Coming of age genre opening film analysis of Mean girls - 2004

Mean girls opening film analysis

Analysed the first 2 minutes

Mean girls open with a close up, low angle shot of the main characters parents talking to what you expect to be a young child.  The audience realise this is soon patronising when the camera cuts to the female teenager character who stands up and smiles eagerly. There is non diegetic African music playing in the background, combined with a medium shot of the father taking a photo of the mother and daughter and then a close up shot of them two smiling. The music continues quietly whilst the teenage character does a voice over explaining how she was previously home schooled and the stereotypical convention of her was that she was a freak/religious. The camera cuts from her mother crying to a flash back of a medium shot of her competing in a spelling bee. Whilst she continues her voiceover explaining how she grew up in Africa but had to move recently, the audience view 6/7 photos of her as a teenager living in Africa amongst the animals.

The camera then switches back to an over the shoulder shot of her parents waving her goodbye as she steps across the road to the entrance of high school. As she takes the step there was a medium shot combined with a diegetic sound of a bus flying past, and an off screen sound of a scream in shock from her parents.  Fast and upbeat non diegetic music begins to play as she crosses and begins to make her way up the school path. The camera switches to a mix of a tracking shot and a characters point of view shot as she sees a group of boys wearing the stereotypical jerseys play fighting and a group of characters dressed in predominantly black trying to put a fire out.  It then shows a close up shot of her confused and anxious face as she continues her path. As the character makes it to her classroom, the camera switches to a medium shot of her and another teenager, they share dialogue and the girl soon realises that this girl doesn’t want to speak to her or be her friend combined with some off screen sounds of people giggling. This highlights that this film comes under the coming of age genre as you know this character is going to have to go through some growing up to get to where she needs to be.