Opening Scene Ideas - Back-Up Plans

In case something is to go wrong, we need a back up plan in terms of not only Ideas but also locations. However right now as we have not finallised on any locations, as a group we started to develop a back up plan as well along with our main plan.

We plan on still creating a voiceover, which would be played above the scenes to make it look as if it is her - we plan on only introducing the female character for the opening scene - thought process. For the back-up we would have her sitting in a library to present her as a nerd who is very keen on her studies, however very passionate about art. Therefore we want another location to be an aart room where she could be shown working on a piece of art which could be linked back to the genre.

This is our back up idea so far, whhich we do plan on developing slightly further, so that we are prepared for the worst.

Opening Scene Idea development - 2

Earlier on we thought on starting the opening sequence with a voiceover which would tell us already a lot about the character. We would introduce the voiceover by our main lead female character writing into her dairy. A diary connotes of a character/person not having many friends and also being shy to the world therefore they need to express their emotions through written words.

Now we plan on portraying only the female lead in the opening sequence due the film being through her perspective. The voiceover we plan on doing will be her diary entry however we will see it playing over other events too. Furthermore we would have some parts of the voiceover matching with the events that take place in the opening scene.

The setting and location that we have thought of is her room at the very begining, a tube station and a library. The tube station would tell the audience where the film is set, London. Library is chosen due to her being a bookworm. And her room, would just show her character to the audience. For example we might include picture frames of her with her family which would tell the audience that she loves them a lot. Or we could also have a few teddy bears lying around the room which links back to it being a rom-com, and also that she is a shy childish girl.

Ideas for Lead Characters

For our two lead lovers, we need to come up with ideas for their personalities, appearances and also names.

As a group we instantly agreed on both characters being from Middle Class families as it would be more bonding with the audience. Due to a major sector of our target audience being from the middle or working class, they would be able to relate and form a bond with our characters which is what we want.

By following the usual conventions of Rom-Com movies, the male lead should be a popular character or a total nobody. And the female is then the opposite of the male charcter, either she then would be a nobody or a popular character.

If we were to present the female as an unoticed person, straight away on gets the idea of presenting her as a nerd who is really into studying, wears big glasses, is shy and likes being away from other people into her own world of books.

By presenting the girl as a nerd we would need to make the guy popular however we could break that convention which could bring something new and exciting to our audience. Having the guy be not so popular either would create a cute love story who would bring out a new side of one another. This would create the comedic side of the film.

Moodboard

This is a mood board which I created, not only conveying conventions of romantic comedy films, but also ideas for our own film. Also the images suggest and are able to help me and my group to come up with the characters and their personalities.

For example, the picture in the bottom right corner includes 'Edward Cullen' from the movie 'Twilight', who is a well known male at school, however nothing much about him is known. He is a mystery to all but that still does not make him unpopular. With our characters being developed and written, his persona is very inspiring as it would create tension in the film due to the audience wanting to find out more about this character who is unknown to most.

Futhermore i have inserted images of heartbreaks, their appearances, personalities, some moments and a few romantic comedy films.

Developing Ideas

For the opening scene of our film, we as a group first need to finalise the plot so that we could start working on the opening scene. From our initial ideas we decided we would like to go forward with the Romantic Comedy idea.

In our initial ides we talked about a 'Journey to..' and 'Bullying' idea as the opening scene, however when we talked more about it; the bullying idea had to be scrapped out as we didn't really like that as it seemed a bit too boring.

Also the 'Journey to...' idea seemed too common in films, that's why we thought we could add a voiceover at the begining, which could be a diary entry and then against a pop, upbeat song have her or him do activities which would talk to the audience about her or his personality.

We will have an upbeat pop song because it is an important part to romantic comedy movie. Every movie tends to have this jolly music in the background which already hints the audience of what genre the film is.

Generic Conventions of Romantic Comedies

Whilst films are created, one needs to show the audience clear ideas of the film belonging to a certain genre. For example if it is an action movie, the production need to convey the generic conventions of action movies; this could be done by them showing guns, over-speeding cars, bomb blasts, and the characters talking about a secret mission from the beginning of the movie. Through these conventions one is able to signify to the audience of what genre the movie is.

The genre that my team have decided to work with is 'Romantic-Comedy', however the main genre which we would focus on is going to be 'Romance' which would have elements of 'Comedy'.

Romantic comedies are usually humorous dramatic stories which focus on themes like 'True Love', 'A Happily ever after' or being that 'Perfect couple'. The plot then would focus on two people, who normally would later on be romantically involved with one another. They would meet, feel attracted or hate each other, part ways due to misunderstandings or them believing they are not good enough for each other but at the end they would get back together as being apart is too much emotional stress for them. The screenwriters and directors also leave obvious clues for the audience all the way throughout the movie letting us know and guess that they will be a couple.

When the two characters seperate, be it due to personal reasons, them thinking that the other doesn't like them or if they are just not the perct match, they often start to realise during this phrase that they themselves are deeply in love with the other. Overwhelmed by their new found love they often go for a grand guesture to make the other person feel special who then also would confess his/her love in return, and the film ends happily.

Survey Results

Once we were finished with the survey and were satisfied with it, we all sent it out to our friends on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and also distributed the survey through messaging servers like WhatsApp, which nearly every smart phone owner has. Further on, I asked all my friends to share the suvey on tho their own friends, especially to friends who are in their 20s. This way we were able to reach to a wider audience.

In total we were able to get responses from 72 people, aged between 15-35 years old.

We also asked them about who they would like to be the lead character? The results were not that surprising as I did kind of expect most of them to vote for both as the audience likes to know what is going on through both's perspectives.

When asked about what they believe an opening scene should start off with, 44 responded with music, whilst another 9 said both. I was expecting the majority to be dialogue as usually at the beginning of a film, the viewer is bursting with unanswered questions which they want to be answered as soon as possible. We will definitely keep this finding in mind whilst planning our opening scene.

 Another interesting finding is the answer to the ethnicity question. The majority of Rom-Com's which are made, usually always have white character in it who would either be British or american. We had expected the same to show in our findings, expecting that the audience have gotten so used to the idea of white leads already. However, as you can see in our results is that the White race actually drew together with the Asian race but the majority voted that they don't really mind what race is presented therefore 'Any'.