Analysing the opening for 'Legally Blonde'.

Analysing:
The film 'Legally Blonde' was released in cinemas in 2001. It is rated a PG-13 and the production companies for this film were 'Marc Platt Productions' and 'Metro-Goldwyn-Mayor pictures'. The distribution studio was also 'Metro-Goldwyn-Manor pictures'. The director was Robert Luketic. The box office achievements, for the first weekend, was $20million. It was nominated for a Golden Globe award and won a BMI award and also a british comedy award. It was nominated for more awards as well.

Target Audience:
The primary target audience for this film would be teenagers, and female. Just by seeing the opening to this film, everything is very pink and girly. The colour pink is stereotypically associated with females, and I think that if a middle-aged adult male happened to walk in on this movie being shown he would almost defiantly change the channel. The genre of this film is a romantic comedy, which is also a genre stereotypically associated with females, so there is more and more evidence pointing towards the fact that this film is aimed at females. The age bracket would probably be ten to late twenties. The film features girls at university, so it would probably be aimed at girls around the same kind of age, or a maybe someone a bit older because they have been there and done that, or maybe younger people because they see people of that kind of age as role models. The target audience would probably be fans of romantic comedy and typically girly films.

Title and Credit analysis:
The Titles and credits were all in pink writing, that looked like a woman's neat handwriting. It was white with pink borders and almost sparkled whilst it was on the screen. The Credits were un-animated, and they stay on the screen for half a second or so during the opening of the film. The very stereotypically girly writing shows the narrative, and shows the audience what the rest of the film and storyline is going to be about. The credits reflect the genre, which is a girly romantic comedy. In the credits, you are shown the film title, production company, cast (in order of importance), the people who have sorted out the costumes and makeup the director, producer and the music used. Those are the main things that you are shown in the credits.

Preferred Readings:
The opening scene features a close-up shot of the main character's hair being waved about whilst being hair sprayed. This draws attention to the fact that the hair is blonde and the audience are shown the start of a typically blonde film, which shows the narrative. When the teenager is riding her bike in the opening scene, the camera follows her and it frames her. It is a long shot, because you an see both her and everything going on in the background. The non-diagetic soundtrack is a very upbeat, pop-style song and stereotypically goes with the genre of the film. The song is called 'its a perfect day' and goes with the theme of the blonde american popular girls being very happy and having a very active social life. The atmosphere is a happy one and everyone in the opening scenes seem very relaxed and happy. The characters shown in the opening are represented as very typically blonde american teenagers and they are displayed as normally being quite shallow, and only really socialising and going out with their jock boyfriends.

Mise-en-scene:
The scenery in this film is also quite stereotypical, like most other aspects of this film opening. You follow a character entering a university dorm, where many blonde people are getting ready, doing their hair, and signing a card for the main character, who is also blonde. The room in which this part has been filmed is very pink and all of the mise en scene has hints of pink or is stereotypically girly in some way or another. It fits all of our established thoughts in our head of how it would probably be. The lighting is always quite bright, both when the characters are shown inside and outside. Everyones faces are well lit and it lets you see their facial expressions a lot better. This doesn't have an effect on the text, however, because the text is so bright and makes the scenes almost look a little bit darker than they actually are.

Ideology:
The ideology of american teenaged girls is that they are blonde, like to wear pink. spend a lot of time out with their friends and very sporty boys. This film does met this description, because even in the opening you can see where the girls live (which is a mainly pink area) and you can see who they hang out with, which is each other. Stereotypically, teenaged american girls in college or university meet this description and, because we have been brought up watching these films, you believe that is what things are actually like. The characters being represented like this make the audience think, after having watched the opening to this film, that all the characters will be like that. However, later on in the film the audience will be surprised that the main character proves the stereotypes that blondes are dumb wrong by going to a law school to try and win back an ex-boyfriend.