GENRE RESEARCH - The teen film

This Guardian article  by Killian Fox, describes this as the origin of teen films:

The teen movie came of age in 50s America, not long after the concept of the teenager was born. The idea of an intermediate stage between childhood and adulthood, with its own peculiar characteristics, was still new when Marlon Brando donned his biker jacket in The Wild One (1953) and answered "What are you rebelling against?" with "What've you got?"Changing social attitudes and a booming postwar economy fed into the emergence of teenagers. Middle-class parents who had weathered the Depression and the war wanted their children to have full educations, uninterrupted by work or military service. As a result, young people found themselves with larger allowances and more free time. The dramatic possibilities of this stage of life, marked by rebellion, angst and young love, quickly became evident to movie-makers.

The protagonist as the other, so all the other teenagers in films who are represented as the Other are a simulacra of the James Dean archetype. 

James Dean will forever be considered the quintessential symbol of teen angst... Rebel Without A Cause is known for looking at the chaos, confusion and loneliness that comes with being a teenager.People are still trying to emulate Dean's pool persona.

WatchMojo named it the greatest teen film of all time:

It's the theme of teenagers of wanting to bond and finding their place in a society that shuns them that makes it our Number One film.

Killian Fox giving a short history of teen films:

Rock'n'roll, the sound that defined 50s adolescence, figured strongly in the early teen movies. Rock Around the Clock (1956) was one of the first films to be marketed at teenagers to the exclusion of their elders. Its success induced Hollywood to exploit this new demographic.
The Gidget movies and Beach Party (1963) developed a sure-fire formula in tune with the mood of the 60s, uniting music, comedy and romance with surf, Californian sun and skimpy bikinis. Much of the success of the teen movie lies in the fact that it crosses over so fluidly with other genres, and in the 70s, teens were subjected to horror (Carrie, 1976), romance (Love Story, 1970), comedy (National Lampoon's Animal House, 1978) and John Travolta musicals - Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Grease (1978).
High-school comedies featuring the so-called Brat Pack were huge in the 80s - a prime example being The Breakfast Club (1985). None of these films would be complete without the high-school holy trinity: the bitchy cheerleader, the uber-jock footballer and the bespectacled nerd.
Self-referentiality entered the classroom in the Nineties: the students in Scream (1996) knew the rules of teen slasher flicks but got slashed nonetheless. Classic texts were rejuvenated in Clueless (1996), an update of Jane Austen's Emma, Romeo + Juliet (1996), and 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), based on The Taming of the Shrew.
Today, the teen movie remains in good health - witness the success of the High School Musical series and Superbad (2007).

ADULT ROM-COM EG2 - About A Boy

WHAT I ENDED UP APPLYING

• The character of Will influenced the antagonist of my film opening, a great deal, including the voiceovers

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE:

• The voice-overs

About A Boy

Chris Weisz + Paul Weitz, 2002

BBFC 12 rating, MPAA PG-13

Running length of opening:  4'00

LEAD ACTORS: Hugh Grant
                                 Nicholas Hoult

                                 Rachel Weisz

GENRE: (Romantic) comedy

PRODUCTION COs: StudioCanal
                                         TriBeCa Productions
                                         Working Title Films

DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures

BUDGET: $27m

BOX OFFICE: $24.3m (UK), $40.8m (US), 
                            $130.5m (worldwide)

CRITICAL KUDOS:

ROTTEN TOMATOES:  Critics 93%, Audience 54%        IMDb: 7.1/10

From wiki: 

The film received critical acclaim, with a 94% 'Certified Fresh' rating on Rotten Tomatoes.^[5] The film, with a budget of US$30 million, grossed a worldwide total of US$130,549,455.^[2] In December 2002, the film was chosen by the American Film Institute as one of the ten best movies of the year. The film received a B+ CinemaScore from American audiences.^[6] Almost universally praised, with an Academy Award-nominated screenplay, About a Boy was determined by the Washington Post to be "that rare romantic comedy that dares to choose messiness over closure, prickly independence over fetishised coupledom, and honesty over typical Hollywood endings."^[7] Rolling Stone wrote, "The acid comedy of Grant's performance carries the film [and he] gives this pleasing heartbreaker the touch of gravity it needs".^[8]

