Mise-en-scene Project

     For my mise-en-scene project, me and my group made it our goal to clearly show the characters "trope" and personality. We wanted to do this in a way where a person could come to our station and easily figure out how to navigate our activity. We believed that by doing this we would be maximizing the amount of information a person learned about our character.

    Our character was a movie lover who also enjoys hanging out with her friends. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and dog. She's currently a stay at home wife who blogs as a hobby. In her blog she watches, analyzes, and critiques movies for her followers. If she's not blogging then you're likely to find her on a walk around the nearest park or out with her friends. We developed our character mainly through the use of construction and stereotypes. For our lighting, or colors, we decided to use darker neutrals to make a point of her not going out often and preferring to stay in the comfort of her own home. For our audio, we used slower songs from movies to show that she lives a slow-paced life, surrounded by movies. We portrayed our stereotypes mostly through visuals in our activity: movie posters in the characters bedroom, casual clothing, mood boards, etc. We believed that one of the typically signs of a movie lover in their 20s are movie posters, vines, and a comfortable bed, given it's more likely the character stays there for most of their day.

    To illustrate our character we created a game, a physical (paper) representation of her, and a visual of her room. For the game, one of my group members did some coding on an app which then allowed other people to click through a presentation as if they were playing a mobile app game. Throughout the game, people were able to learn more about the characters everyday life, personality, and trope. One of the key features of this activity was that people were able to do our character's makeup. Another activity we did was our physical board, which was a visual of the characters bedroom. Here, people could dress the character up differently through the use of some clothes my group members made. People could also gain a better connection with our character as the activity brought you into the character's actual room. On the day of the presentation we put all the computers closer together, for the first activity, and then put the second activity a little more off to the side, that way it was still visible but it wasn't in the way of anything. I believe that my group did a great job at putting the whole project together and I'm personally happy with the results that we got. Each and every one of us put in hard work into the project so that it could be the best possible.

Link to Activity #1

Activity #2

Genre Research - Romance Movies

What Makes a Romance movie Romantic?

Introduction:

I've generally always been attracted to romance films because despite them being repetitive they're: cute, fun and typically light-hearted. So they're normally my go-to after watching movies with a lot of grief, action and heavy topics.

Romance, by definition, is a feeling of excitement, love, affection along with many other deeply emotional, or idealized, feelings. I believe that, although the genre expectations may change, the genre itself will never die. This is because a lot of people cling to this genre since it serves as an emotional escape that provides joy and hope. It's also an extremely versatile genre: it can be appealing to all ages, from adults to young pre-teens, which is what makes it such a popular category in media.

Content:

Every romance movie has a specific trope that the characters follow. Whether it be enemies to lovers, soulmates, fake relationships, or even holiday romances, directors lean into a specific archetypes to, not only meet the audience's expectations, but also help familiarize the audience with the movie. These tropes are generally easy to recognize and will be a clear indicator of a romance movie. 

Conflict or emotional tension between characters in movies is another clear indicator of a romance movie. Directors use these struggles and tension to move the plot forward as the movie progresses. This tension, or conflict, could be initiated by either the love interests or a third party. This is typically seen in "forbidden love" movies, a prime example being "Romeo & Juliet", the tension/conflict between the characters was primarily initiated by their parents, not themselves.

A production having a central love story is another obvious indicator of it being a romance movie. In these movies, you'll typically find the love interests being the actual main characters. You'll also notice how the whole movie revolves around the main characters, their individual stories, and how their relationship developed. Overall, this central love story is the backbone of a romance movie.

Romance movies also tend to have a happy or emotionally satisfying ending. As mentioned before, romance movies are very cliche, light-hearted, and soft, which leads to them having a happy ending for the main characters. Also, since romance movies are supposed to be this cliche, idealized version of love, the ending might not always make sense but nonetheless the characters will end up happy. For instance, in holiday romances, in which the character goes on holiday for a few months and finds the "love of their life" on this luxurious island, one of the love interests will typically pack all their stuff up, leave their old life behind and then live with their lover forever, just to avoid getting separated. Doesn't make much sense, but it brings the audience joy, comfort, and further drives into that idea of true love and love being perfect.

Production Techniques:

Throughout a romance movie, the editing may appear to be slow paced. It might spend a few extra seconds on a scene where the characters are sharing an intimate moment to make the audience feel emotional. The editing could also be slow paced to further drive into that slow burn trope that romance movies tend to follow.

Romance movie soundtracks tend to include slow, intimate songs to further drive into that emotional tension mentioned prior. These types of songs go along with the slow paced editing that I mentioned prior. These songs are used during more intimate moments so that they feel less awkward. We also see movies do the opposite and cut intimate moments short by cutting off the music in the background. When movies do this, the audience can feel and see the, typically negative/awkward, change in atmosphere.

Marketing: 

As mentioned before, romance movies could have an appeal to any type of audience, no matter how young or how old. Thus, marketing often highlights universal themes of love that appeal to multiple generations. This is because a romance movie may drive more into the theme of young love, high school sweethearts, or enemies to lovers, all themes that appeal to preteens, teens, and even kids who are going through many changes in their life and are likely to yearn for that type of love in their own life. Disney movies and coming of age movies typically tend to drive into that specific theme. On the other hand, romance movies may be more sarcastic, funny, or realistic in order to appeal to adults, who might've had their own experience with love and find the content relatable.

