Evaluation Question 2

Question 2 – How does your opening sequence represent particular social groups?

The social group that I am trying to represent is a female teenager, aged from around 13 - 16 years of age, who wishes to become famous by ballet dancing. She is an outsider in school and does not care what anyone thinks about her, causing her to have no friends, as all she cares about is her passion for ballet dancing. She is interested in wearing make up, looking good, dancing and her hobbies are ballet and going shopping for costumes like wigs, tutu's etc. She also likes to go to the cinema to watch films like "Step Up", "Billy Elliot" and "Bridesmaids" and loves to watch reality television programmes such as "Strictly Come Dancing", "The X Factor" and "Britain's Got Talent". Due to her dedicated time to her hobbies and interests, she is educationally slacking, and therefore her parents do not wish for her to continue with her hobbies, as they want her to become successful, and these things are holding her back. This social group can relate to the target audience as they will most probably have similar interests and hobbies.

The character profile that our group created gives more details into our character, and how she would represent these particular social groups. Here are some brief but important details about our character:

• She is an outsider in school – this is shown through her facial expression that she likes to be alone.
• Has fears of not becoming famous – this is shown through the quick camera shots of her hiding her ballet shoes and wig from her sister for her not to find out she is dancing. The posters of famous people on the wall also show that she wishes to become famous as she looks up to famous celebrities.
• Has a strong passion for ballet dancing – this is shown through the camera shots of her practising ballet in secret, and the scared facial expression when she hears her sister coming up the stairs.

My opening sequence represents this social group as the character in it has the same personality, hobbies and interests. She is also educationally slacking due to her obsession with ballet, which makes her parents worried about her and so instead made her stop ballet dancing to make her concentrate on her education, meaning she does it in secret instead, to continue her hobby that she had done since a very young age and developed a passion for. This can be related to the film "Billy Elliot" as the character too was hiding his love of ballet from his father because he thought it was “not for lads,” making his son pretend he enjoyed boxing instead, whilst carrying on with ballet in secret. This can also relate to our target audience as they too may have a hobby that is restricted due to their parents wanting them to concentrate on their education.

We also represent this social group through the mise en scene used. The costume used is a wig and ballet shoes, to show that the girl likes to do ballet dancing, and the wig shows that she wants to be someone different and famous. The ballet shoes were hidden underneath the girls mattress to show she is hiding it from her parents and the wig was on the desk, but hidden when she heard someone coming, which also gives the audience the impression she has something to hide. The props in the opening sequence were make up, and other beauty products, showing she likes to look after herself, ballet shoes to show she does ballet, teddies to show her childlike side, posters to show she is an ordinary teenager, and magazines show she likes to be updated on the latest celebrity news. These props were placed in various places around the room. Make up and other beauty products on the table in front of the mirror to show she uses them often. Ballet shoes, which are hidden underneath the mattress, but also on the girl as she is wearing them, whilst doing her practice. Teddies on the bed to show even though she may be obsessed and dedicated to ballet she is still a child inside. Posters to show she is interested in famous people. And also magazines to show she likes to be constantly updated on celebrities.

The setting used is her bedroom, to show that she is still a normal teenager in her room, despite her obsessions for ballet. When actually coming to the filming, we set up the media studio to look like a bedroom due to various location problems we had faced, however it was still set up like a girls bedroom with all the appropriate things and was useful when it came to filming. For hair and make up, the girl used a wig to show she wants to be someone different and is trying to achieve it through wearing one, it also showed her insecurities about not being famous, whilst the make up is natural and not overdone to show she is a normal child in the comfort of her own room where she does not need make up and can be herself. This can relate to our audience as many teenagers have insecurities and want to be something else. The body language of the girl at the beginning of the opening sequence is slow and delicate whilst putting on her ballet shoes to show that she is very passionate and careful with them and this is shown through slow camera movements and shots at the beginning to let the audience know what to expect. This same body language is continued through to when she is practicing her moves and stretching, however later on when she hears someone coming, the camera shots get faster to represent how the girl is feeling and her panic to hide her secret, so fast camera shots are used here when she is hiding the wig and jumping into bed to pretend to be casually reading a magazine. The camera angles used are a wide angled shot to show the interior of the girls room, like all the posters and magazines etc. to give the audience a clear view that it is a girls bedroom. And the rule of thirds, in which the teddy is in focus and the girl dancing in the background is blurred to show that she has a childish side shown through the bear, and her being blurred in this shot shows she is trying to hide something. The rest of the camera shots used are close ups of the girl putting on the shoes, long shots of her dancing and a medium close up of her facial expression when someone was coming to show her panic. These are used to show in detail what she is doing in various ways and keep the audience interested. There is no dialogue used in this opening sequence as it not being used can make the opening much more interesting as the audience have to rely on the camera to tell the story, rather than the dialogue. There are no sound effects used either as they were not needed for our type of film, but there are two soundtracks to it. At the start of the sequence, an uplifting cheerful song is used which gives the audience a clear answer as to what genre this film is going to be, and when the girl is dancing and practising her moves a ballet/classical soundtrack comes on to show the type of dancing she is doing, and it speeds up when the girl is hiding her wig etc. to show the girls panic. These types of soundtracks being used keeps the audience watching as it reflects the mood of the film.

The key characters in our film are the main character who plays Emma, the girl obsessed with ballet. We chose the cast by going into a year 9 drama class and selecting a pupil who fitted the “look” of our character we had in mind. We had no issues with cast, and when directing she stayed true to our representations of our character by following our directions, e.g. Put on shoes delicately. We also helped our character stay true to our representations by researching other films, like "Black Swan", the main character is similar to our character in some ways as they both have a passion for ballet and want to succeed in that industry. Our character is also similar to the young girl who played Posy Fossil on the film "Ballet Shoes" as she sneaks out to do ballet despite not told not to do it any more. These two films are helped us stay representative to our character as they helped us with our ideas when planning our character in depth.

In conclusion, my opening sequence represents particular social groups as they have similar interests to our character which can also be shown through mise en scene and the cast.