How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups?

Evaluation Task 2

In our film we decided to feature teenagers as our main social group, excluding young and elderly people. Further to this we also included some middle-aged characters further on in our film in the form of teachers. We decided to use these social groups as they are most relevant to our teenage demographic and we have seen this in other teen angst films such as 'Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging'. However within this teenage population there are lots of other social circles that we have chosen to incorporate into our film.

Firstly we have decided to use Rose our main character as the typical outsider of social circles that strives for popularity. Rose is the new girl in our film so she naturally suited this 'lone wolf' character. However we decided to use Rose because she is the typical good-looking, tall and shy girl that has the potential to become popular within the social circles. Rose is very similar Cady Heron from 'Mean Girls' because much like Rose she strives for this goal of becoming popular and loses her true friends in the process. We decided to incorporate this typical social group of the outsider as it adds an added dimension to the typical 'bitchy' female groups. Rose is also very similar to Cady with regards to appearance as well as personality. For example as you can see in the image both characters start off by wearing dull coloured and ordinary clothing that is suitable for school. However as the film progresses with their popularity we see their clothing evolve into   more extravagant and unsuitable for school. This represents this rebellious social group well as it clearly represents the characters as they change. Further to this both Rose and Cady have Red hair which is important as it forebodes the series of farcical events that the pair cause in both films.

The second social group within the teenage demographic that we decided to feature is the stereotypical 'bitchy' female group that is very popular in many teen angst films like 'Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging' with the character Lindsey as the leader. In our film we used Lucy Lou as the head of this group because of her typical tall, attractive teenage girl appearance that we saw from Lindsey. Although we decided to use Lucy Lou as a character with long dark hair compared to the typical blonde like Lindsey as this feature conveys Lucy's dark side under her fake personality. This character trait is seen in our title sequence as she knocks Rose to the ground when she first sees her. We felt it was important to incorporate this because our target demographic will find this typical social group very relatable as it is very common within teenage girl groups. Further to this all of our research suggested we should conform to this typical teen angst convention as all of them seemed to have included including, 'Mean Girls' and 'Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging'.

Another social group that we decided to convey in our film is the stereotypical good looking boy that all the girls want. However instead of conforming to the typical convention of just having one like 'Robbie' in 'Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging' and many other teen angst films. In our film we have used Tommy and Dexter both as this teenage heartthrob character. We decided to expand this social group and have two boys competing for the main character Rose as it adds a unique feature to this convention. Dexter is the stereotypical tall, dark haired, good looking and fashionable boy the same as Robbie. Dexter's love for female attention is emphasised by his look round at Rose as soon as she walks into the room. This is similar to Zac Efron's hair flick when he gets out of his car in '17 Again' as both convention portray the characters confidence. On the other hand we introduce the other heartthrob character Tommy in a very discrete and portray his character as shy as he walks into the shot looking down at his phone. However his confidence with females is then introduced shortly when he helps Rose to her feet and engages with her. We felt it was important to incorporate this confident male heartthrob lead characters because it is a very popular convention of teen angst and is engaging for our young female demographic.

To support these teenage social groups we also decided to include an older social demographic throughout our film through the use of teachers which also worked as teachers is a typical convention of teen angsts as they are set in schools. We wanted to subtly include this older social group without them taking a major role in our film as we felt this would be most interesting for our target demographic. We also saw this in our research for example in 'Ferris Beulluer's Day Off'. To do this we decided to use long shots that have teachers in classrooms as this represents the social group in a detached way. These shots included mise-en-scene that is iconographic to school such as smartboards, desks, display boards, books and a computer. Further to this the teacher that we decided to include is a male from Canada. His accent therefore enhances a wider social group due to difference in ethnicity, representing todays multicultural society, while maintaining our white actors as this was decided due to our demographic.

In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop and Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media Products?

Evaluation Task 1

1) This image shows our title fonts and the style that we used throughout the film. We kept the same font and colour scheme throughout the whole title sequence to maintain continuity throughout. We used pastel colours so that it appeals to a female audience because these types of light and colourful fonts are associated with females. The positioning of the titles is different in every shot so that it keeps the audience interested throughout as in some films the title sequences seem to become continuous and boring and we wanted to ensure this didn't happen. Furthermore, we decided on the font of our titles because we looked at the Easy A title sequence which was very effective and they used similar blocked sans-serif font. We wanted to conform to this typical teen angst convention by also using a similar font, although changing the colours for effect as previously mentioned.

