REFERENCE FILMS

There are many films I have taken inspiration from for my trailer, and here are the few that inspired me the most.

High School Musical:This is a clichéd high school film portraying the many stereotypes we have in teenage society. From the jocks to the drama queens to the nerds, they are all shown here, with special emphasis on the main stars of the movie, Gabriella (the studious, nerdy, smart one) and Troy (the athletic jock with a lot of expectations on his shoulders). They both meet at a fateful new year’s party, sing together, and like each other a lot. When school starts, they find themselves to be in the same homeroom. They also give auditions for the school’s musical.

When their friends and family find out, they have a lot of reservations. These were not the people they thought they were, and they thought they needed to take some form of action to bring them back to the right path.

Interspersed with songs at short intervals, this modern adaptation of Romeo & Juliet, as critics have compared it to, gives us a lot of melodies signifying and aiding the plot going on in the movie. For example, Stick To The Status-quo is a song in which it is discouraged to try and grow and become anything other than what your status-quo defines you as.

Gabriella, being a smart student who excels in science and math, and Troy (on left) who needs to take his team to victory in the basketball championships, find that they must find a way to overcome this hurdle if they truly want to sing together in the school’s musical.

They are shortlisted in the competitive singing competition, but the only problem is that Sharpe Adams, who thinks it is her birth right to be the singing and performance arts queen, sabotages Troy and Gabriella’s chances of auditioning by making the date of the call back auditions coincide with those of the basketball championships, and the decathlon competition, which Gabriella is part of.

With the help of their friends, they work out a plan where they cause a mishap in the schools computers so the big game and the decathlon are postponed. When that happens, they run to give the auditions. They get the parts, making Sharpay and Ryan understudies, and they win their respective competitions as well.

In this film, the conflict that has arisen is the fact that Gabriella (picture on left) and Troy, two people who come from opposite sides of the stereotypical high school society, want to do a school musical together, which is not what they usually do, and society won’t let them become the people they want to become. Society is forcing them, using instruments of social control (such as disapproval from friends, family) to succumb to what the society thinks is better for them, as it also furthers their motives (i.e The basketball team wins the championship, and the decathlon win the competition too).

In the case of my film, the male protagonist and the female protagonist both come from similar structures such as the ones Troy and Gabriella come from: Shaheer is the football athlete, and Noor is the studious girl. They both revolve in different circles, and have a chance meeting at the school canteen when Noor runs out of money and Shaheer pays for her drink. That is similar to Troy and Gabriella meeting at the New Year’s Eve party. Similar to the plot of High School Musical, when Troy’s friends trick him into saying that Gabriella is not important, and she find out and stops talking to Troy, over here Noor realizes that Shaheer is one of the most relaxed, unconcerned people on the planet. That is affecting her negatively because she is an extremely motivated, driven person with the need to overachieve at everything. Another incident happens when she is out with a friend and Shaheer is there with his friends. He says hi to her, and they talk a few minutes.

When Noor goes back to her friend, she snidely asks if she is ‘friends’ with that guy? The tone, coupled with the expression and obvious distaste of her friend makes it known to Noor that it is socially unacceptable for her to have friends such as Shaheer. This pushes her to stop talking to him altogether, aggravating Shaheer to such an extent that he starts studying to prove to Noor that he is worth it.

Being a high school drama film, High School Musical is set with a lot of preppy music, mostly happy and cheerful. There is only one sad song. This shows that it is a light drama, not something overly serious, and appropriate for a preteen to teenage audience.High School Musical is the inspiration for my film in terms of the main leads as well as the social barriers need to be broken in order to transform into your true potential.

Slap Her…She’s French

This is a slightly more mature fillm, and it inspires me in the aspects of how Starla is denied being a cheerleader (amongst other things) due to the sabatoging efforts of the french exchange student who, in seeking revenge, destroys Starlas life. Starla, failing in French, needs to pass in order to be allowed to remain cheerleading captain. The exchange student fakes in helping her and she ends up landing in worse trouble than she was in before, also being kicked off the team in the process. As in my film, Noor after spending an extensive amount of time with Shaheer ends u not being able to study often and gets a C ona test — the lowest grade she has ever gotten in her academic career.

Legally Blonde

Legally Blonde starts off by showing us a girl who lives in a sorority, and is very well off. They play off on the stereotype of Elle being a stupid blonde who only is concerned about the latest gossip, what shade of lip-gloss she should wear and what the perfect dress would be when her boyfriend Warner proposes. When she is out shopping for said dress, the salesperson tries to sell her a dress double the price than it actually is.

But at this very important point she proves that she is actually pretty smart because she catches the salesperson in the lie and reprimands her about stereotyping her for a stupid blonde. This shows the audience that just because she dresses up differently and takes an interest in her appearance does not mean she is stupid. It also shows us that she might not be a math genius, but she is a genius in something that the math genius would be very bad at.

They go on to choose the dress, get ready, and Elle goes for her date, expecting an engagement ring. Instead, Warner, her boyfriend, dumps her. This comes as a shock for her as she was madly in love with him. But Warner was going to law school and wanted someone more ‘serious’ for her image. More stereotyping, especially in reference to her image.She decided to become more ‘serious’ for him. She works really hard and gets into Harvard Law School. But of course the story of her life follows her everywhere and she is looked at from snarky mean eyes that term her as “Malibu Barbie” and other things that show how much she is judged on her appearance. After some initial hurdles, she gets serious when Warner tells her to her face that she’s not smart enough. She starts studying, readying extensively and working really hard to prove herself. When she gets chosen for a very special project in which only a couple of law students got to work on a very important case, she is ecstatic.

Eventually she proves herself even more through her work, and even though she faces more problems through friends, through her mentor hitting on her and seeing her as nothing more than a pretty girl, and almost giving up and going back home, she sticks through it and wins a case! Not only that, but she becomes best friends with Warners now ex-fiance, as they both understand and realize that he was a slimeball. Aside from that, she starts dating a very nice guy, graduates top in her class, and has a happy ending.