Mean Girls

As part of my research i watched the opening of a teen comedy film, to see how it will influence my production. I decided to watch Mean Girls this is what i found out:

The film begins with the titles, they are very simple, used on a black background and are written in bold and bright different colours, this symbolises youth and gives us a hint that this film is a teen comedy. The titles are spread across the screen highlighting the social separation between the school students. when the titles comes up they are in the centre of the screen showing that they are the centre of the social system, everyone wants to be one of them. the letters used are all capitalised, with 'Mean' written in white and is bold compared with 'Girls' which is written skinny and in pink, this is used because most of the girls in this film want to be skinny. pink is used because it is a stereotypical girly colour.

Before the camera shows us that the main character is a 16 year old girl, the representation of Cady, is that she is a young child on her way to her first day of school. This is used for comic effect and is the first time that we know we are watching a teen comedy. When she gets to school the representation of her changes, she is know seen as the shy new girl, compared with the other students she is seen as upper class. This is because she was home schooled and has spent most of her life in Africa. The other school students are represented as middle class, normal public school students.

The film uses the normal teen comedy conventions, they help convey the situations and emotions of the characters in the school. the high school is used to show us the setting is iconic of this genre, it is used because this is where most teenagers are the majority of their time. I will be using this in my production because it is iconic and the audience will expect to see it set in a school. They also show us the different social groups that the school is divided into: 'the loser' 'the jocks' etc... These are used to show how school is very cliche, this has influenced our film because these stereotypes are vital for our story. In addition, the main character is also involved in an embarrassment scene (pouring coffee over the teacher,) these are used a lot in this genre for comic effect. We will be doing the same, they are always a funny way to introduce a character to the school or class. Finally, there is also the use of iconic props: football, books, desks, school bus, blackboards as well as these we also hear the diegetic sound of the school bell. These are the traditional props and sounds you would hear in this genre of films, they have given us an idea of the things to use in our production.

The audience of this film and many other of this genre are teenagers. Male and female teenage audiences can watch it, because they can relate at least one of the characters in the film. Boys will watch the movie because of the hot girls who star in it, and girls will watch because the story is more focused on them and they will be able to relate because they would be able to see people form their school in the role of different characters. we can tell that they are the target audience because of the setting which is used in the opening of the movie, the High School, because it is familiar to the audience. the target audience for our movie is also the teen market, we think by using the setting of the high school, and some of the same character types from mean girls we will also be able to make an excellent movie.