Characters

After deep deliberation Victoria and I decided on using are friend Jessica Hutchingson to play the role of the ‘unpopular’ girl and Bethan Kench to play the ‘popular’ girl. There are various reasons why we selected these two individuals to play are leading ladies. A distinguishing feature we picked up on when watching a range of romantic comedies was that the female acting the ‘popular’ character always had blonde hair, this hair colour connotes a confident, fun loving, ditsy character. This is the persona we are trying to perceive thus are ‘popular’ girl must have blonde hair. We went around school trying to find suitable candidates for this character and took pictures so we could critically compare each of them and weigh up the pro’s and con’s of each individual. Here are some of the possibilities for both the popular and unpopular girl:

We eventually decided on Bethan for the 'popular' girl, her main feature being her blonde hair, she is also a slender young lady so the tight fitted girly clothes will fit and look spectacular on her, she has big blue eyes and straight white teeth, these are all typical traits a character like hers possesses, she has also had basic acting training appearing in local pantomime’s so being in front of a camera will not faze her.

We selected Jessica firstly because of her willingness to act this role. Jessica is also tall and very slim, we believe by the style of her clothing and the use of her body language we can make her seem like a lanky uncoordinated female. However we are posed with a problem in that Jessica possesses beautiful facial features and we need to make her look not so easy on the eye, we plan to do this by scraping her brown hair back and making it look messy. In addition to this we will not apply any make up to her face to make her look plain.
Also Bethan and Jess are some of mine and Victoria’s close friends and we feel comfortable letting them into our homes and we know they are reliable and will put all there effort into acting there roles to the best of there ability.

Costume Ideas

We want the 'popular' girl to sport clothes that are sophisticated, high fashion, bright and girly this will hopefully convey to the audience the type of character she is without her even having to speak. Emphasis on the costume element of mise on scene is going to be pivotal in our 2 minute opening sequence as we want to evoke certain emotions for the characters in a short space of time, and we believe by getting the costume perfect we can achieve this.

The sophisticated and high fashion feel will connote wealth, a good sense in style and the fact that she takes pride in her appearance, by placing her in bright clothes it will tell the audience that she oozes self confidence and loves to be seen. By dressing her girly, the viewers will be under the illusion that she gets a lot of male attention and is the girl everyone else wants to be with and around. These are a few of the attributes we are hoping to gain through the use of costume.

I would define the look we are going for, for the popular girl as ‘preppy’. This consists of a mixture of designers such as Abercormbie, Jack Will, Lacoste and Ralph Lauren. Below are a few examples I found of attire that would be appropriate for the popular girl:

Below is a mood board I created with a selection of items from clothing to jewellery to bags and much more just to give you a feel for what we are considering. We could pick any of these pieces and put them together to construct the perfect costume. We will obviously trail and test a variety of costumes on are actresses before filming, to see what compliments her, the character we are creating and the settings.

Setting ideas for the 'un -popular' character

The settings that Olivia and I are thinking about for the 'un - popular' girl are my the outside of one of my friends house, inside of house and the dirt paths and tunnels in my village - Whetstone.

However the end result we have visualised for the 'un -popular' girl is to be less fortunate, therefore we cannot use the inside of my friends house because she may be offended, consequently for the inside house scenes we shall film in my house. The plan is to make it un - tidy and messy; resulting in my house looking cramped and un - clean. The kitchen will have laundry on the sides, painted pictures on the cupboards, dirty tea towels hanging off handles, newspapers spread out all over the floor (because of the new puppy), the dogs basket etc. The bedroom will be just as un - tidy; clothes everywhere, grungy posters, shoes on floor, bed un -made etc.

The bike scene that we are going to include in our film opening with be filmed on a country gravel path, which has fields on one side and 'jungle like'  bushes on the other. We believe that this scene will be used effectively because the natural lighting will be good, also it shows the struggle that the 'un popular' character has to go through every morning.

This are pictures of my friends house that we are going to use for the exterior shots of the

 'un - popular' girls house.

These are shots of my bedroom after I messed it up, this is the types of setting that Olivia and I are trying to achieve for the getting dressed, bedroom scene. We are also going to put 'grungy' posters up on the walls, this makes the room darker without loosing the light. The dark setting is a reflection of how the 'un -popular' female lead is feeling.

These are two shots of my kitchen; for our kitchen scnen olivia and I are going to 'clutter' my kitchen resulting in it looking un - clean and messy - this is a reflection of the 'un- popular' girls appearance. Using my Kitchen is not ideal however we have no other option without risking offending someone - our vision was to have a small un - unclean kitchen.

This is where we are going to film the bike scene. I believe that this setting will look effective for the scene that we have visualised. The idea behind the bike scene is portray the stuggle that the 'un - popular' female has to go through everyday to get to school: hopefully achieving the audiences' sympathy.  However the scene will look ineffective if the natural light is not bright and hazy - as shown in the pictures. Therefore Olivia and I will have to plan a day when the whether is going to be dry and bright so we can achieve the best possible scene.

