Make-up: Teenage girls love makeup, they can't live without it and this is a big factor in a teenage girls life story. Young girls love getting dressed up and going to parties, and our target audience will also have a big interest in makeup as this is the age people experiment with it.
'Perfect girls': This image includes female celebrities such as Vanessa Hudgens, Rihanna and Miley Cyrus, and these are girls that most teenage boys 'fancy'. So this is why I included them in my collage, as boys are very interested in these type of girls and usually define them as 'perfect' or the 'ideal woman' and most teenage girls aspire to be like them.
'Perfect boys': I have also included male celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, Zac Efron and Louis Tomlinson. These boys are very big in the celebrity world, and teenage girls love them. They stalk them on social networking sites and wish they would notice them, even if it is just once. Boys envy them, and usually associate any criticism they can with them.
Relationships: Chris Brown and Rihanna are also on my collage. They did used to be a couple, and teenagers are this age are obsessed with relationships. This is why I included this, as also in our film a relationship would take place between a girl and our main protagonist James, and our other protagonist Eileen, will envy this relationship.
Our Protagonists
James is one of our main protagonist's in our film opening. He is a white, middle class teenage boy who is approaching 17 years old. We show that he is middle class by showing a shot of his house when Eileen, our other protagonist, walks up his driveway. The house is a middle class house with a driveway, with 2 garages which includes a step up to the door. A house similar to James class would be: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-43266800.html?premiumA=true
He is a stereotypical teenager, throwing and attending parties, being a user on twitter and sending regular tweets, drinking with his friends high amounts of alcohol and he is also very grungy as he does not really care about his appearance, just his reputation. We portray him in this way so we can associate well him with with the target audience as we want the audience to form a connection with him, so then when he gets taken later on in the film, you feel sorry for him. Teenagers drink a high amount of alcohol these days, here is an article showing the major risks that this has on their bodies: http://metro.co.uk/2014/01/05/specialist-calls-for-debate-on-drinking-age-as-teenagers-being-treated-for-liver-disease-4250061/
Our target audience is a 15, so this includes people are about 15-17 years old, and this is the age of the teenagers in our film and the age of James. This is why we included a popular teenage boy, as during teenage years everyone wants to be popular so the target audience can relate. Also at the party scene, this makes it easy to identify the personality and popularity his character. We also chose to do this type of opening to raise awareness to teenagers and people that use social networking sites. There is a typical expression given 'It would never happen to me' is a regular thought that teenagers think when hearing tragic stories like these. But the truth is, it really can happen to anyone and we wanted to make sure people understand this. However, James is not a typical victim, as he is male, and most movies that we researched that are similar to ours, use the victim as a girl instead of a boy. Similarly, in a film called 'Facebook stalker' a man uses facebook to stalk a girl from a coffee shop. This is similar to our film, as a protagonist stalks another protagonist via social networking sites such as twitter. This then raises awareness to our target audience of the possible risks. Teenagers announce a lot of personal things on twitter, her is an article about this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2538523/Stars-social-networking-sites-reveal-VERY-personal-photographs-Golden-Globes.html
We discovered that James' character is a lot similar to the character "James Cook' in the TV show Skins and this is the character we wanted to portray. He is shown in a very grungy way, but all girls in school like him and he is very popular. He also believes that he is unbeatable. However, the difference is that Cook's family are very upper class as his Mother has a very big house. This is the only difference in character roles that Cook and James have.This is the image we wanted to portray James as: Cook from TV series 'Skins'
Typical victim's in thriller/stalker movies: Donner from movie 'Prom Night'
We found that in most thriller/stalker movies, the victim was mainly a white female. We decided to challenge this idea and change it to a male. We then found a film, Prom Night, which also includes a stalker and the victim was, a white young girl, which then supported our research. Here is a link to support this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome
We found that in most thriller/stalker movies, the victim was mainly a white female. We decided to challenge this idea and change it to a male. We then found a film, Prom Night, which also includes a stalker and the victim was, a white young girl, which then supported our research. Here is a link to support this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome
We decided to go against Propp's character theory as we wanted to make our film more original. We decided to go with a female villain, which is different to the majority of thriller films.
Eileen is the other protagonist in our film opening. She is a white, middle class female who is middle aged. We show this by her clothing, as she dresses quite old fashioned including kitten heels with a long black coat with her hair slit back to her head in a low pony tail. We choose not to give much off about Eileen, and this gives the mysterious vibe behind her. We never see her face, and this is a major challenge we decided to take and could confuse the audience about what type of person she is. She is not stereotypical, as she is a woman and from market research, we found you irregularly come across female villains is this genre of film. As the mass of interpretations are that men are the villains and women are the victim, but we wanted to reverse this to make it more original and create something different. Mental Illness
Our character Eileen suffers with a mental illness of depression. A few years ago, before her obsession with James, her husband was killed in a violent car crash. She has been mourning ever since and really misses her husband. This is why she seeks male comfort, and believes James can give her the same satisfaction and love as her husband could.
In a film called oral fixation, I found that there is a character that looks over a board. This is similar to our movie when our board is shown. He is keeping track of a lady. However this man is not the stalker, he is just trying to help the man that is being stalked get away from the danger that the stalker is putting him in. When I saw this clip, i was very surprised as I watched this film for the first time after we completed our opening sequence. Once seeing this, we became very confident with our idea and about the choices we made because a film with the same theme 'Stalker' used the same convention as we did.
Another film that we found that was similar to ours was Prom night, but this film is everything we did not want to make ours about. A man stalks a young girl and makes a evil move to her. He does everything he can to make sure he gets 'the girl' and even his actions are killing the girls family and friends. This is a very stereotypical film as it is an older man stalking a young, popular girl. The girl is popular, and is a stereotypical victim and this is the personality we wanted to include however we reversed it so the victim is a boy instead of a girl, but with the same traits.
This is the image we wanted to portray Eileen as: Stalker in film 'Oral Fixation':
Typical villains in thriller/stalker movies: Stalker and murderer in movie 'Prom Night'
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