S2-56 : FILM OPENING PROJECT 2008/9: February 2009
Friday 13 February 2009
Call sheet
Director/producer:role shared throughout group.
main location: Long road sixth form college location contact number: 01223507400
Production contacts:
George Baglin:07535645082
Steven Dickens:07742295615
Shaun Kaba:07530923015
Emily Toffs:07891210996
shooting scheldule: day 1- scene: opinions locations: library, refectory, sportshall cast:frankie roughan, halle magret, laura stepney, becca ling, megan larkey,surri dawn graver, stuart dutton, conor murphy.
day 2- scene:
posted by AS Media Student at 05:31
Film Analysis
For my analysis of a teen 'Romantic Comedy' (romcom), I have chosen analyse the opening sequence to Mark Waters 2004 film 'Mean Girls'. i will be looking to see how different micro elements, e.g. mise en scene, editing, sound and camera work are used to establish the story line, characters and the genre. As well as watching the opening sequence to the film, I will be using other resources to find out information about the film, like Wikipedia, IMDb and Google, so that I will be able to find out the name of the songs used, and who they are by, etc.
Mean Girls is a controversial teen romcom, which covers all aspects of modern teenage life, like cliques, ethnical background, sexuality,etc, and the problems that can arise from these, like bullying, racism and homosexuality, but they are still covered in a comic fashion, so you may even say it was leaning over to black comedy. The film is centered around the protagonist 'Cady Heron' (Lindsay Lohan) and shows her lifestyle change when her family move from the desesrts of Africa, to the concrete jungles that is America, and how she realises that life in America isn't quite the walk in the park she thought it would be.
High School Musical is a musical which is aimed at young children, mainly girls up to teens. There are three of the movies and have become a worldwide success. It is based around two protagonists 'Gabriella' and 'Troy' and shows how they meet and develop a relationship. I will be analyzing the micro-elements which are present in the opening sequence e.g. mise en scene, sound, editing and camera work.
The scene starts with an establishing shot of the lodge where the main protagonists are staying. Then shows Gabrielle doing what her character typically does, reads, and then her mother comes and tell her to go to a children party, then switches to Troy doing hat his character typically does, basketball, and then his mother comes and tells him to go to the party. At this moment in time Gabriella and Troy are both totally unaware of each other. there is then a series of medium shits which show the two characters walking around the party by themselves, not wanting to be there, there are individual close ups which show that they are perhaps a bit disorientated and the viewer can tell this by their facial expressions and awkward body language. They are then brought together into one shot when they are made to get on stage, this introduces the protagonists first meeting.
Most of the sound is diegetic with the sound of spoken dialogue and then when they're at the party, the sound of the karaoke is in the background. There are is non-diegetic sound when Gabriella is introduced, the sound sounded quite magical and girly, and as the film is aimed at young girls, the sound fitted in well. Not much non-diegetic sound was probably used because as it is a musical, the tracks were most likely wanted to be distinct and for there still to be a sense of storyline in the film.
The editing is quite normal paced and naturalistic. There are two shots when the protagonists are both individually framed, there are two spotlights and they both seperatley higlight Troy and Gabriella, this cleverly shows that they have been brought together. There are no special effects and the lighting is natural, however there is quite a magical feel to it because there are various decorative lights which all create a young, girly image.
These elements create the mise en scene, which is a girly, magical atmosphere. The fact that it is at a childrens party which is all lit up with kareoke makes it very girly and child friendly. It creates a very positive tone as when the two protagonists meet lively music is present.
Step brothers is about two 40 year old men that still live with their parents. The brothers meet first time when they move in together where there is some hostility. The first scene is with Brennan (will Ferrell) eating cheesy nachos for breakfast the close up on the nachos lets the viewer guess how old he is then shows that it is a grown man which shows the comedy. The lighting is naturalistic which shows the realistic side of the film. The way dale ( john.c.Reily) is introduced is funny because it shows his dad going to a confrence which is where he meets brennans mum, while dale is playing guitar hero and he asks his dad for money for pizza. The editing is well done because transitions switch between the two showing them in similar situations which works well. most of the sound is non-diagetic which works well because it keeps the film at a steady flow throughout.
Romantic comedy films, colloquially known as romcom, are movies with light hearted, humorous postlines, centered on romantic ideals such as a true love able to surmount most obstacles. Romantic comedy films are a sub-genre of comedy films as well as of romance films. Because of their appeal to women, romantic comedies are sometimes called 'chick flick'
There are usually 2 protagonists - man and women meet, part due to arguement or some form of conflict and eventually reunite. Sometimes throughout the film the 2 can be hesitant to become romantically involved but the screen writer leaves clues that suggest that they are attracted to eachother.
Our film opening might not necasserily show the two protagonists together and any issues they may be facing, however we do hope to introduce them to the viewer, showing their particular style or place in their society. Stereotypes are commonly used in teen romantic comedies and the characters are very distinct and obviously split into different social groups, we decided this would enhance our film opening so we are introducing many different people that are in a college from different social classes. We were heavily influecned by Mean Girls.
