Most of the film including the opening sequence is set outside in the sunshine. During the opening sequences you get to see a lot of the setting although the camera focuses more on the characters, this I don’t really know if it is typical of a teen movie. The movie and most of all the opening sequence are shown in a realistic, natural kind of lighting, this is a common characteristic of a teen movie and I noticed quite early on in the movie as most of the opening sequences are shot outside. The high school building looks almost like a fairy tale castle and is perfect for a film based on a comedy by Shakespeare although it does make the film feel a little more fairy tale like than what you would expect in a teen movie and it looks like it doesn’t fit in with the film. Other scenes in the film are set in the characters houses. All the characters have nice, big, expensive looking house and this is what you get in almost ALL teen movies except from the few that try to stand out from the crowd and want their movies to be different from others and have maybe some of the characters in the movie coming from a poorer neighbourhood but after saying this it is still true that the big expensive houses, nice cars and rich parents are almost essential for the teen movie of today and you’d rarely find a movie without this.
Now in this paragraph I come to the characters. Most of the characters in this film are the stereotypical types you would expect in a teen movie. First of all we have Bianca, she is the popular girl who all the guys want to date although the actress who plays her does not seem pretty enough to play this part which if given a choice would have been much better suited to the actress who plays Kat. Joey is the popular rich guy who thinks he’s hot and sees money and good looks as the answer to everything. Michael is the typical geek and Cameron is the new kid who is befriended by the geek. But still with these stereotypical characters, the ones you expect in teen movie there are a few unconventional characters and Kat is one of them, she is Bianca’s sister but the 2 of them are completely different. Kat doesn’t want to be popular, she was once popular and as she says “got bored of it “ which is totally unusual for a character in a teen movie as a character would do anything to be popular and most of the characters thrive on popularity. Kat does exactly what she wants and says exactly what she thinks and she doesn’t care what anyone else thinks of her also her language is very sophisticated for someone in a teen movie. Kat’s character is very different from the kind you would expect. A typical teenager in a teen movie would be very concerned and aware of what other people thought of them and would do anything thing just to fit in and given the chance to be popular would be like a dream come true, a dream which would not simply be “got bored of”.
In a scene at the start of the film where Kat is in a car on her own and a group of other girls are in a car next to her, on her radio she is playing music, then the girls in the car next to her turn to look at her, she looks back and then the music switches to “ I don’t give a damn about my reputation”, then both cars drive off. This song was perfect to be played in a scene with Kat because it was just as if the song was her own words because she doesn’t give a damn about her reputation or what anyone thinks. But Kat is not the only unconventional character from the film. There is also Mr. Morgan, their teacher, he behaves in a way you’d expect no teacher to behave and he’d only be able to get away with this type of behaviour in a film. Mr Morgan shocks the audience with his rude language e.g. He told Kat to “leave the room, you’re pissing me off” although He is rude to the students this only adds comedy to the movie and his attitude toward s the student only makes the film better but he is not the kind of teacher you would expect in a teen movie. While Mr Morgan says what he wants and makes sure he is heard and that his word is final the typical teacher for a movie would be picked on by students and be targeted by paper aeroplanes or they would just be totally ignored. But having him as a teacher is good as he challenges students and puts them in their place e.g. he says to Joey “ One day you’re gonna get bitch slapped and I’m not gonna do a thing to stop it. This is just one of the sentences which really shows his true character. Another thing which I thinks I should mention is that all the other kids in the school look normal like they are really in school not all dressed up like models which is typical of some teen movies.
The camera angles in the film, throughout this film there is a wide variety of different camera angles. In a scene in the film when the camera is showing the slightly exaggerated stereotypical groups and their surroundings, in a long shot, the camera kind of spins round giving you a glimpse of all the groups in that one turn. I think that was an example of excellent use of camera. Later on in the film when Cameron first sees Bianca the camera starts off as a long shot then it zooms in for a close up and while this is happening the editing gets really slow so the audience gets to see her like she appeared to him, almost like he was in a dream. Both the editing, camera angles and music give the audience a brief idea of how Cameron felt about Bianca. Also during this scene the music slows down to create atmosphere, the slow, calm music in this scene is very different from the loud upbeat music that teenagers usually listen to. Although it is typical for a movie to use slow music when a character sees someone they fall in love with, you don’t usually get this kind of slow editing and soft music in a teen movie.
Mise en scene is a term used to describe what is in a frame and why, when talking about mise en scene you have to consider: settings and props, costume and make up, body language and facial expressions, lighting and colour and all these factors combine together to give the shot a certain look. In a scene where Bianca was outside on the swing, upset and you see kat looking through the window at her. The way this shot is set out with a small area of the screen taken up by kat looking out the window down at Bianca and the way the camera films it makes it seem as if they are a far distance away although Bianca is only in the garden and kat in the house. This may suggest a distance in their relationship. The camera shows Bianca on a swing while showing just the right amount of scenery behind her. Bianca is dressed in a style which you would expect on someone much younger, she is wearing a long white dress with a pink cardigan and black buckle shoes and I think this was done to make her seem like just an innocent little girl. None of them were wearing make-up, which I think gave the scene a natural feel. The editing here is slow and there is very little movement from either of them. Their facial expressions are deep and meaningful, from kat's facial expression I got the feeling that she might of just felt a little bit guilty over the fact that Bianca was upset and although we couldn’t really see Bianca’s face very well but I got the impression that she must have been thinking and going over things in her head. The lighting in this scene was really natural and realistic and there were not any bright eye catching colours. This scene appears as though a lot of thought went in to it, which kind of separates it from most teen movies because most teen movies appear to have no deep thought put into creating them as it doesn’t take much to entertain a lot of teenagers and if you don’t have to put the extra thought into creating a movie. Why bother?
In this film there is a lot of rock chick music played, if not in clubs then in a scene with kat. Usually in teen movie you get e.g. in Save the last dance there was a lot of rap and hip hop music played but no rock chick music and in “ Bring it on” you got almost like pop music but no rock chick because these are the types of music people expect and it is not common to find a successful movie like 10 things I hate about you which dares to set its own rule and be a bit different from other films.
Although this movie is very different from most other teen movies I have still come to the conclusion that it is a teen movie. In the end all the arguments for it being a teen movie outweighed the arguments against it being a teen movie although the decision was very close. The reason that I decided that it was a teen movie was that although it was based on a Shakespeare play it was a love story, which is what most teen movies are about and almost all of the cast are teenagers. Quite a few of the main characters were the stereo type characters you always get in teen movies and although Kat, Mr Morgan and Miss perky were all unconventional they were still not enough to change the fact that this is indeed a teen movie
