Foundation portfolio evaluation: Q1: In what ways does your media product use , develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products.(Part 1 of 2)

For this question i am going to analyse our coursework and exsisting media productions of the Dance/street dance film genre and compare what we have done to follow the conventions, and what we have done to break them.

first of all i have looked at streetdance : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ4EGbDAQ9Q
and analysed the movie and wrote about how that film follows the genre/conventions of the dance genre.

1:Text colour. At 1:38 we can see the text being white, this follows the conventions of the genre as most dance films have white/black or red text for the characters names , this therefore follows the conventions of the genre.

2:Text style and font. at 1:38 we see a "chalk" style of font used for the character "carly"'s name it also recurs as it again appears at 1:43 and so on when we saw more of the characters appearances in the opening sequence. This follows the conventions of the genre as in many/most dance films we see a "urban" or chalk style of text/font used in the opening scenes of the films.

3:setting and location. At 3:16 we can see "Uk streetdance championships, this follows the conventions of the genre as the story usually consists of the characters entering a dance competition to better their lives, the location therefore consists of urban areas also shown in several clips which as used as sort of transistions between the scenes (i.e 1:26)

4:clothing and costume. At 1:56 we see a group of streetdancers performing a dance, they are seen wearing similar coloured clothes but they are primarily wearing baggy trousers , vests, big t-shirts this typically follows the conventions of the genre as in most/many dance films we see the characters wearing baggy "urban" clothes, especially in group dance scenes we see them all wearing the same clothes.

5:title name. At 1:19 we can see the title "StreetDance" in black and bold writing, this breaks the conventions of the genre as most dance films usually have the text for the titles in a chalk style, therefore the film differentiantion itself from the other films in the dance genre.

6:colour adjustment (editing). At 0:36 we can see the colour looks very faded , even "old" style ,this could be used to represent a flashback which is prominent in alot of dance genre films and is usually used to show off example of people dancing to help set the scene with narration over the top.

7:lighting. At 0:27 we can see the lighting is mostly dark with a few spotlights this is different to most dance films in the genre as most would have the scene with full lighting but this film is breaking the conventions by having the first scene in the film having mostly dark lighting.

8:transitions. At 0:33 we can see a fade to black between the scene where the lights turn on and the scene where the group start to dance, this is used to break the conventions as most other dance films just show other locations and dont use any transistions such as fade to black inbetween the scenes.

9:genre. At 0:55 we can see a group of people about to dance, this follows the conventions of the genre as most of the dance films produced show street dance as opposed to ballet. Therefore following the conventions of the genre