Activity 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups? PART ONE

                            EVALUATION ACTIVITY 2

Connie Martin who stars as Jess

 Jess is the main character in our film hense we chose her as our vocal point in our opening sequence, the sequence follows Jess in her typical daily morning routine which includes getting ready, waking up, brushing her teeth etc.

Jessica day from "New girl" as  representation of a social group would be described as a group of quite out going people who are fairly direct in their movements. You would imagine she is from a typical nuclear family with a stable background.

In the next series of posts, i am going to post two pictures; one of our actress Connie Martin comparing with Zoey Deschanel in New Girl. This will be used to see the see similarities and difference between both characters and will be used to show how and where as group we got the basis of our interpretation for a Romantic comedy in our opening sequence.

Jess is a twenty-something happy go lucky type character, so our target demographic was similar to of"Friends" and 2 Broke girls". We based our characterization upon the fictional character in New Girl. In the program the majority of her costume is girly, with a feminine dress sense.

We had Connie in a dress, that is quite short, simarlily to Jessica Days costume in New girl.

Through our character Jess's dress sense we were able to demonstrate some of her cultural background- we imagine Jess to be Lower- middle class, in every way our actress Connie Martin fulfils the stereotype of twenty something london girl. She has an iphone and is very trendy. In 2013 today nearly every young adult is in possession of  a smart phone of some sort, this suggests to the audience Jess's age.  In other teen dramas, such as 90210 smart phones are frequently used.
After watching a few episodes of "New girl" with the rest of my group (Albeni Urul and Emily Elbousserghini) we took a few notes on the characterisation of the character Jess.
  

Jessica screen grabs from the US TV SITCOM

The way we interpreted Jess was that she is a bubbly woman in her late 20s, she has an immature nature which makes her very humorous. She loves the arts and enjoys writing, reading and making stuff. Her "ditsy" nature is portrayed through her clothing, in several episodes she is seen in spotty pyjamas, so when doing our test shoot with Connie Martin we decided to take a few photos of our Jess doing the same, with spotty pyjama shorts. A film which also features a young woman wearing quite garish pyjamas is Renee Zellweger in Bridget Jones Diary, in the opening sequence of this she is seen crying and singing in immature pyjamas.

 In the end when we got down to filming, due to technical issues we were unable to use the spotty pyjamas so "Jess" ended up wearing slouchy clothing which also can be used to reflect her docile and lazy nature.

picture of Connie with dog who features in opening
sequence

Link to the opening sequence of Bridget Jones 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk2A9xwale0&feature=player_embedded
  The opening scene of 'Bridget Jones Diary' prepares the spectator for the film. It shows a woman who seems to be in a personal crisis. It is pretty clear that the crisis is happening in her personal relationship to the other sex. She is looking for a partner who would lighten up her life. The expectation is raised that the film is about how this crisis will be solved, with a happy woman at the end of the film.

Our actress Connie martin ended up being a perfect to suit for our character, she has a similar hairstyle to Jessica day in "New Girl". In our opening sequence there are no other characters featured therefore the audience are pretty much unaware of her relationship with others. But if this film was to be fully produced again we would refer back to our initial stimulus of "New Girl" - in the programme Jessica Day,  tries to start a new life after a shocking break up, the program follows the story of her trying to find herself.

Screen grab from our opening sequence, in this scene you can see that back of Jess's dress is not fully zipped up, we did this purposefully to suggest her "scatty" nature.

In a lot of American young adult dramas it is stereotypical for young lady to have a pet. The most common is the dog, in our opening sequence we felt it was funny to use the dog as a significant member in the order of Jess's morning routine. A film that features a dog is Legally Blonde starring Reese Witherspoon, this film is also a romantic comedy aimed at teens to young adults. Having a dog is seen to be quite girly so through this it could represent a particular social group.

For this activity i also decided to look at "Tamara Drewe" a low budget british romantic comedy and other " Happy go- lucky". Happy-go-lucky is a british comedy drama written and directed by Mike Leigh, it focuses on cheerful and optimistic primary school teacher and her relationship with those around her. Both of these films follow the story of down to earth Brunette girls, so it falls under a similar category to "New Girl" and our film "Jess. In both films the women are middle class girls who haven't really got a sense of the world yet, this is a through line in our film.

If we were to make our full film we would take inspiration from all the films and use them to create our own romantic comedy. In Happy-go-lucky the main character is seen to be quite indecisive, messy and clumsy. So in our opening sequence we had "Jess" looking for her phone and then by the end finding it in her oven; demonstrating her scatty nature.

In our opening sequence, the music we chose is happy and light; after watching Happy-go-lucky trailer, i noticed that our opening shared a similar vibe due to the music. This music suggests a young happy social group; the immature tune demonstrates an immature naive mindset.