Initially, we are planning to follow conventional locations for the drama genre. Below are a list of locations we have discussed:
Kitchen/living room
Bedroom
Park
Each of these locations are real places that people use on a daily basis. The kitchen and living room are part of a family's home, and will provide a relatable and realistic family life setting for our characters.
The bedroom will represent the personality and the privacy of the main teenage character, and is the place she escapes to when she needs space.
The park is a place that people go to relax, and will be a peaceful place for our character after arguing with her parents. However, the stealing incident will create a somewhat unsafe environment for us to set up the second half of our plot.
Each of these locations are places we can easily access. Though we have still to decide which house we will use to film the home scenes in, we have decided that we will use the park in Royston, as highlighted below on the map.
These kinds of films always set the scene through authentic period costumes, which sometimes reflect the mood or personality of a character. Usually colours can make the main character stand out, for whatever reason.
Pride and Prejudice
All the costumes in this film are period costumes which set the scene for the early 19th Century. The bright mix of colours in the females' costumes suggest a clash of personalities, while the style of the dresses still idealise the fashion of the era. The bright red uniform of the militia suggests that this was set at the time of a war, while the red suggests danger because Mr Wickham is in fact the 'bad character' in the film. The blue tailcoat, striped waistcoat and smart trousers of the second male character suggest wealth and status to represent his hierarchy to the audience.
The Young Victoria
Similar to Pride and Prejudice, the costumes in this film set the time in which the film is set - in this case, during the reign of Queen Victoria. However, these costumes are more grand because it is a story of royalty. The use of different colours in the Queen's costumes represent different periods and highlights/bad moments in her life. The first dress represents the time when she was pregnant, so the colour reflects her happiness. The purple and green dress represent the period when Victoria had just become Queen, so perhaps the colours could be used to suggest her at her peak. The two dresses on the right are worn in the film when Victoria has rowed with Albert (who consequently gets shot when she is wearing this dress) and the black one on the right is the gown she wears when she is in mourning for her Uncle, the King. Again, the influence of the militia is heavy in this film with the red uniform.
Becoming Jane
The female costumes in this film are such that the main character, Jane stands out in red. This could suggest her rebellious personality and her vigor and determination in life. In the image on the right, Jane wears a blue dress, while all the other females are wearing pink, red and turquoise dresses. Like in The Young Victoria, costumes in this film are used to represent the mood and mindset of the characters. In this scene, Jane is fed up and does not want to visit a rich, snobbish lady who owns extensive property, and trails behind the party. The male costumes in this film once again represent the fashion of the era in which it is set. The middle photo is of Jane's father, and a clergyman. His hat which is different to the man's on the left, could be a sign of his position in society as a clergyman.
GENERAL DRAMA:
In these kinds of films, costumes are ordinary and simple, because the characters are either meant to come across as realistic, or if the film is based on a true story, the characters are in fact portraying real people, and therefore need ordinary clothing. Most of the time in general dramas, we can identify 'good characters' through light coloured clothing, and 'bad characters' through dark coloured clothing. This is because appearance can be manipulated easily to portray someone in a particular light which communicates a character's intentions to the audience quickly and easily.
Forrest Gump
All costumes in this film are ordinary clothes which link to the realistic settings and situations. The main character tends to wear a light coloured shirt and a suit, which make the audience almost feel sorry for him because he looks lonely and smart. The lemon yellow dress worn by the female character is a dress which is associated with the 1940s/1950s in which the film is set.
One Day
The costumes in this film as simple. They have to be realistic costumes that represent characters who could be real people, so dresses, skirts, shirts, backpacks, suits and coats are all clothing which we would expect to find on people out on the street every day.
Props can be important for the iconography of a film. For example, westerns tend to have cowboys and indians, guns, deserts, cacti...etc. Props make the scene more realistic and complete the setting. Below are some examples of iconic film props.
Some props - like these from the Star Wars series, become an element of the film which makes it recognisable globally. Most people are aware what a stormtrooper is, and what a lightsaber looks like.
