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Evaluation

Evaluation for Romantic Comedy

The purpose of this assignment was to design, develop and create a trailer for a romantic comedy movie. We were also asked to design a poster for the trailer. We were given the title “The First Date” to use for the trailer. I don’t really know much about romantic comedies. I’m only able to think of four romantic comedies that I’ve enjoyed and I’m unsure if two actually qualify as Romantic Comedies. Basically, I was out of my area of expertise. Despite this I quickly came up with a couple of ideas for the trailer. The first was about a guy trying to get his friend a first date as he had never been on one. It was a very typical Romantic Comedy plot and I quickly changed it. I then decided to go more down the dark comedy route and had the idea to have a guy kidnapped by a girl and forced to go on a date with them. This quickly became the favoured idea and I started storyboarding it.

I had an idea for the poster almost immediately. It was the typical romantic poster with a white background and red text. The girl would casually be leaning on the guy. The twist was the guy was duct taped to a chair. Any other poster ideas quickly became irrelevant and this is likely my first mistake as I became determined to use this one idea.  The other poster ideas I noted down were not as good as the first one and I didn’t put much thought into them. Due to my poor drawing skills, I don’t think the sketch of the poster I did was very good and apparently, neither did anyone else as two other students (Carl Doherty and Chloe McCann) decided that my drawing of the female lead was so bad that they drew her themselves. It was amusing and probably made the poster better. 

The filming went very well for the most part with a majority of it being filmed in a single session. In this session I couldn’t actually move, due to me being duct taped to a chair, so it took a little longer for things to get done. Overall I think it was a very good session and not much could have been done to improve it. The only real thing wrong is that we had to do it in a different location than I wanted too. This was due to the studio being modified at the time. 

One of areas I don’t think I did particularly well in is the research. It was difficult to find any “history of romantic comedies” pages or anything on the subject of past romantic comedies for some reason. I think it’s likely because people aren’t very interested in old romantic comedies and are more interested in the new ones. I think another factor in my research not being very good is that I’m really not a fan of Romantic Comedies. This made it difficult for me to find, what I consider, to be more interesting information. 

Overall I think that this is one of the worst videos I’ve made. I’m not pleased with it at all. This is likely due to the fact that I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to romantic comedies and I don’t think it was very funny. The camera work and the acting were good, the script was very good. I'm not actually sure anymore what made the video so bad. It could have been a lack of motivation on my part or maybe because I wasn't enjoying the project. In conclusion its probably not as bad as I think it is but I'm still not happy with it.

Poster

The poster did not go as I planned. I intended to take a seperate picture (See draft below) and edit the title and the usual poster stuff onto it. This never happened due to us running out of time and everyone being busy with other things. I eventually decided to take a screenshot from the trailer which most suited the poster.

I think this still works pretty well. It still shows that the something is not quite right about this movie and that its clearly not the first date the male lead wants to be on. I think its still a good final poster despite it not being the one I wanted.

Storyboards

Reviews

Romantic Comedy reviews

I'm a Cyborg but that’s okay (2006)

The movie is about a girl who thinks she is a cyborg. After attempting to force wires into her  system, she's sent to a mental institute where she meets a guy who always wears a mask. He likes to steal things from people. He's in there because he fears that he'll shrink into a dot if no one pays attention to him. He finds out that the girl is refusing to eat because she's scared it'll ruin her circuitry he decides to help her and grows attached.

Despite this set up its actually the most pleasant of the director's (Park Chan-Wook) movies. I'm a fan of the director which is really the only reason I bothered to watch it. Its a decent movie with some great visuals(As usual from Park Chan-Wook) and quite a few amusing scenes. Sadly the first half of the movie kind of drags. It takes awhile before it really gets into it as the movie seemed preoccupied with introducing the other inmates than with moving it forward. While they are interesting it would rather have just gotten on with the movie.

Overall its a good movie. Definitely not Park Chan-Wook's best work (Oldboy) but also not his worst (Thirst). This could be more down to me expecting a lot out of Thirst while I wasn't expecting  Cyborg to be very good.

  

 Chasing Amy (1997)

I love Kevin Smith movies. He's a nerd who managed to make it big and it always shows through in his movies. Chasing Amy is about two comic book artists; Holden and Banksy. Everything is going good for them until they meet another artist called Alyssa. Holden ends up falling for her but she turns out to be gay. They eventually get into a relationship anyway that seems to be great but things start to get bad when Banksy begins thinking that Holden and Alyssa relationship is affecting their friendship. Holden also starts finding out about Alyssa's sexual past which puts more pressure on the relationship.

This movie is just hilarious. My personal favourite part is Holden's idea to solving all the problems. It's both hilarious and...Almost logical. The whole script for the movie is just perfect to the point where I can't really think of any complaints besides the fact it the ending is kind of a downer. My only other complaint is that Jay and Silent Bob aren't in it very much, which sucks because they're always great. Despite this the scene they're in is still good.