Roger Ebert observed that "the Cary Grant department is understaffed, and Hugh Grant shows here that he is more than a star, he is a resource."^[9] The film earned Grant his third Golden-Globe nomination, while the London Film Critics Circle named Grant its Best British Actor and GQ honoured him as one of the magazine's men of the year 2006.^[10] "His performance can only be described as revelatory," wrote critic Ann Hornaday, adding that "Grant lends the shoals layer upon layer of desire, terror, ambivalence and self-awareness."^[7]

The New York Observer concluded: "[The film] gets most of its laughs from the evolved expertise of Hugh Grant in playing characters that audiences enjoy seeing taken down a peg or two as a punishment for philandering and womanising and simply being too handsome for words-and with an English accent besides. In the end, the film comes over as a messy delight, thanks to the skill, generosity and good-sport, punching-bag panache of Mr. Grant's performance."^[11] About a Boy also marked a notable change in Grant's boyish look. Now 41, he had lost weight and also abandoned his trademark floppy hair. Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman took note of Grant's maturation in his review, saying he looked noticeably older and that it "looked good on him."^[12]He added that Grant's "pillowy cheeks are flatter and a bit drawn, and the eyes that used to peer with 'love me' cuteness now betray a shark's casual cunning. Everything about him is leaner and spikier (including his hair, which has been shorn and moussed into a Eurochic bed-head mess), but it's not just his surface that's more virile; the nervousness is gone, too. Hugh Grant has grown up, holding on to his lightness and witty cynicism but losing the stuttering sherry-club mannerisms that were once his signature. In doing so, he has blossomed into the rare actor who can play a silver-tongued sleaze with a hidden inner decency."^[12]

TRAILER:

IDENTS:

Universal ident  and  StudioCanal, the first lasting 25 secs and the second 15 secs, connotes the primary superior status of Universal as the distributor. Both have their signature sounds.

The third ident, Working Title, has an audio bridge. This connotes their status as a subsidiary.

TITLES:

The actor's name appears over the
character he is playing

The letters are all lower-case, is this a subtle signifier of the theme of childhood?

THE OPENING SHOT:

High angle and tracking shot of the protagonist.

NARRATIVE, EXPOSITION:

We get introduced to the two ventral characters, we have a binary opposition of age and also of wealth.

MISE-EN-SCENE:

The table signifies his wealth and intellectual capital, with a big book, and his shady character elements are hinted at with an ashtray, they are not anchoring him as a smoker because it might spoil the romantic image.

EDITING:

long takes. 

GENRE SIGNIFIERS:

The romance side of the film isn't signified, other than that we have a carefree male who rejects long-term romantic commitments in favour of short-term flings, which is anchored through the fact he ignores the calls of his liaisons.
This equilibrium will be disrupted as he will eventually find a woman he has real emotional feelings for.

REPRESENTATION:

NORMATIVE OR COUNTER-HEGEMONIC?

This is quite a stereotypical and narrow reperesentaion of the UK, focusing mainly on English, RP people as the normal characters, pandering to an International and especially US audience, typical for Working Title.

SOUNDTRACK:

Incidental music, more typical for adult rom-coms than teen rom-coms where we have a soundtrack of a song with lyrics?.

TRANSITION TO MAIN FILM:

At 3'30 as the incidental music bridges into the next scene, and the relationship between Will and Marcus is foreshadowed with the baby.

Opening EG8/Teen EG2 - Wild Child

UPDATE:

This was originally part of my general film openings research, before I settled on the teen (high-school) and rom-com genres, so it is both part of my general conventions and genre research, just like Bridget Jones's Baby and Submarine.

WHAT I ENDED UP APPLYING

• The zooming into the protagonist's room
• The fading in, the zooming in

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE

• The protagonist getting out of bed, and rushing because they are late
• The fading in from the ident to the opening shot (an extreme long shot)

Wild Child

Nick Moore (2008)

BBFC 12 rating, MPAA PG-13 rating

03:50 minutes

Lead actors: Emma Roberts, Kimberley Nixon 

Genre: Teen (romantic) comedy

PRODUCTION COs: Working Title

LINKS: Box Office Mojo; The Numbers;  RottenTomatoes; IMDb; Wiki; Facebook

CRITICAL KUDOS:

From wiki:

Wild Child has a 42% "rotten" rating at Rotten Tomatoes, based on 21 reviews with the consensus that "More mild than wild. This tween comedy mess falls flat on its face due to poor characters, poor direction and poor jokes".^[5] The Sun Online gave the film 2/5 saying "WILD? More like mild, unless you think short skirts and “horse face” put-downs are outrageous." Though Urban Cinefile gave Wild Child a much more favourable review stating "The film has an energy and honesty about it: it's lively, funny and smart and the characters are appealing."

