Ferris Bueller Day Off Essay

“I said it before and I’ll say it again, life moves pretty fast, you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” This is how the audience meets Ferris Bueller. John Hughes’ 1986 film, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off had quite a bit of appeal that brought the attention of many viewers. A film about a beloved senior in high school who decides to play hooky for the day and go on an adventure around Chicago. The trailer doesn’t do much to tell much about the plot, instead, it introduces the main character by a sequence of opinions that background characters are saying of the delightful Ferris Bueller. Bueller is described, via the trailer, as a character that influences his peers – gaining him popularity – in ways they find

positive, but administration thinks otherwise, and he also does what he wants when he wants to and it just happens to work out for him somehow, this is how he’s always been and not much is going to seem to change. Based on the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off trailer, it’s clear and apparent to see how the film contributes to the marketing practices and strategies of look, book, and hook, based on it’s appeal to previous John Hughes fans and teenagers.
The look of the film is quite simplistic; Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is another teen movie for the time period. What makes this film unique however, is several things. The film’s writer and director, John Hughes is notably known for his hand at teen films of this decade. Bueller, not only interacts with the characters on screen, he directs many of his statements to the audience. This act of breaking the fourth wall, in a sense, bridges the gap between the diegetic space and the real space of the viewer. In the first ten seconds of the trailer, there is a medium close up I which Ferris Bueller talks through the camera and to the viewer, thus inviting the viewer into the film and into the world of Ferris Bueller. Throughout the trailer there’s a contrast between the characters that adore Ferris and the characters that seek to tear him down. Characters like Ed Rooney and Ferris’ sister, are visibly annoyed and irritated by the admiration and adoration of Ferris Bueller. Other characters give off this swooning and admirable respect for Ferris and all he does. There’s a strong emphasis on Ferris both throughout the trailer and throughout the advertisements around the film. In the trailer, scenes that displayed Ferris were almost exclusively medium close ups, emphasizing him as the central character. Even posters that circulated around the film were medium close up images. For example, in Variety Magazine there was a poster released that advertised the film and it included a medium close up of Ferris Bueller leaning on the title and the amount of money the film has made in it’s first 61 days (Variety 12-13). Ferris almost always appears in a chilled out and cool stance, leaning and relaxing on things.
The usage of music in this trailed in conjunction with the visual elements, it creates an interesting element to drawing the audience into Ferris Bueller’s Day Off via the utilization of the marketing look. Within the trailer itself, there’s classical music playing throughout, something that’s unconventional in comparison to other teen movies of the time. The classy sounding song playing in the background is ironic in the trailer in the sense that the music makes a film about a teenager that ditches school for a day sound more sophisticated than any other teen movie – yet Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is just a teen movie. This musical accompaniment can be interpreted as a way of stating how Ferris Bueller isn’t like the rest of the teen movies of the decade, it’s deeper and more sophisticated. According to Billboard Magazine, following to the release of this film, songs like the Beatle’s Twist and Shout and Yello’s Oh Yeah were released as singles die to the popularity from the film (Billboard 86). This shows the relationship between movies and music, and how the two can draw upon an audience to increase and build popularity. Collectively, all of these things come and work together to create the look for the film that draws an audience in.
There is one particular hook that plays a major role in drawing in an audience. By this time, John Hughes had already been established as a well known and liked filmmaker that makes and targets his films for adolescents of the time period. Prior to the release of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, John Hughes gained much success from his past films such as Sixteen Candles and Breakfast Club. These two films established John Hughes as the director that he is, so when it comes to him releasing a new film, like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, he already has a fan base and there’s the existing premise of the John Hughes Teen movie. Secondly, the films star, Matthew Broderick’s, popularity is something else that plays a role in hooking people in to wanting to see this movie. The Film Journal’s writer, E.K. writes, “Broderick – arguably the best comic actor of his generation – makes the potentially disastrous device (talking directly in the camera) work, and overall turns in a performance that is every bit as central and engaging as Molly Ringwald’s in Sixteen Candles.” John Hughes films and even the actors he chooses to be the stars are often being compared and contrasted to the past premises that both entities serve to producing the hook of the film through the trailer.
The book, based solely on the trailer, is harder to identify.

Generic character types are difficult to identify because the trailer focuses on Ferris and the casts’ reactions to him. There are the minority who don’t like Ferris and there’s a majority who admire and look up to him. Through the trailer you have to infer who his best friend, girlfriend, and sister are and what role they play in the film. The film doesn’t introduce you to any of the characters, it simple just gives their opinion on the protagonist of the film. From the film, we can interpret that Ferris didn’t go to school that day, he found himself taking a shower and laying in bed while others are at school, driving in an expensive car when he should be at school, and dressing in a suit for whatever situation he was trying to get him or someone else out of. That’s pretty much the base of it, the narrative of the film is simple, Ferris Bueller is a teenager who is a senior in high school, one day he decided to skip school and drag his best friend and girlfriend into the day off with him. In a review article, the plot’s simplicity was admired, “that’s pretty much it, folks, and if the plot seems like simplicity itself, well, therein lies much of the films charm” (The Film Journal

20).
With all of these things being taken into consideration, it’s quite easy to see how the conventions of the look, the hook, and the book contributed to the film being the “high concept” success that it was. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a high concept film because it emphasizes the style of John Hughes, thus drawing in a preexisting fan base that aids in the marketing strategies of the film. John Hughes notably has a special connection with his teen audience, a connection he reinforces utilizing the convention of the look allowing his main character in the film to break the fourth wall. Alternatively, Ferris Bueller was continually portrayed as this cool dude that you wanted to meet and get to know through movie advertisements. The hook comes into play in a similar way that the look did. John Hughes’ hand at teen films during this time drew in fans consistently through his film releases. He’s been recognized in the past for his casting abilities for these characters that audiences grow to love throughout the film. The films plot and characters a simplistic yet relatable, utilizing the skills and techniques of the book appealing to audience members. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a film that drew in a teen audience, while it may hove bored adult viewers it defiantly made an impact on the teen generation both during it’s release and even now.