Casting Shots.

For our cast we decided that we would play the three main girls because i am a drama student and the other two have also had a drama experience and we all felt that we would be able to portray each character quite easily. Another reason why we thought we would use ourselves to play the girls is because we are very different from each other in looks and personalities which is exactly what we need to represent in our opening. We also felt that because we are trying to get the highest mark possible we know we will have to keep filming again and again until we get are shots perfect therefore it will be too much of a hassle to keep asking people who are not in our media class or do not go to our school to re film things because there is a risk they could drop out which would effect our whole production. The only other character we struggled with casting was the boy (chase) because we felt that if we wanted our storyline to work of an arrogant player to be represented we needed someone who could pull of the role. So we observed some boys in our sixth form to get an idea of who would best fit the role, and a boy called toby sylvester gained his place in our opening scene because straight away even just getting his picture once we told him our storyline he represented a player by his poses and actions. so we think it will make our film more realistic.


Starting from the left top
Leanne Shillingford- Esmee
Rebecca Spencer- Aaliyah
Toby Sylvester- Chase
Beth Francis- Klaudia

Prezi- updated

Target audience- Chasing chase on Prezi

Opening music.

At first when we started looking at music we thought it would have to be R&b for an english school because we thought its quite young and modern and would work really well however when we found some R&B unsigned artists it did not go at al with what we wanted to do. So we looked at the opening again of john tucker must die and discovered that all chick flicks that start of showing around a high school (just as we are doing) normally have quite rock music rather then R&B when showing around the school. So we clicked on guitar on the website "jamendo" and came across a song we think will be perfect for our the opening credits showing around the school. It fits perfectly with what we want to do therefore we have decided as a group this is the perfect music that we want for the very start.

Influences- John Tucker Must Die, Mean Girls and Crossroads

The first film that came to mind when we was building our opening sequence was john tucker must die. Our groups idea is to have a chick flick with a boy who is playing a multiple number of girls which is similar to John tucker but yet so different from ours. In john Tucker he ends up falling for one girl who is giving him a taste of his own medicine by playing him where as our film ends up with the player (chase Smith) being gay and is trying to over come his sexuality. However, we are still using JTMD to help with our opening sequence for example because we want to make it look like a typical high school and we are trying to get the right kind of music to fit the scene, so we are listening to the soundtrack of JTMD to get the correct genre to make it work. We are also trying to keep our film as different to john tucker as we can because we do not want examiners to feel we have stole there idea. For example, we are trying to keep the three different girls different from eachother but also different from american movies therefore we are staying away from the typical cheerleader, Clever girl and the pretty girl that are always put into american high school chick flicks. So, we have made it look more real life in a british way for a london high school to make it look more of an english film to make it look realistic. So are viewers will be introduced to Aliayah an urban rude girl, Esmee` an italian clingy girl and finally Claudia a little rich posh girl living of her fathers money.



A big way how we have used mean girls as an influence is that we have always said from the beginning when our player "chase" is talking to the girls we want to have him on the phone with a split screen. He will stay on the left side of the screen and the three girls will talk to him individually and as the girl changes the right side of the phone call changes just to show his methods of how he is basically saying the same things to all of the girls. It is a clear way of showing how he is arranging the same times with the girls and just different days. It also gives close ups of each of the main girls to show how different they are from each other and what they are doing etc. The way we got our phone call split screen idea was from mean girls where they have a four way conversation however we want it to be just a split screen to show two people having a conversation.