IDENTS

Two idents, the Universal Studios and Working Title.

The Working Title ident fades into the establishing shot, an extreme longshot of a lightblue sea. The beauty of the sea connotes perfection, so it signifies the paradise-like life whoever lives here has.

The titles start with Universal. The idents are non-serif, white, with company big and verb/prep

TITLES:

All upper-case, name is bigger than the role. They are spread across lines.

UNIVERSAL PICTURES PRESENTS
A WORKING TITLE PRODUCTION
IN ASSOCIATION WITH STUDIOCANAL

The final title, yellow and violet 

NARRATIVE, EXPOSITION:

We are introduced to the protagonist, it is her we follow out of the room and throughout the rest of the film. The sea fades into a medium longshot/longshot of the protagonist's room , with two further titles "Working Title" and "Studiocanal" appearing before the room fully appears. The colours of pink and light blue attribute female gender stereotypes to the protagonist, the first of many throughout the narrative.

 

 

 

 ...

Medium shot of as the protagonist springs into action, disruption of her equilibrium (see post on media language for Todorov's five stages of narrative). 

A longshot of the protagonist home, this alarmed and frantic behaviour will be recurrent througout the narrative, so it sets up her character. . She breaks through the title, possibly signifying her rebellious and even destructive tendencies that are going to emerge later and .

Media Language in 5 Shots - This Is England

WHAT I ENDED UP APPLYING

• The convention of the protagonist getting out of bed and seeing their room was one I saw in many other film opening examples especially with tweens and teenagers, and I started my film opening like that as well

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE

• 
  

THIS IS ENGLAND

Shane Meadows, 2006

PRODUCTION COMPANIES: Warp Films, 
                                                 FilmFour Productions

DISTRIBUTOR: IFC (US)
                          Optimum Releasing (UK)

GENRE: Historical social realism

LEAD ACTORS: Thomas Turgoose

                            Stephen Graham

                            Joseph Gilgun

                            Vicky McClure

BBFC:  18                 MPAA: Not Rated

BUDGET: £612k       
BOX OFFICE: $3.1m (UK) $329k (US)  
                        $8.2m (worldwide)


CRITICAL KUDOS

ROTTING TOMATOES: 93%                     IDMb: /10

REVIEWS (from wiki)

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 93% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 89 reviews.^[10] Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 86/100, based on 23 reviews — indicating "universal acclaim".^[11] This made it the tenth best reviewed film of the year.^[12]

The film appeared on several US critics' top ten lists of 2007; it was third on the list by Newsweek's David Ansen, seventh on the list by The Oregonian's Marc Mohan, and ninth on the list by Los Angeles Times' Kevin Crust.^[13]

In Britain, director Gillies Mackinnon rated the film the best of the year^[14] and David M. Thompson, critic and film-maker, rated it third.^[15] The film was ranked fourteenth in The Guardian's list of 2007's Best Films^[16] and fifteenth in Empire's Movies of the Year.

Accolades[edit]

The film won the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film at the 2007 British Academy Film Awards. It also won the Best Film category at the 2006 British Independent Film Awards, Turgoose winning the Most Promising Newcomer award.

A full list of reviews listed on IDMb here.

TRAILERS:

SYNPNOSIS:

Shane Meadow's and Warp's (critical) breakthrough, having an autobiographical story set in 80s with an a working-class orphan of a Falklands soldier.

The film starts with the opening credits putting the film into historical context with three minutes of historical footage, starting with the cultural figure from children's television Roland Rat, followed by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the royal wedding between Princess Diana and Prince Charles, as well as several protests. It ends with images of the Falklands War, with mutilated bodies and covered up corpses of soldiers.

The exact date is immediately given as July 1983. 


