Evaluation Task 2 - Representation of social groups in 'High Expectations'

Middle - Grace
Far right - Charlotte

This is an image of the two main characters Grace and Charlotte in their 'friendship group' which represents their social status. The image clearly portrays this group as being the popular / bitchy girl group at school. The main character Grace is in the centre of the group to represent that she is the most popular girl in school and enjoys being the centre of attention. Whereas Charlotte, her follower, is on the outside of the group which represents how she is trying to fit in with the popular girls. You can see by the appearance of the girls that they fit into this 'popular' group at school. This is apparent with the stylish clothes that all of the girls are wearing, the fact that they are all in nice, stylish clothes represents how they care about their appearance which is a stereotype of this social group in other teen angst films such as Easy A or Mean Girls. You can also see that the girls all have handbags and some have bracelets or other accessories, which again shows how they try hard to look good and stay 'in fashion'.
Obviously all of the girls are the same age (16/17) which again represents that they are the most popular girls in their year group and at that age they are among the oldest in the school - so perhaps the girls in the younger years try to be like them. The camera shot used is a long shot that is taken from a low angle. This allowed us to represent that the girls are popular and stylish as the long shot meant we could focus on the whole appearance and the outfits of the group. The slightly low-angle is used to show that the girls are of a high social status as it is like they are looking down on everyone all the time, and the other characters in the film, as well as the audience, are looking up at them.

Social groups

We included Alan Mazura (far right) and Hadyn Cheong (3rd in from the right) which represents different cultures which comes under cultural diversity which is a convention of the teen angst genre. We included this to show what modern society is like now as opposed to how it used to be. We included many other groups in our film when they enter the media classroom at the beginning of the opening scene, such as: the sporty boys, nerds / geeks and the 'gossip girls' which are represented in the image above (the three girls on the left at the table). They are represented as the 'gossip girls' as you can see them having what appears to be a conversation about the boys behind them, hence why the girl on the right has her back turned and is the one speaking.
All of these social groups are generic conventions as they are commonly found in the teen angst genre. These different social groups mean that our film is more likely to attract a more mass audience as more people will be able to relate to our film.

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Image from Mean Girls

 Character comparison

Charlotte in our film

As you can see in the two images above, Charlotte in my media product dresses pretty similar the costumes used in Mean Girls. The use of pink / purple and bright clothing is a generic convention in teen angst films as it is a very stereotypically girly colour. The pink clothing connotes the characters popularity and this is apparent in both my media product and Mean Girls as both of the characters are categorised as 'popular' in their schools. The mid shot in the image from Mean Girls represents that character's girly side as she is doing her hair and make-up and this is also apparent in our film when both Grace and Charlotte are getting ready for school in the split screen during the title sequence, this is shown in the image below.

Grace and Charlotte getting ready

Candy Heron in Mean Girls

As you can see in the image of Candy Heron on the right, she looks quite similar to the main character Grace in our film. They both have red hair and are both very pretty, the red hair connotes that they are possibly trouble-makers or easy to fall in love with in a teen angst film and this is the type of representation that we were aiming for in our film with Grace, it is very stereotypical that the most popular girls in school are usually always the most attractive.





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Sporty Group

We include other groups such as the 'sporty' or 'athletic' group in our film to show a wide range of social groups. The audience will instantly recognise that these are the sporty 'lads' as when they're walking into the classroom they're messing about and talking quite loudly, and their social group is also apparent with the clothes that they're wearing. They're all wearing hoodies with sports related bags and this represents that they're part of the sporty group as this is stereotypically the type of clothing they would wear in other teen angst movies. This is obviously also apparent because they're all relatively tall and look quite 'fit' which shows they take part in sports in school.

Geeky group

This image is one taken from the title sequence showing the 'geeks' in the film. This is apparent by the fact that they walk in very quietly and don't talk to anyone else in the line, it shows that they're quite isolated and only care about their own progression in school rather than their social life. The audience will automatically see that this is the geek group and this is another thing that will make them feel more comfortable watching the film as they can relate and compare these characters to people in their school environment. The range of social groups in our film mean that more people can relate to our film either personally or from people that they see in school, and this means the audience is more likely to enjoy our film.