Chalet Girl - Opening 2 Minutes

Chalet girl is a romantic comedy about a girl who moves to the Alps and discovers her talent within snowboarding, where she later goes on to win a professional competition and falls in love. The opening of "Chalet Girl", begins with the titles and over them we hear the first segment of sound; cheering from a large crowd. By having this sound playing over the titles, we as the audience put ourselves into the setting and begin to image what setting the film will begin in. This therefore catches the audiences attention and forces them to turn their attention to the screen for the next scene.



The first camera we see is a close up of a skateboard. We therefore as the audience are made aware that the film will be related to a board sport and this close up shows this. We are then shown several long shots, which pan across, following the skateboarding character across the screen. By doing this, we are then made aware that this is has something to do with what our main character does. We then get commentary from two presenters who are shown in a two medium shot. This allows enough room to fit both characters in the shot and also shows us their facial expressions and body language, towards each other and their reaction to the topic they are discussing.


We are then shown several shots at the same time, of the presenters and two other shots of a skateboarder. By having several shots on the screen at the same time, there is more emphasis on the setting that the film will be seeing later on. It also looks at how good this character is at skateboarding due to the fact that there are several images to back up what the presenters are saying.


However, we are not made fully aware of who the character in the skateboarding shots are, until we see a close up of Kim's face and we hear the commentators describing who this character is over this shot, to make us as the audience aware who it was we had just recently been watching skateboarding, in the previous shot.

We see Kim wearing very scruffy and un-lady-like clothing, while riding her skateboard. This therefore tells us as the audience that she is a tom-boy and so we therefore have a perception of her that she will not be interested in men. It also means that it does not meat the stereotype that we have of women, as we stereotypically see women to be very delicate, posh and self confident.
Due to the fact that Kim wears very scruffy clothing, we also assume that she is quite poor as we stereotypically expect wealthier people to be cleaner and care more about their appearance.


At the end of the two minute opening, there is a long shot, where Kim is slouched over a fast food counter as a worker. This tells us as the audience that she is on the minimum wage, therefore she is not rich and also lives a plain and simple life. This therefore gives the audience something to relate to as Kim is not rich and will not be very rich.