In our film, the mobile phone will be our main prop, because it is the item which is stolen and returned. This is a typical prop which is now used in most films, since technology has developed. Now it is something which everyone has, and therefore is something that the audience can relate to, which therefore adds to the realistic element of the drama genre.
Using the research into stereotypes i have created our character's profile and what they are going to look like!
This is a video i found of an interview with Scarlette who plays 'Maddie' who tells her abit about the character she plays and what her personality is like. I would imagine our character 'Jodie' to have a personality trade like this.
Due to casting issues we have had to change the character "Joe" to a girl, although we are still keeping the character's characteristic's the same and costume, we are just changing the character from a boy to a girl. Here is the character's new profile.
Our film challenges stereotypes of people's perception of others, many films either use these or challenge them in famous and successful films in order to connect the audience to characters as they may already have an idea of their personality strates. I have chose to research stereotypes to give us an idea how to dress certain characters and how certain characters are thought to be. I have chosen to research some of these stereotypes before i create my character profile to see how we can challenge different stereotypes.
Stereotypes are commonly used in films so that the audience will know about the characters personality before it is said in the film, although some films challange them. Most
stereotyping is commonly known to take place from schools which many film directors have adapted too.
Here are some popular stereotypes used in films and TV:
Stereotype: "Gothswear black clothes, black makeup, are depressed and hated by
society."
This is a character from 'Hollyoaks' who fits this stereotype, straight away the audience can see this through mise-en-scene.
Stereotype: "Girls are only concerned about physical appearance."
The Mean Girls film is based in a high school- the perfect place for the director to play with stereotypes. "The Plastics" fit this example of a stereotype through how they are dressed and handle themselves in photo's before you even meet the characters in the film.
This clip from the film shows how the stereotypes are seen throughout the school and how student's see others. All characters are dressed to fit each stereotype, eg. 'Jocks' in sports-wear, 'plastics' in skirts and lots of make up.
"All blondes are unintelligent."
Brittany is a character that a stereotypical blonde, wears make-up, unintelligent, a cheerleader, easily led etc. This is a snapshot of her character and how she fits into this stereotype.
HOWEVER,
'Legally blonde' challenges stereotypes. The main character looks and acts like the stereotypical blonde, with the outfits, make-up, the little dog in her bag etc, but the film challenges stereotypes as she applies for law school and becomes a successful lawyer and wins a court case. Infact it was her "blondeness stereotype" that allows her to win the court case!
This is the Court scene which breaks the stereotypical "dumb blonde" as she uses's her knowledge of what is typical knowledge of a "blonde girl" to use against the defendant to prove she is guilty.
In our short film, we are using a blonde girl to do the robbing which is challenging the blonde stereotypes as appearance-wise, she does not look capable of stealing.
In our film, a girl drops her files and the main character goes down to help her pick them up. At this point, the audience doesn't see that the girl steal the main character's phone because it is revealed later on. This is similar to a concept used in the film Knight and Day starring Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruz. At the beginning of the film, we see the two characters bump into each other twice, and we don't suspect anything until later on in the film when the truth is revealed. This time the clip is played back to Diaz's character from CCTV footage, and the audience sees Cruz's character slipping something into her suitcase the first time, and taking it back out the second time so that he could get it through security.
Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging Similarity
At 06.33, the sequence that follows the conversation between the characters is very alike the opening to our film. Our main character is first seen having an argument with her parents. The parents can be seen talking at her, but she is not listening because she has zoned out. This is similar to the sequence in the video above, except that instead of a narrative playing over the top of the video to represent the character's thoughts, we will have music playing, with the credits showing on the screen while the main character is retreating to her bedroom.
Another similar part of our film from "Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging" is the 'embarrassing mum' character as you can see in this video from 2:55 minutes onwards of how her mum embarrasses her infront of the boy she likes. We like this idea as it is typical of a teenagers life and it is included in our film as our main character is fed up of her mum embarrassing her.
This advertisement gave us the central idea as it is all about "jumping to conclusions" and seeing things differently depending on what you are actually able to see. This is the main focus into our film .
