Stereotypical Teenage Angst Locations - Research

Before planning the locations of my own teenage angst films, I looked in to other films in the genre to get an idea of the types of locations that are used. Again the main three films that I have looked at are Easy A, Mean Girls and American Pie. 

The most common location that appeared when researching in to these films was a school, this is because obviously as teenagers, the characters will still be in some form of education. With the school as a location it helps to represent the age of the characters to the audience aswell. When filming my trailer I decided to stick to this stereotypical convention and also use a school as one of my locations, I felt that by using the school, the audience were able to see what the characters were like and the situations that they had to deal with. As an audience they may also be able to relate to some of the issues that occur in the characters lives.
 




The images above are examples from Mean Girls and American Pie, they show the schools in which the characters went to during the film. In my own trailer I decided to use part of a school to film mine, I filmed mine in the sixth form area of Ernulf Academy. Because my film is a British made, low budget film I was not able to access any bigger school facilities, however using the sixth form area still worked well and still managed to show that the characters were in education.


Another location that is shown in all three of the films is a house, this is usually one of the main characters houses. This is quite a stereotypical location that is used normally to show house party scenes, which teenagers are known for having. This location is usually quite effective in the teenage angst genre as it is common for something to happen which then sparks a chain of reactions later on in the film. Again with my own film I decided to stick with this convention and also include a house party and the target audience will be able to relate to the current situation and the issues that come up during these scenes. I also decided to use a house party scene because it suited the storyline nicely, which meant that I was able to write the plot of the film knowing exactly what locations I was going to use. 

The two images on the left are examples from the films Mean Girls and American Pie. The houses that are usually used for house party scenes are big, modern houses, normally belonging to the popular character/group leader. The house that I have used to film my own trailer was a fairly big, modern house. I decided to stick to this convention of the teenage angst genre because I felt that it worked very well and also it helped my film to fit in with the genre.