Character Juxtapositions

Technology

One part of technology we used on live type. This is where we made out titles. Live type was a very useful programme to use because none of us had used it before, but we was soon able to pick up how it worked. The way it worked was just to type in what you wanted, pick a font and then how you wanted it to appear. A good advantage to using was that it was also on a time line so that made it easier for us to import it in to Final Cut Express.

Conventions

This is a mid-shot of both characters together sitting on the bed. This conforms to the conventions of a teen film because it shows both characters laughing and gossiping this shows there friendship and is something all teenage girls do when they get together.

The production company logo comes up at the very begining of the film as it does in all teen and other genre films. This is what the audience will first see. We decided to use this logo because it was the most eye-catching and original logo.

Production Company Logo

For our production company we decided to use a name that would fit the teen film genre. So I came up with the idea for Half Moon Productions and created the logo using photoshop.

Distribution

When researching for a distributor that we would want to distribute our film we did some research. We found seven well known teen films and looked at their distribution. From doing out research we found out that:

• Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging: Paramount Pictures
• 10 Things I Hate About You: Touch Stone
• Juno: Fox Search Light
• Mean girls: Paramount
• 17 again: New Line Cinema
• Never been kissed: 20th Century Fox
• Clueless: Paramount Pictures

From doing our research we discovered that Paramount Pictures was a very commonly, and a well know distributor. We thought that this distributer would best suit our film because of it very good reputation and status in the Film industry.

Conventions

This is the title shot from our film and it conforms to the traditional conventions of a teen film. We chose to do the titles this way because it looks more fun and wacky, like titles that would be seen at the start of a teen film. We also chose to use the background image because it's the opening shot of the film and where the characters first encounter.

This is a two shot of our main character Anisha, and her best friend Sarah sitting on a bed. It conforms to traditional conventions of a teen film because it's something that would normally happen within the narrative. Two best friends sitting around in one of their bedrooms and gossiping.

Kelly's conventions

This is the first shot that the audience will see. The location is a park. This is a convention of a teen film because of the location. Most teens hang about outside, with their friends even if they are not doing anything. Also the time that we filmed was planned because may teens hang about in night time, e.g. 10 things i hate about you. (The lines at the top is from where the screen shot is taken, its where the titles are about to come up)

This is the second convention shot. This shot complies with conventions because of the titles because they come over the middle of the shot which is seen in many other teen film where text appears over the film and also the characters. This is because both of them look happy and look like they are having fun, also because the phone is in the middle it makes the audience think that the girls are talking or texting a boy.

Filming and editing

For our filming we ran into a few difficulties. Our first difficulty was that because our location was outside and the days we wanted to film,

• the weather conditions where bad so we could not film.

• Another problem we ran into was to our cast, when we actually went to go and film, they dropped out at the last moment saying they could not do it. This put us in an awkward position as we had already done a little bit filming. In the end we decided that we had to change our actress so that we could get the filming done in time for our deadline.

• When we had uploaded our film, we had even more problems, first of all after we had done some editing all of our footage got deleted beause of a problem with them mac's.

• Our final problem was whist editing after re-filiming, it would not save and some of the footage went weird and we could not use it

we feel that if these problems had not happened then we would of had more time to work on our film opening, which could of mean that certain things could be improved.

Survey and Results

The main reason why we wanted to do our survey was to define our target audience and do some primary research than reading other peoples which may not have answered all of our questions. As we only had a limited amout of people we could do to get the survey, all of the people who filled it in was in Dunraven. This however was not such a bad thing becuase they are they age group we want to watch our teen film. From the answers we were able to learn that:

• The majority of an audience at a teen film is female
• The majority are aged between 14-16
• All of the audience went to 6th Form/College
• The majority of the audience either liked watching teen films or didn't mind
• The majority prefer teen films mixed with Comedy/Romance
• They had all seen between 10-50 teen films
• They go to see films because of the actors/actresses starring in it

Our locations, actors,actress and how they relate to the genre

Locations
There where many factors that we had to take into consideration when we where chosing our loactions becuase many problems could arise while we where going to film. Some of these problems were: did we need to get permission to film? The weather conditions, if we are filiming outside. Does it fit with the genre of our film ?
The location that we are going to use in our film opening is a park, which is tooting triangle. We have decided to use this location, because it is a stereotypical location where teenagers would hang out. The location of the park is broken up into to pieces, There is a playground,massive green area, and a soil pitch. The only part of this location we are going to use is the green grass area. Some of the reasons we chose this location was becuase:

• It was easy for all of our group and cast to get too.
• All of the group had been to the location before and had all thought that it would be a good location.
• We wouldnt need to rely on the weather as long as it wasnt raining or snowing then we would be able to film.

Casting

The actors and actresses we are going to use in our film opening will be all teenagers to go with the genre of teen film. The casting we will have will be a few girls girls and few boys to make up our groups. The main actress will be Alexa, as she is casted stereotypically beautiful, and has blonde hair. The other casted girls will not be ugly but not better looking than the main character, we will do this by making the main characters costome to stand out more

than the others to make her look more attractive.

Ideas

These photos are of our brainstorm which we made to think of initial ideas for our Teen Film. We thought about certain areas such as conventions, techniques and film openings we could look at in our genre.

Research film 1

We are researching the opening credits to teen films. The first teen film I am looking at is Juno. It starts of with the production company logo fading into the image of “Juno” walking. Non-diegetic music is playing in the background. People are running past her and are not taking any notice of her and when she walks behind the tree there is a transition into a cartoon. Were she enters a cartoon land and then the opening titles start coming up.

Mood Board!

This is our mood board which is based on the genre of our film. 

Entry Two : Conventions and stereotypes of teen films

There are many conventions of teen films; they can be technical or stereotypical. From a technical view, some techniques that are used in teen films could be to do with the mise-en-scene. For example the main locations used are usually “clean and high achieving” high schools. Other locations would usually be the bedroom of the character, shopping centre or parks. The casting of teen films is usually different to what they appear to be. By this I mean that they cast are actually older than their character but made to look younger. This is done so that the cast do not have any of the signs or growing up, like having bad spots or the boy’s voice breaking. From a stereotypical point of view, there are 5 main stereotypes,

• The pretty girl/bitch
• Jock,
• Nerd,
• The best friend of the main character and
• The parents

The Jock

The pretty blonde

The Nerd

From a technical view point, the camera will normally move quite slowly, and during the editing process use slow cuts and fades/dissolves.

Other very sucessful teen films that have made us wanted to film in this genre are :

• 10 things i hate about you
• Angus thongs and perfect snogging
• High school musical
• Mean girls
• Super bad
• St trinains
  

Entry One: Our Plans

Our Plans for now are :
Our film is going to be targeted at teenagers.
It is going to be based in tooting triangle.
Possible Actors : Alexa, Anthony, Lee
Convensions used in teen films:
-Stereotype of pretty girl, jock and nerds
-High school or teenage hangout areas
-Use slow cuts and fades
Non diegetic music
Our target audience is 15+
Mainly targeted at teenage girls
Aimed at sterotypical girls, not tomboys.