Coursework Discussion 1 - 14th November

On the 14^th November we brainstormed in the group which genre we were all happy to base our trailer, poster and film magazine on, although we found it difficult to  make we managed to form together a rough idea.

  To begin with we researched into a variety of trailers such as 500 Days of Summer, P.S I Love You and The Notebook etc as we found them to be inspirational and we were set on doing a genre with a hybrid of Romance/Drama. We were particularly fond of the idea regarding, slow pace cuts, the non-diegetic music, a voice over  and particularly flashbacks yet we thought it would give too much of the linear plot away. We had strong ideas on the specific Mise-en-scene such as the stereotypical attractive boy and girl, preferably a blonde skinny very striking teenage girl as this would draw in a specific target audience which was young girls and woman as Romance films are usually regarded to be a ‘chick flick’ and less appealing to men. We also wanted a dark haired, tall, good looking boy to attract the target audience as well as fit in with the typical conventions of the genre. We found this to be a challenge as we gave it more thought and our biggest obstruction was finding the appropriate actors to conform to our genre. Although we had vague ideas on the location we originally wanted to film in London, specifically at Hyde Park, Oxford Street, Regent Street and around the west end, our reasoning behind this was that we are approaching the Christmas season and the decorative Christmas lights would have complimented the theme of our trailer exceptionally well. Although the more we thought about our theme the more doubts we had building and we worried that some of our ideas may not have been realistic, for example would we really manage to get ourselves as well as our actors to travel to London? Lighting was also an issue as Romance films use various lighting to conceal blemishes on the actress’ face which adds to the effect which reinforces romance. The weather was also an issue as it is getting rapidly darker in the evenings our time for filming would be limited and we would most probably have to make more than one trip up  to London which was a problem regarding cost. I feel as if we may have rushed into making a decision instead of taking into consideration the finer details as well as the vital aspects.

  As it is vital that we think ahead so we are able to later write about our specific choices and decisions we found that a Romance may not be the right choice of genre for our group. We realised the importance of planning in addition to the preparation procedure and noticed that we needed to apply more thought and come up with something that was a lot more beneficial so we were able to put more time and effort into a more upbeat genre that we particularly enjoyed and were thoroughly inspired by therefore we arranged to give it additional thought until our next meeting.