that she is alone with nobody around her, it also made her look timid.