Year 2 Task 1

Romantic Comedy

“In a typical romantic comedy the two lovers tend to be young, likeable, and apparently meant for each other, yet they are kept apart by some complicating circumstance (e.g., class differences, parental interference; a previous girlfriend or boyfriend) until, surmounting all obstacles, they are finally wed. A wedding-bells, fairy-tale-style happy ending is practically mandatory” - wikipedia

Romantic Comedies are movies that have a couple falling in love. It usually shows how their relationship progresses and how they either stay together or break up. It’s almost always the former.  The basic plot formula is; couple meet, couple become lovers, couple fall out due to a misunderstand, couple get back together. This formula is rarely diverted from so the movies tend to be the same thing each time. There are exceptions but not many.

Romantic Comedies have been around since Shakespearian times with his plays such as “A mid summers night’s dream” and its ilk. In film they were very popular around near the start of cinema and up into the 1960’s where the genre died down for a while. It was revitalized by the 1989 movie “When Harry met Sally”. Since then the genre has been extremely popular.

Format of feature films

The advantage of a feature film is they are easier to get made than a TV show. A TV show would require backing from a studio, it’d have to go through the pilot process and then it’d have to maintain a level of quality or risk being taking off air. The advantage of a TV show is that you can stretch the story out to however long you want and you can included numerous sub plots. The characters can be more fleshed out and people will continuously watch the show if they enjoy it. An advantage for a movie would be the rating system. For TV shows you are often limited to what you can do due to the stricter rating system. With movies you also get a bigger budget.

While short films are a lot easier to get made and cheaper they also don’t get the kind of exposure that feature length movies get. They are usually only shown on the internet or at certain film festivals. It’s rare that particularly well known people get involved in them so that’s another downside.

Trailers

The main components of a romantic/comedy trailer are:

·         The music suddenly stopping to enhance a funny moment

·         A narrator explaining the plot

·         Showing the big kiss

·         Spoiling most of the movie

The merchandise for romantic movies is limited. This mostly down to the fact the main fans of romantic comedies are females who have no interest in getting action figures, statues or anything like that. With other genres such as sci fi and horror it is common to get a number of collectibles. In romantic comedies it’s usually limited to CDs, t shirts and posters.  There are also bill boards which is usually the normal poster maximized to fit a larger area. There are sometimes areas of the poster extending over the top or the bottom of the board. There are also posters on buses which have to be changed to fit onto the bus. To do this it has to be separated into segments

First ideas

A guy’s friend has never been on a date. The guy becomes determined to get him a date.

A girl kidnaps a guy to force him to go on a date with her.