2) This is an image of the main character Rose mid-way through the opening sequence of her getting up and ready for school. However this shot has particular importance because it conveys the first idea of the storyline for the audience. This is due to the mid shot the clearly shows Rose's anxious and nervous emotions through her body language because she sighs. Her facial expressions of a slight frown although maintaining a pleasant smile also shows this confusion of emotions. These features are important because it shows the audience how she is feeling about her first day of school between the usual rush. We used these negative emotions as a foreboding technique of the later storyline which involves turn turning into a hated character.

3) We used this long shot as an establishing shot to clearly show that our film is based in a school environment. We felt it was important to incorporate a shot of her walking up to the front of a school as it enforces the fact that the setting is a key feature of the opening sequence (her going to a new school). The shot shows her walking up to the door in a hurried manner which is important because it conveys the school setting as a safe environment which is important for our film because this typical convention is then shortly broken by the protagonists.

4) We decided to place the film title in this shot because it immediately associates the title which is 'Rose' with the character Rose. This is due to the fact that the main focus of the shot is a close up of Rose's face so the audience will easily find this association and shows that she is the main character in the film. We decided to use a pink colour for the font for the title of the film because it is stereotypically a female colour which means it will be appealing to our target demographic. Furthermore the pink will portray Rose as a typical teenage girl which is important as we have made her into this type of character. We also decided to have the title very large and central of the screen because we saw this in Easy A opening sequence. We decided to conform to this feature as it worked will and we have a similar target audience so we felt this was an important convention to include.

5) This shot shows how we introduced the protagonists in our film. We decided to use a longshot of Lucy Lou and Hannah walking in. Firstly this is because the audience will have full view of the door that she friskily slams open. This is important because it conveys her immediately as a character who is aggressive and shows she is a protagonist. This is then followed by Lucy Lou strutting towards the camera and flicking her hair in a confident and sassy manner. This is used to show the audience about Lucy's character's personality which is important when introducing a character for the first time. Secondly shortly followed the introduction of Hannah who is walking behind Lucy Lou. We decided to have Hannah following behind and obstructed by Lucy's figure as this portrays how Hannah has a reserved and submissive character. This is because she is often in the shadow of Lucy as shown in the shot. Furthermore a new soundtrack starts to play as this shot starts. This is because we are using the music as a sound motif that reflects the characters. In this case we used a very rocky and powerful song to emphasise the fact that they are protagonists and nasty personalities.

6) This shot shows a lot about the genre and how we used certain shots to convey this to the audience. For example this shot is used to show a romantic connection between Tommy and Rose because he is showing he is a Gentleman by helping Rose to her feet and she appreciates this with a clear smile. The importance of this is that a common convention of teen angst films is a romance between main characters so this shot is used to show this genre convention. The shot also clearly shows two teenagers which is important because all teen angst films feature teenagers. Therefore it is important that we have teenagers starring in our film.

7) This shot shows Lucy Lou deliberately bumping into Rose and knocking her over into the lockers. This shot is very dramatic because Rose drops all of her papers onto the ground. We therefore decided to use slow motion in this shot to emphasise the shock and danger of the situation. We saw a main character in Easy A also get knocked over however we felt the shot happens too fast and takes away from the excitement of the scene. This is why we have decided not to conform and adapt it to emphasise the shot.

8)This is a shot of Tommy and shows his casual outfit. We decided to use simple and ordinary costumes for our characters so that the characters do not appear unnatural and suited to a sixth form school environment. This is because our target audience will know what to expect of what teenagers wear to sixth form so wearing this style of clothes will be relate-able for them. In this shot we also used a mobile phone which we felt was important because stereotypically teenagers are always on there phones are distracted from the rest of the world due to them. However in this shot Tommy spots Rose on the floor and doesn't take any notice of his phone once he sees her. We used this prop to emphasise the situation as he goes from being completely engaged in his phone to completely forgetting about it. 

9) This is a high angle shot of Rose sprawled out on the floor after she has been knocked down by Lucy. We decided to use this high angle shot to make her appear small and insignificant due to her vulnerability. The shot emphasises her weakness at this moment in time which is important because we purposely wanted her to appear weak in this scene. This shot was initially very long and non-engaging due to the length of it. We were able to use editing to trim the shot down to make it a lot shorter. This meant that the shot was more interesting as it is only quickly displayed on the screen which is important as this editing allows us to keep the audience interested.



Costumes and Make Up

Costumes and Make Up

We looked up style trends that are popular at the moment so that our costumes would be current among our teenage girl demographic. However we also wanted costumes that would be timeless, so we kept the style basic without patterns or brands. When researching on costumes usually present in teen angst films we found that other films have had this idea by dressing characters in items of clothing that are one colour without many patterns. This is present in films such as Mean Girls, Easy A, and Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging.
In our film we will focus on dark colours as that is what is popular with this generation, with jeans and a shirt or t-shirt.

