Overall the feedback we received was very positive and many groups agreed with the decisions we had made.
Many of the positive comments referred to the music with one group saying: ‘The non-diegetic music was a good choice and the way it stops when she falls and hits the ground is very effective!’. As a group we decided to cut the music when Nina falls to indicate to the audience that this happy and upbeat atmosphere created by the music had been disrupted by the bully. One comment read: ‘music clear and matches the opening’ we felt that the song fitted in with the music used in other teen romantic comedies and the lyrics helped to portray some of the traits associated with teenagers.
We wanted to make sure that the different stereotypes could be clearly identified by the audience in the opening. One group said: ‘Good use of stereotypes’. This was something that we felt was very important to include in the opening as from our research we found that these were the conventional stereotypes seen in teen romantic comedies, so we used props and costume to portray this, with another group saying: ‘The iconography is excellent throughout the opening; such as the lip gloss for the popular girl and the big glasses for the geeky girl, which are common things people associate with these characters.’.
A positive piece of feedback we received was about the characters getting ready ‘close ups of characters getting ready introduces characters well’, this is something that as a group we felt was important, as this allowed the stereotypes associated with each character be identified, such as the jock wearing a varsity jacket. This also allowed us to clearly show Nina as the main character, as she is the first face you see.
An improvement we received was ‘The only thing that our group would change would be the colours and the clothes of the popular girl. The fact she is blonde helps but it would of been more stereotypical if she was wearing pinks and bright colours.’ This was something that we tried to incorporate in our original character profiles (a pink top/skirt with a black top/skirt), however when we began filming it wasn’t possible, so we had to resort to the darker costume used. However, if we were to do this task again, we would have used what we had original planned the Bitch to wear, as pink is more stereotypically associated with this stereotype.
One group said: ‘A range of accurate camera shots and camera movements have been used which has helped to portray the genre, such as the tilt up the jock character.’ This was something that we found tricky to smoothly do at first, but the use of a tri-pod helped us succeed in producing steady shots in our opening. By doing this, it helped us create verisimilitude and continuity throughout the piece, a group agreed with this by saying: ‘continuity is good’.
A negative comment that we received was ‘background noises change; disrupts the continuity’ this was something that I agreed with, as when we were filming, we tried to only film when the corridors were silent, however there were people cleaning and clubs happening afterschool so in some shots there is slight background noise. If we were to do this task again, we would have found a corridor that wasn’t in as much use as the one we used in our opening, which may have helped to get rid of unwanted background sounds.
The comments referring to the use of titles were on the whole very positive: ‘We like the titles used and the way the title of the film stands out from the rest and it is also looks like an already made teen romance.’ The idea of making the title of the film stand out from the rest of the titles was something that we thought was important, as the name of our film is clearly associated with teen romantic comedies. However, a negative comment we received about the titles we used was: ‘actors names are on screen for different lengths of times’ this is something that we noticed when editing our opening, however, I don’t feel that this is a massive fault, as this was a hard thing to overcome with the clips all being different lengths of time.