In marketing, romance movies might also make it a point to emphasize what romance trope the movie uses. This helps narrow down the audience from just different age groups to specific interests and likes. This also allows the audience differentiate the movie being advertised from your typical love story. What I mean by this is that when people look at romance movies, they typically think of them as dull, cliche, and embarrassing copies of one another. Thus, involving the specific trope helps differentiate the movie a little more and brings forth the target audience.

Samples: 

The film 10 things I hate about you (1999) consists of two main characters, Kat (Julia Stiles) and Patrick Verona (Heath Ledger), the movie drives into many different tropes such as, enemies to lovers, forced proximity, and fake relationship. In this movie Kat is portrayed as this rebel, "not like other girls," character who is forced to get a boyfriend so that her younger sister, Bianca, could also start dating. Bianca's love interest pays the other main character, Patrick Verona (a "bad boy" cliche), to make Kat date and fall in love with him, all so that Bianca and her lover could date. Initially, Kat rejects this sudden affection she's receiving and Patrick becomes annoyed at the fact that she's making it hard to earn his money. However, as the movie progresses we see the pair start to get closer, bond more, and find comfort within each other. As the movie reaches its climax, Kat figures out that Patrick has been getting paid to go out with her, however by this point, Patrick has accidentally fallen in love with Kat. This of course creates new conflict between the characters. The conflict is resolved and the movie comes to a close with a happy ending after Patrick dedicates a heartfelt speech to Kat, they reconcile and both sisters get to date their lovers.

The film Flipped (2010) depicts the story of two kids, Juli Baker (Madeline Carroll) and Bryce Loski (Callan McAuliffe). The movie uses both the enemies to lovers and popular guy/outcast trope. In this movie, Juli and Bryce meet and immediately, Juli feels a spark that Bryce does not return. Not until they're older and now its Bryce who feels that spark and Juli who lost it. The movie often switches the narrative between Juli and Bryce to show both sides of the story. It starts off when the kids are in the second grade, the movie switches the narrative to emphasize the contrast of how positive Juli's first impression of Bryce was, versus how negative Bryce's first impression of Juli was. We also learn that Bryce's family views Juli's family negatively and they see them as filthy people. Following that, there's multiple montages of them throughout elementary school to emphasize how passionate Juli was about making Bryce her boyfriend and how hard Bryce is trying to avoid that. Later on in the movie, Bryce deeply hurts Juli's feelings and only realized he loved her after she's lost feelings for him. Throughout the rest of the movie we watch Bryce attempt to salvage their relationship and hopefully gain her love and trust back. The movie ends off with a happy ending as Bryce manages to rebuild that love and trust with Juli and the two end up dating.

Recommendations:

How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003)

Shrek (2001)

La La Land (2016)

Grease (1978)

Dirty Dancing (1987)

The Proposal (2009)

Enchanted (2007)

Sound Projects

     During the sound lesson and videos I learned many new techniques and methods that are used during sound editing. For example, thanks to this lesson, I learned all about foley: how to create it and where to use it. I also learned about soundscapes, both realistic and non-diegetic sounds. I learned about where it'd be best to use them, how to use them correctly, and when to mention them while analyzing a text.

    We then had to put our skills and what we learned to the test through two different projects. For our first sound project (Sound Project #1) we had to come up with an action that could happen in the span of 1-2 minutes. Then we had to create an outline, create foley, choose the sounds and work together to edit it all together in the end. For our second sound project (Sound Project #2) we had to revisit our One Word Film project and figure out what sounds would best fit it. We had to create at least one foley sound, make sure all sounds matched up with the visuals and then individually edit the sound into the project.

    For Sound Project #1, me and my partner immediately began thinking of places that could have a lot of sound, that way we can create an engaging soundscape. We then began thinking of sounds we could incorporate into the scene and we used our outline to better help us see how the scene would play out. To edit this project, we were told to use and then used ClipChamp, an app offered through Office 365. I believe that me and my partner did an excellent job at gathering sounds and editing them together so that they flowed nicely and could portray the story. However, looking back on it now I wish that we had put more thought into our setting and action as I feel like we could've done something more interesting. 

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    For Sound Project #2, my partner and I began thinking of sounds we could incorporate into our video. This was, in my opinion, harder to do as the original project was meant to be viewed without sound. However, we were still able to create a realistic soundscape with what we had. For our brainstorming portion, we carefully rewatched the video and thought about what sounds would best fit the portion of the video. Our outline was definitely helpful for this project, just as it would be for any other, because it helped us better analyze and divide up the video, which made brainstorming and editing easier. I used the same editing software that I used from my first sound project: ClipChamp, as I was already familiar with it. I believe that me and my partner did a good job at working out which sounds would best fit the video and using foley to correctly line up the sounds with the video. However, next time I would like to improve my skills with editing both videos and sound because as I was rewatching the project, I noticed many awkward moments that were lacking sound or visuals.

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