Our third influence when coming up with the storyline was crossroads. Cross roads helped us because the way we want to have all of the characters characters different to each other is what they did in there storyline. So we was wondering how we was able to show all of our girls being different from each other rather then just changing accents and looks. This movie helped us realise that the script is a big part towards that in the way they act for example in cross roads the popular girl is saying "we look so hot" to all of her friends so that straight away lets us know her character and what she is like. The setting is also a big part for example the popular girl "kit" was at a graduation dance in nice pink dress and the other girl "mimi" was hanging around in some park. So it is generating ideas how we can show our three girls being completly different within the first two minutes.

chasing Chase- Synopsis

Chase Smith is the schools heart throb with a deep secret, in attempt to hidehis true feelings Chase builds himself a reputation of being a ladies man. Dating three girls simultainously, we are introduced to the three stereotypical girls from different clicks of the school.
Esmee, the beautiful but clingy Italian stalian, Klaudia the up tight posh totty with all her daddy's money and Aaliyah the urban rude girl no one wants to mess with. After a sumer of multipledating and secret keeping, the three girls are placed in the same media studies class, they soon discover what Chase has been doing and how he has tried to play each one of them at the same time.
They are not ammused and decide to take things into there own hands by a a very public argument between the three girls Esmee, Klaudia and Aaliyah and the one boy Chase in the common room Chase then eventually reveals his homosexuality secret whilst breaking down infront of the three girls and everyone else.
There is then a cut to three months later showing how each of the girls and chase have moved on this time Chase is still up to his old tricks but dating three guys at the same time instead of girls as he feels he only had a problem letting people know his sexuality he doesnt think that dating more than one is an issue as the truth is out.

chasing Chase- Target audience

Target audience

Pleliminary Project Video

Preliminary project

Discussion of 3 opening sequences

In class we watched the first 2 opening minutes of 3 different films. They were three very different kinds of openings but they also had some similarities, such as the credits of the actors/designers/directors names and all of them had an opening title logo such as "20 fox century".


Opening sequence one was called office space. It opened with the title logo "20 fox century" and when it says "20th centuary fox presents" you know within the first 22 seconds it is probably a comedy or a drama because the font is quite bubbly in a bright blue colour and its not really dark and gloomy therefore that give you an idea on the genre. The soundtrack is also another important part when setting the genre because it is upbeat jazz music. The scenery is introduced with an establish shot and it shows busy cars to give us an atmosphere that it is in and at  45 seconds it goes on to introduce the first character with credits still appearing with actors names. At 1:51 seconds the music is changed to quite rap music to introduce us to the second character and it lets us as an audience already know that he is completely different from the first. The music then goes back to the jazz when it goes back to the first character just to show the comparisons of the two. I like in this opening sequence how slight humour is involved straight away with the old man passing the cars with his walking stick because it got straight into the film and didn't drag on.


The second opening sequence was called Train spotting and it started out the same being introduced by universal and it also says channel four films presents however with this film we get straight into a man running with an over voice as his thoughts. There is shots about what he is talking about for example he talks about his football team and it shows a game that was played. The first shot when the voice over is being played is the introduction to the first character so the audience get to know a lot of information  about him by listening to what he is talking about. When we was introduced to other characters such as "sick boy" there was a freeze frame to introduce them so we have a clear view of the person. We are introduced to a lot of setting in the first opening two minutes because he is talking over time as it is going threw various stages of his life therefore we was introduced to the police, heroin and also as mentioned before the football team. In my opinion i thought it was really good how it got straight into the storyline because the worse thing when watching a film is for it to drag on, however i found it quite hard to understand what the voice over was talking about because it was not very clear. 


The final opening sequence was called Sweeney Todd and my personal favourite. It starts of with the names of the production companies of warner brothers and dream works pictures presents with the camera following down the sky. It was absolutely different to the other two openings because it had a dark horror genre. The camera was following the skyline to introduce us to the roofs of some houses whilst having the credits of the actors names appearing. The whole way threw is the follow of blood which rather then introducing us to characters it lets us know about the story by it going down the window and into the oven because it attracts you as an audience because you want to follow where it goes. The blood is also quite animated but it fits into the real life scenery as it turns into water like blood  in the stream rather then the thick ruby red blood in with the pies. The theme is continuos threw out the whole opening of just the blood running around the scenery. 

Media studies brief

The set brief for our Video project is to create the titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes. This blog will document the pre-production, production and evaluation stages of this project.