I suggested that we include a Birds eye view shot. The idea is that we film the 'un - popular' girl on the bike off the top of the tunnel going in and coming out therefore including two birds eye view shots. However we will film the first birds eye view shot and skip to the 'popular' girl then edit the 'un - popular' female coming out of the tunnel - the viewer is under the impression that she was in the tunnel longer than she actually was.

The 'Popular' girls location

The location Victoria and I have decided to use for the ‘popular’ girl is my house in Leire, my house is fairly large and nicely decorated, this will contrast entirely with the house we have chosen for the ‘unpopular’ girl. Also an advantage of the location being my house is that there will be no problems when it comes to the days and times we need to use it. Featured below are some shots of my house:

Mood Boards

I generated a mood board for each of the binary opposite characters we are trying to create in our opening sequence, I did this so I could get a deeper knowledge and understanding of the characters, I did this by thinking about what they would wear, what activities they would enjoy, who there friends would be, what music they would listen to etc and hopefully by gaining this depth and information I can portray this to the audience also through mise en scene.

25 word pitch

We were asked to produce a piece of writing, consisting of 25 words that would sum up our entire film and enable the audience to understand the plot fully. This is what we came up with:

“A romantic comedy aimed at teenagers, which revolves around two female binary opposites and how their high school cliques operate.”

Examples of interesting shots

The Blurry shot that Olivia and I will use is similar to this one. This shot will look effective in our media for when the 'unpopular' female puts her glasses on. We will do mainy practice shots to achieve our final overall 'blurred' glasses shot.

I believe that this blurred shot will look effective and will flow well with our romantic comedy genre - the element of subtle humour of the character not being able to see.





This clip is usuful for inspiration for the getting ready scenes in our film opening. My idea was to use something similar to this however when Demi Moore (the actress in the film clip) puts her underwear on we will use a close up/ extreme close up, (for our credits) using name lables in the seams of the briefs.




This 'Birds eye view' shot can be used effectively in the bike scene of our film opening. The bike scene is when the 'unpopular' girl bikes on a dirt path, gravel road to school: she goes under a tunnel and i had the idea of standing on the top of the tunel and film her going through it.

Pitch Feedback

Our whole class agreed that our film should fall under the genre of Romantic Comedy and that it should be aimed mainly at a female audience, however there was some deliberation over what age the target audience should be and underneath I have created a pie chart to illustrate the outcomes. As you can see the over riding vote lies with the ages of 13-19, this is the exact age we were planning on aiming our film at and our class affirmed this idea for us.

Positives
Well thought out characters
Would attract a large audience as many people enjoy the genre/type of film
Well planned out pitch
Very easy to understand and will be very easy to watch, this will attract many people
Love the location choices and think there realistic but at the same time totally contrasting
Been influenced by many different shows and characters (intertexuality) this shows it has been well thought about

Potential Problems
It will be hard to use cross cut editing
Continuity may be an issue, for example the weather will need to be consistent
Could be made more original as there is already a lot of films out that are similar to this
Having to change location constantly may be hard due to weather and it will take up a lot of time
The editing will have to be very slick for it to have its desired effect
You will have to make it overly clear the difference between characters as the audience may get confused easily.

This feedback proved extremely useful, we are going to take all of these positives and potential problems and reassess some of our ideas so that non of the issues raised above will be solved.

Pitch

This is a powerpoint we created to present to our class so we could recieve feedback and constructive criticism as to how we can impove and advance our ideas.

our pitch

Shot List

After vast research we have come up with several ideas our film opening. We want the opening and the credit to be fairly quirky and unusual...



Credits


• When the two binary opposite characters are getting dressed I had the idea of using name labels, for the director’s credits.


• Also whilst the less fortunate (Unpopular) girl is rushing getting ready and doing homework at the same time, she could type her name at the end of her work.


• Whilst both the female leads are eating breakfast, we could use some credits on the food boxes.


• Some of the credits could also look effective with post coming through the door.




Interesting shots


• When the un –popular girl wakes up using a soft focus shot to make the shot ‘fuzzy’ then she reaches for her glasses (the shot is a close up of her hand); the shot changes to a close up of her face (still fuzzy): as she puts her glasses on the shot becomes clearer.


• The camera is put in the fridge, the fridge is then opened and there is a close up/ mid shot of one of the female leads, however this shot is going to be repeated with both of the females –the mise en scene represents the binary opposites.


• When the (un-popular) female is biking to school, she goes under a tunnel – we believe that a bird’s eye shot would look effective here.


• When the females are eating breakfast we had the idea of zooming into one bowl of cereal in the un –popular girl’s house then when it zooms out the shot is in popular girls house: same bowl of cereal.


• The first shot of the ‘popular’ girl begins in an extreme close up of just her eyes then zooms out to a long shot.


• When the ‘popular’ female steps out of the car (at school) – beginning with one leg then the other. A close up of the heeled shoe should be used then a zoom out to show the leg then a tilt shot should be used. This shot connotes her sexuality –Laura Mulvey’s male gaze.