Statement of Intentions

My Statement of Intentions:

What I am Setting Out to Do:

In my two-minute opening of a film, I want to make a professional and clean-cut opening of a film that is coherent with the romance genre. For me, the romance genre is all about understanding realistic relationships, as well as portraying the aspirational and idealistic hopes of romantics, and I intend to show both sides of this in my opening.

As aspirational references, I have various film openings which I really enjoyed:

He's Just Not That Into You:

The opening scene here has some common features of rom-coms: a montage and a voiceover. The voiceover helps the audience create rapport with the main character and begin to become involved in the story. Furthermore, the flashback technique also helps the audience become better acquainted with the main character, even without having met them yet and understand the reactions they have to certain situations. In Gigi's case, it shows the audience her resilience and ability, for better or worse, to never lose hope in love. The technique of using a flashback also creates an enigma as to who is the character now, what does she look like, how did her story turn out... 

Flipped:

The opening scene of "Flipped" is one of my favourites, not because it uses a particularly innovative filming technique or a unique style, but because narrative-wise, later on in the film the point of view changes and as an audience, we are shown the world through the other character's eyes and it picks up the story from the beginning again, only from the other perspective. This dual nature of the narrative is the best way of portraying the two sides of the relationship between Julie and Bryce, and how always, there are two different perspectives. What I really like about this opening, and the film, in general, is the way in which it lets the audience create rapport with both characters to understand the complexity of their relationship. Furthermore, the film also uses the technique of a voiceover and a flashback which are both very effective as we saw before.

Set It Up:

Sadly, I could not find a YouTube video for this film opening, but it is on Netflix and I encourage those who can to watch the opening. It is a montage which introduces the audience to the lifestyle of assistants of important figures in a company. This is important as both main characters have this job, and it determines many of the characteristics of the narrative of this story. Apart from providing a comedic effect, it helps the audience become acquainted with these two characters without knowing them, as well as getting involved in the atmosphere of the film.

What I want to achieve:

I want to set up an opening that achieves three main objectives:

I also would like to include as many codes and conventions of the romance genre as possible to help me achieve these three objectives. Some of these are characteristics of the previous film openings like a montage, a flashback or a voiceover; but others are achieved through elements of the mise-en-scène, camera, editing and sound, which I already looked at in another blog post and I will keep researching.

Difficulties I Might Encounter:

I will have to find actors and a suitable setting, which I am already thinking about. Filming a serious piece of work with your friends can be a challenge so I will definitely have to plan my schedule well in order not to leave everything for the last minute and have enough time to take as long as I need to film a quality piece of work. 

Handing in everything on time will be hard work, so I will have to try and always be on top of my schedule to make sure I have time to solve any issues that come up along the way, because hard as we try, there are always going to be unexpected and unplanned obstacles.

Choosing and getting the props and costumes might be easier for the romance genre than for other genres, yet it could still prove to be harder work than planned.

Weather conditions as well as having a quiet enough place to film comfortably (even though the sound will probably have to be edited on top f the image) can also become obstacles that I need to bear in mind.

On top of this and all the other unplanned situations that might come up, there is the whole covid situation going on at the moment. The ever-changing nature of the situation makes it impossible to predict when, where or if I will be able to film at all. I will have to plan everything to the best of my ability to make up for a potential inability to complete this project, and also bear in mind that there can be many quick changes of plans, so all the more reasons to stay at the top of my schedule.