After the camera has zoomed out of a close up of a portrait photo, this shot displays a routine of the young boy getting up for school, in a medium long-shot. The mis-en-scene features a stereotypical image attributed towards young males, that of a football team poster. The boy is naked except for his underpants, which can connote a maybe more relaxed upbringing than if he was wearing pyjamas, which would suggest a bit more of a stricter,  traditional and middle or upper-class background. The fact that the mis-en-scene of the room is pretty bare and does not have a lot of objects, hints further at a poorer and working class background, as otherwise parents would like to spoil their children if they could afford to. The boy is looking at a portrait photo. With the images of Falkland soldiers falling in battle and the date given, one can connote from this that the by has a lost a close relative in the war, most likely his father or older brother. This kind of portrait lying on surfaces on home being a stereotypical image of a lost loved one. The audience thereby feels sympathy for the young boy's loss, a feeling which is added by the colorless nature of his room, which can be seen as a metaphor for how his life feels.



This is an extreme long shot of a moving subject, giving a feeling of distance the young protagonist. He is walking towards a shop Him walking pass a group of boys his ages signifies his status as an outsider. The fact that the boys start picking on him for no reason creates antipathy for the other characters. However the boy's usage of swearwords soon after this shows a side that is not just a victim. The swearing of both the protagonist and the other boys signifies the rough nature of the area.

...

Through a medium-close-up the boy is shown to be reading a comic. The boy is shown to be enjoying a typically childish thing to do with an undertone of innocence, this child-friendly atmosphere is increased by the comics in the background. The boy's status as an outsider is increased to that of a rebel by not listening to the shop owner's request to buy the comic.



This is a two-shot where vulnerability is expressed with use of the naturally taller height of the shop owner. Due to height differences the shop owner is in medium long-shot (down to the knees) and the boy in medium shot (down to the waist). The Indian shop owner is a common cliché in urban England. The boy has just been having his first pleasure of the day, but it is snatched away from him. There is repetition in the boy's usage of swearwords.

The long-shot shows images of youth culture, with the cliché of graffiti on walls. Sitting under The bridge connotes an area outside the main world, which signifies rebellion and a resistance to mainstream society, a form of counterculture. the hight of the skinhead right shows his status as the leader and a proactive character as he rises to help the suffering protagonist. This creates great sympathy for him as he is the first character to help the protagonist in his day of misery. In portrayal of the skinheads we have two positive representations, the one of a kind helping person displayed in the young male standing and the black man with a hat. Skinheads have a reputation of being Nazis. The two skinheads towards the left don't care much for the boy's predicament, and their skinhead look is even more extreme, so they appeal to the stereotypical expectations of street youths, sitting together and laughing everything off, despite it being obvious that the boy is suffering.

First 5 Shots #2 - Bridget Jones's Baby

WHAT I ENDED UP APPLYING

• I

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE

• The

TITLE

Director, 2009

PRODUCTION COMPANIES: BBC Films, 
                                                 UK Film Council,
                                                 Aramid Entertainment

DISTRIBUTOR: Universal (US)
                          Optimum Releasing (UK)

GENRE: Political satire 
               (subgenre of comedy)

LEAD ACTORS: Peter Capaldi

                            Tom Hollander

                            Chris Addison

                            Gina McKee

                            James Gandolfini

BBFC:  15                 MPAA: Not Rated

BUDGET: £612k       
BOX OFFICE: $3.5m (UK) $2.4m (US) $7.8m (worldwide)


CRITICAL KUDOS

ROTTING TOMATOES: 94%                     IDMb: 7.5/10

REVIEWS (from wiki)

A full list of reviews listed on IDMb here.

TRAILERS:

...

SYNPNOSIS:

...

SHOT 1

Medium longshot, immediate exposition of the protagonist, no narrative enigma (very brief the snow blocks some of her). Very little information is withheld, she's English, she's RP/middle-class connotations, she's a spinster. Sexuality not known yet, could be that she prefers women but highly unlikely. In background too couples. This creates a binary opposition, forever single/happy together. The whole plot of the film is to get her married to "Mr Right", and in the context of the whole. 

SHOT 2

Disolving transition into an extreme longshot of the snowy landscape a

SHOT 3

Panning shot to reveal cottage-like home. To signify her feeling of discomfort, dreaded anticipation of returning home?

SHOT 4

A woman is answering the door. This is counter-hegemonic in terms of patriarchic. However they seem to soon break the Bechdel Test by talking about a man.

SHOT 5

This is both a high and a dutch (also known as canted) angle, we still see no father or other male figure near the door, can be read as non-normative and counter hegemonic. Wealth is signified, along with the RP-accent this anchors a middle class family.