The make up our characters will differ depending on gender. The boys in our film will have little to no make up to keep a natural, real life look that the demographic is familiar with. The girls will be made up like teenage girls that will watch our film. The main character Rose will have more natural make up at the start, as with research we discovered that the main character starts off as a natural beauty but then evolves into into a more impressive beauty, so by the end Rose's make up will be more visible and professional to show how she progresses as a character. This is much like Cady from Mean Girls and Olive from Easy A.

Planning of Characters

Rose Martin:

Rose is the main character of the film as shown through the use of her name as the title. We chose this name because it reflects her characters personality in the film. This is because like a Rose she looks sweet and nice, however her true hurtful personality later shines through, like the sharp thorns of a Rose. As explained Rose starts off as being the stereotypical sweet and nervous new girl that can't seem to do anything wrong. We took inspiration for this aspect of the character from Easy A as they also use a similar character and this was very popular to the target audience which is similar to ours. This aspect of character conforms to what we learnt from this research. However we decided to change Rose's character as the film progresses so that she transforms into a nasty antagonist. This is because it supports our USP that shows the main character losing her friends because of what she becomes. This is important because having seen similar characters in Easy A we know our target audience will be able to relate.

Tommy Brown:
Tommy Brown is the stereotypical nice guy that always seems to be the boy who gets 'friend-zoned' due to his friendly and caring personality. We choose to name the character Tommy Brown because this is a very typical English name that our demographic will be able to relate to. Tommy is also a very average stereotypical teenage boy which is why we decided on this name. We took inspiration from a character called Robbie in Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging. Robbie is very similar to Tommy because they both play this average sweet boy and end up being discarded in the end as nothing more than a friend.




Dexter Hill:
Dexter plays the role of the slightly mysterious teenager that seems to catch the attention of females such as Rose in our film. We decided to call him Dexter because it suits his character which is out of the ordinary and doesn't conform to the typical characteristics. Dexter becomes more involved with other characters like Rose as the film progresses and becomes very close with her. We also took inspiration from Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging as there is a similar character called Robbie. Robbie's character was very popular with the teenage girl target audience after we researched reviews which is why we decided to incorporate a similar character.

Hannah Newman:
Hannah is a character who lives in the shadow of her best friend, Lucy. This is because Hannah acts as Lucy's sidekick and partner in crime. We decided to name this character Hannah because it is a very popular English name that many people have and does not say a lot about her personality. We therefore decided on this because Hannah is always shadowed by Lucy's character and the demographic can relate to this. Hannah always finds herself in trouble with other characters mainly due to the actions of Lucy. Due to this Lucy finds herself as a character that isn't very liked by the other main characters such as Rose and Dexter. However Hannah seems to have a lot of respect from other female students because of their fear of the two-some. Hannah's character was greatly inspired by our research of Mean Girls as there is a very similar side-kick character called Karen. This was effective because
it provided an extra depth to the antagonists so we decided to include it in ours as well.

Lucy Lou:

Lucy is the stereotypical teenage angst protagonist that is always causing trouble with the other characters. We decided to name her Lucy Lou because it is annoying rhythmic like her personality which is also very purposely annoying. We decided to make Lucy a character with twisted ethics of a bitchy teenager. For example she likes to gossip about other characters. We found out from research that gossiping is a common trait of teenage girls which is our target audience which is why we decided to incorporate this. We also introduced Lucy as a very mean character that nobody dares to mess with. To enforce this we had Lucy knock over the main character Rose and we saw this in Easy A which is another reason why we choose to do so.  

Film Title

Our Film Title

As seen above our film title is called 'Rose'. Rose is the name of our main character and we choose to incorporate this as our title for several reasons.

• Firstly Roses have the connotative effect that relates with romance and love. As our film is based on the love and Romance between our main character Rose we felt this would be well suited as our title.
• Secondly Rose is a very traditional British name. As we are targeting a British demographic we felt that it is important to have a relatable name that they are familiar with as it will make the title more memorable. Furthermore as it is such a simple but uncommon name with the current youth we feel this will make it even more memorable. 
• We also liked the idea of Rose as a title because we looked at the popular connotations that are associated with Roses. We found that they are associated with being sweet and thoughtful although having a nasty shadow because of their sharp thorns that are known to hurt people. This is very much the case for the character Rose and is why we felt it was important to portray these connotations through the title.
• We took inspiration for our name from our research of the film 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off'. This is because they featured the name of the main character of the film in their title. However we decided to not entirely conform as we only used the our main characters first name and didn't mention the plot in the title. We decided to do this to differentiate from other similar teen angst titles.