1.• How do your products represent social groups or issues?
Our movie is a coming of age movie about lesbianism, coming out and discovering yourself. Our movie represents a lot of people's actual coming out stories. For example, Rose's mom does not know that she likes women or even has a girlfriend before she decides to go looking through her phone. A lot of coming out stories are actually similar to roses in the way that their parents are homophobic and kick them out of the house knowing they have nowhere to go. Our film also represents black women who like women, most of the representation black women who like women usually get is not good. Most black representation in the media is usually involving gang violence or something depressing, or an interracial couple. We just felt that we needed to show that black lesbians and LGBTQ+ people exist and they don’t all have to have a sad story. Even though we did make the story quite sad, we tried to make it a point that no matter what happened Rose would always have someone by her side no matter what happened. In the movie even when her mom doesn’t want her anymore she knows that she can go to Carmen. Our movie also represents a huge elephant in the room which is homophobia, a lot of people relay homophobia to the fact that they are Christian, which I’ve seen used as an excuse so many times which is super upsetting. We also used actual teens, most teen films nowadays are made for teens but are not relatable for them or just do not represent them in any way, a lot of them also use adults to portray children rather than just having greens, which leads to teens to not getting a lot of content that is actually relatable for them.
2. How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?
Our production team tried to make our movie have a certain color that you could identify it by, we chose yellow and like kind of mellow colors. There are a lot of greens and pinks and purples in small details of the movie. For example, Rose's bracelet is purple and blue with a little bit of pink, whereas Carmens is pink and green. We wanted to focus on small details because they can also make or break a film. For example it is not said in the film, but after Carmen gives Rose the bracelet she made, Rose makes her one too and both their bracelets have corresponding hearts, where it says C loves R or R loves C. We also wanted to add aspects of ourselves into the branding and show how involved we were in our movie, and how much effort we put into it. For example, I painted our postcard and my partner edited it, a cool thing is that I can not really draw faces so I usually choose to leave them out, so I sent it to my partner without mentioning the fact that I am not that good at drawing faces and she suggested I do not put faces so she can put the titles across their faces, which i thought was a great idea. Another detail in the painting is that I did not include below the arms so we could not include their bracelets so I changed them to necklaces, but with Rose and Carmen both having extremely similar ones, with Carmens having a few more white details. I also based their hairstyles off of some of the scenes. For example, in Carmens first and last scene she has her hair in a bun with her bangs in her face, which is shown on the front of our postcard. For Rose I based it off the scene where she is blow drying her hair, because I have her wearing a blue shirt and that's the only time she wears a blue shirt, so I decided to make her have her hair down.
3 How do your products engage with the audience?
Our target audience is members of the lgbt community, specifically people of color, or those who feel under represented. We are trying to show our audience that even if they are not out of the closet or do not feel comfortable doing so any time soon, that there will always be someone there for them. We wanted to show that no matter what happens someone will always be there to “pick up the pieces” and put you back together. We wanted to represent actual relationships that happen. We also wanted to show different types of relationships which is why we wanted to sort of try to show the relationship between Rose and her mom and explain why she was shocked when her mom told her to leave. A lot of people say they are not homophobic and that they are okay with lgbt people until its someone close to themor they will be out right homophobic to thers while having lgbt family memebers, which is extremely damaging to a persons mental health. I know a lot of people who have been kicked out of their homes by their parents and after that they feel like there is nothing left and no one to help them.
4 How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?
For our research we watched a lot of films with women who like women as lead characters. One of the things we noticed is that they did not really do anything besides their sexuality, like they barely had developed personalities. Another thing was that the “love interest” would usually be in a relationship with a boy and the main character would get upset. We found examples of that in the film “booksmart” when Amy is crushing on Ryan but she finds Ryan kissing a boy at a party. We tried to “challenge” conventions by making her liking women just a piece of her story and not the whole thing. For example the story would still make sense had you not known Rose like women and was in a relationship with one, like she could still get kicked out but the watcher would only figure out why when her mom says it, which is why that scene is so important.