The following videos show our test footage taken around the college, this would benefit us when it comes to filming our real shots so that we don't waste time deciding the frames of the shots. We figured the best positions and distances between the actors and recording equipment and mapped them out so we could take them to the filming location. (The shots are finding positions not showing the quality of the acting so please ignore any laughter). We have slowed each shot down to 70% so we can find any problems with the filming.
Firstly, we have the eye-level full shot. This shot is disadvantaged by the movement in the camera
Next, is the second attempt at the eye-level full shot. This shot is disadvantaged by the character showing his feet at the beginning of the footage. In order to match the research into full shots, the camera would need to hide the actors feet and let his head touch the top of the shot.
The following shots attempt to show characters reactions to the lead male. In each shot the characters must be absorbed by the main character by following his movement with their eyes and face. However, we needed to use test footage to decide the distance between the camera and the lead male. We want to show him walking past without revealing too much of his looks. This first shot has a slight distorted angle, as shown in the research, but we feel the lead male is too far away from the camera and reveals too much which doesn't match our specification; (walking past without revealing too much of his looks).
Other than the slight jolt in this footage, we feel comfortable with this layout in camera and actors.
This footage doesn't display enough movement in the characters face and eyes, we want to emphasize the importance of our lead male by showing that people stop what they're doing to watch him come into the location.
This final shot shows the reactions of characters without seeing the lead male walking past. We feel this isn't as effect as the other shots.
Unfortunately, using photoshop for our production company logo wasn't possible because we were not able to make our logo either sparkle, or diamond covered, and as the inspiration for our logo is the Sex & The City film logo we knew that without these elements our logo could end up looking messy and unprofessional. Thankfully "www.photobucket.com's" photo editing offered sparkly lettering, so I made our logo on there. We decided to call our production company 'SSGE PRODUCTIONS', because we all wanted to make our mark on the piece of work, and we felt the best way of doing this equally was to take the first letter from each of our first names (Shaun, Stephen, George & Emily) for a simple, and yet affective company name. Here is my first attempt a our logo;
After having made the pink logo, as our group is made up of three boys and one girl, we decided that the logo is a bit too feminine, I thought that perhaps checking what the logo would look like if the text were blue, and would make a difference on how girly the logo is;
After having made the blue sign I thought that as we are making a chick flick, the blue sign is not girly enough so i added a tiara, as they are very common in chick flicks aimed at girls age 12+, like in 'A Cinderella Story', 'Princess Diaries', 'Mean Girls', etc, and would be likely to make an appearance in our film in a prom or some sort of college ball, were it to be made in a feature length production;
But then I thought the crown looked a bit out of place on our logo and caused it loose some sense of professionalism as it didn't sparkle, unlike the rest of our logo so I asked the rest of the group for there opinions. I then chose to go with the original Sex & The City inspired logo, as it is the most professional looking logo out of the above and the most suited to the genre and storyline for our film opening.
Official 'SSGE Productions' production company logo;
To find the the perfect shots for our storyboard we decided to study some scenes from famous films including Superbad and It's a Boy Girl Thing. Both of which have scenes introducing changed characters in a similar way we would like in our film opening. The following picture show the classic introductary shot of the important character(s) from the film. This influenced our idea to use an eye-level fullshot of our central character.
This camera shot has been illustrated onto our storyboard, shown below.
Throughout our film opening we warmed to the idea of swapping between footage of our ideal character and various views/opinions of this person. The footage of our character would begin as close-ups showing aspects of his body (such as his legs or feet as they walk into the college ground or whichever location we choose). The following image is a snapshot of the film It's a Boy Girl Thing as the newly changed character steps off the bus, this sparked our idea to film our character as he steps out of his car. However, after experimenting with different angles of this camera shot, we found that a low angle close-up of our character would emphasise his appears without revealing too much of his character.
This camera shot has been illustrated onto our storyboard, shown below.
The following images show our investigation of the different angles of the close-up camera shot.
Furthermore, we would like to display peoples reaction to his entrance not only through the opinions of other people but by filming other characters watching him as he walks past. In order to accomplish this we would need to film several people as their heads follow his movement to show the impact of his arrival. I think it would appropriate to use either a midshot of a specific character with heads moving in the background or use the rule of thirds technique and use a row of characters with their movement seperately. Another possibility would be to use focusing techniques and use distance to show the line of people and their reactions individually.
During the opinion footage in our opening sequence we decided to use mid shots of the characters when they're in their locations. It is very important to use the same shot in each location to match the footage in mean girls, as shown in the moodboard below.
In order to incorperate both our central character and peoples reactions, it would be perfect to use an overthehead shot. This would also show his status in that the corridor or pathway would be clear for him to walk down with no obstacles. The following images show this technique being used in It's a Boy Girl Thing. Our overthehead shot may use the unusual angles that are being used in that scene of the film in order to achieve a purposeful entrance.
This camera shot has been illustrated onto our storyboard, shown below.
Step brothers is about two 40 year old men that still live with their parents. The brothers meet first time when they move in together where there is some hostility. The first scene is with Brennan (will 
The following images show our investigation of the different angles of the close-up camera shot.
