We used a few settings when filming, one of which was the school setting by the lockers. We used this setting because the lockers connote the school setting which is important as this is where the film is set. Another setting we used was the new girl's bedroom. We used this as it had typical female iconography and so the audience would know that the main character will be a female and that she is typical girl and that she feels most comfortable at home. This means that the audience can relate to her better from the start.
Lots of teen angst films have these setting, including Mean Girls and Easy A.
We tried to choose actors that portrayed conventional characters of teen angst films. These are the actors we used:
Maddison Griffis - Alice Willard
Dylan Barker - Josh Long
Maddison and Dylan are the two main characters in the film who eventually get together. Maddison is the shy, new girl while Dylan is the most popular guy in the school. In most teen angst films these two characters are good looking and eventually end up liking each other. This was the case in teen angst films such as Angus, thongs and perfect snogging.
On the left are the characters in our film who play the conventional popular, stuck up good looking group of girls. They are an important group in teen angst films and are found in nearly every teen angst film, including Mean Girls (Left picture). They usually don't like the new girl and one of them, usually the main one, is involved with the popular sporty, boy. However as the film progresses, The popular group of girls are seen for who they really are and people start to dislike them.
Also another convention of teen angst are the costumes that these characters wear. For example, the popular group of girls usually wear, expensive, trendy clothes and are stereotypically pink. Also the popular boy will wear trendy, nice clothes.
This was the original idea for the voiceover that we did end up editing and adapting to fit the footage that we had. We wanted the main female character introduce herself and then also putting across her views of the new people she meets and her situation. This is because it will help the audience to empathise with her and so enjoy it more. The voiceover is a teen angst convention and we took the idea from watching films such as Clueless and Easy A.
Below is the final voiceover after we had edited it and adapted it to fit the edited film. We did this because we felt it fitted better and so helped the film progress more as it sounded more natural.
These are the shots that we used in our teen angst film. Shots such as the long shot of the clothes piling up the bed and of the mean girls entering are conventional for the teen angst genre. We took some of these ideas from films such as mean girls and clueless.
This is our preliminary task that we had to film and edit. We were given a storyboard with all of the shots that we had to include but could change the script freely. The shots included close ups, long shots and mid shots. We were also told that we had to include a shot reverse shot, match on action and the 180 degree rule. These are all examples of continuity editing and are used throughout media and films. This was all good practice for when we came to make our teen angst film.
Match on Action is the idea of one action being portrayed through two different shots. This usually included cutting out a section of the action in order to keep it interesting and to not waste time showing boring, unnecessary shots. In our preliminary task we used this when I opened door. The first shot was me going to open the door and the next shot was me walking through
The 180 degree rule where you always film from the same side of the room in order to not confuse the audience. During in a conversation this is useful as the people won't keep switching the way they are facing. This is shown in our preliminary task when Taylor and myself are having a conversation.
Shot reverse shot is an important example of continuity editing as it helps to show interactions between characters. If this isn't used then a conversation between two characters might not be clear and may be confusing for the audience to follow. We used this, again when Taylor and myself were having a conversation.
This is our final production company logo. We used one of the draft ideas and added stars around it to represent the fact that we produce high quality films. This is similar to that of Paramount Pictures. The iconography of London and Britain in the middle of the logo shows that the USP of our films is the fact that we are a British production company and the British social realism this brings. We have a simple, serif font which is placed in a film strip. This connotes that we are a low budget, independent company. This is an idea which we took from the Take Two Production company logo as they are similar to us as they are also a small, low budget company. Again, we made the production company logo black and white which connotes simplicity and that we are low budget