Overall its a great movie. Very funny and actually has some legitimate points to make.

Pretty Woman (1990)

A rich businessman hires a prostitute to go to some social events. He ends up falling for her. Not really much else to say.

Just like pretty much every other Gary Marshall movie we have our shopping/rabid consumerism montage and an illogical story. “Become a prostitute and there is a possibility a wealthy businessman would end up falling for you”. I think I laughed a single time during this. The rest of my laughter came from making jokes with a friend about it. The acting wasn't anything to scream about with Julia Roberts been particularly bad. And the ending. The ending could have redeemed it but no they had to go with the average Romantic Comedy ending. C'mon you had a good chance to do something with it! Give a "Some things aren't meant to be type ending." But no, lame afraid of heights joke and big kiss.

I really didn't enjoy this one.

Scott Pilgrim vs the World

Scott Pilgrim must defeats the seven evil exes of his current girlfriend, Ramona in order to date her.

It’s difficult to think of much wrong with this movie. It’s a lot of fun. The action is well done and the comedy is hilarious for the most part. The only thing that’s wrong with the movie is Scott himself. Michael Cera was poorly cast. In the comics he’s not as awkward and is more a jerk while Michael Cera is just…Michael Cera. He plays same character in pretty much everything he’s in. The rest of the actors and actresses did a good job with their characters. Chris Evans absolutely nails his role as evil ex number 2 as does Brandon Routh as ex number 3.

Overall it’s a very good movie and it’s a lot of fun. People who haven’t read the comic probably wouldn’t be bothered by Michael Cera so they’d likely enjoy it more.

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

Shaun decides to turn his life around by winning back his ex-girlfriend and make things good with his step dad. And then the dead rise.

This is a spoof of one of my favourite sub genres; the zombie genre.  The title itself is a joke on “Dawn of the Dead” and the whole movie makes lots of references to other horror movies. For the first part it’s mostly romcom humour before taking on a darker humour in the latter half. The two main characters, Ed and Shaun, are great together with Nick Frost and Simon Pegg both nailing their roles.

Task 4

Task 4

The poster is very simple. It’s an alien egg from the movie on a pitch black background with what seems to be a grid of human bodies on the bottom. It’s a very empty poster but it’s also very suiting with how empty space is. The tag line is “In space no one can hear you scream”, probably the coolest tagline a movie has ever had. It’s very minimalistic and it works very well for the movie. The only other colour outside black and white on the poster is Green. It gives a creepy hue to the moon like egg at the centre of the picture.

This is the alternate poster to the movie. The poster used in most cinemas just had the Batman logo and nothing else. It was proving that everybody knew who it was and they’d have to go see it. This poster only shows a very shiny batman logo with the title below.

This poster is fully in black and white except for the main text. It shows only the class in the picture, giving no indication as to who the main characters are. They blend in with the minor characters.  There is an equal chance of each of these characters being killed and no one is really safe. The tagline is “Could you kill your best friend?” which would cause people to wonder just what the hell is the movie about?

This poster is for the adaptation of the Hellblazer comics and despite the differences it replicates the feel of the comics pretty well (Despite not being as scary).  The poster is quite simple with a beam of light illuminating Constantine’s face. The poster is mostly dark colours with only a slither of light showing through. Inside the beam is various images of demons as if they are haunting him.

Again this movie is minimal in what it shows. It shows the main character’s face combined together to form the mask of the movies most memorable character, Frank. It has a very liquid look to the poster which ties in with Frank appearing once behind some kind of watery alternate dimension. It’s a creepy image that doesn’t explain much about the movie as that would be very difficult.

The poster for this movie is yet again very minimalistic. It’s a shot from the movie with one of the exorcists arriving at the house. He is only seen in silhouette with a light amount of fog covering the background. The lights have a green hue to them and cover up a lot of the house. It’s a very creepy image and you know that something horrible is going to happen.

The poster for Scarface is a very famous one. It has Al Pacino as the lead stood in centre of the poster with him standing partly in the dark and partly in the light. This could be trying to represent how he’s torn on whether to do the right thing or that he’s not 100% evil, but that’s up to you. It’s (again) a black and white poster with only the main title being in colour.

The A Nightmare on Elm Street poster is a fully drawn poster in full colour. It shows the main character, Nancy, lying in her bed as something evil lurks above her head. She has a terrified look on her face, insinuating how scary this movie is. Her face and the bed are illuminated by the moonlight.

This is my favourite movie poster, The Crow. It’s a very simple poster and features the titular character walking forward through the rain. The only thing with a hint of colour is the centre of the poster where The Crow stands. The tagline is “Believe in Angels”. The Crow would technically be an avenging angel. The whole movie has very dark colour with it rarely extending beyond its grey colour palette.