Hey everybody, welcome back! In the last blog, I decided on doing a Romance Drama for my brief because I think it will be not only the most versatile but also the most emotional. Also, I've chosen to work with my classmate Tejal on our brief. Since both of us are in our school's TV production program, we both have plenty of experience working on films together. I'm very confident that we'll be able to produce a film opening of high quality (and she's super fun to work with, so that's a plus too)! With all that out of the way, let's get right into today's blog: the conventions of a romantic drama.
Characters and Narratives
Tejal and I decided to start our research with the narrative aspects of the film opening (which is what I've addressed the most throughout my blogs), so I'll focus on the technical elements in my next blog.
Like Tejal mentioned in her blog, one of the defining features of this subgenre is that it tends to further explore the conflict in a relationship between two characters. Whereas the other romance subgenres don't emphasize conflict as much as they do love, romantic dramas focus a lot more on how conflict and turmoil can bring people closer together, even if it drives them apart at first. So, several tropes that are common to this subgenre in particular are familial conflicts, opposites attracting, and forbidden love. See Romeo and Juliet - one of the most famous examples of a classic romantic drama. The Capulets and Montagues are hostile with one another, yet Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet fall in love with one another. The conflict between their families makes their love far more dangerous, tantalizing, and exciting, and thus makes every up and down more emotional.
With this fact in mind, Tejal and I are considering centering our plot around two of those tropes, namely familial disapproval/conflict and opposites attracting. We want to have our main characters be a grunge, punk teenage girl and a preppy, rich teenage guy to try to fit into this trope. We also want to include disapproval from both their families to fit in with the other trope.
Technical Elements (like Mise-en-scene)
Since we have our characters in mind, I also want to address mise-en-scene and other technical elements so we can figure out how to portray these characters on camera. As for costuming, which is going to be one of the most important aspects since our film relies a lot on the characters, we need to have customized outfits that fit each lead. The girl would likely have darker, maybe leather or denim clothing as well as possibly dyed hair. Dyed hair might be difficult to accomplish because we would have to cast an actor with that aspect in mind, but the clothing should be completely feasible. For the guy, he would probably have more sophisticated, expensive, tailored clothes, maybe imitating luxury looks like slacks and a polo or a turtleneck. Tejal and I found a few photos to use as references for our characters.
These are two photos that we're using as references for our girl.
These are two photos that we're using as references for our guy.
As for cinematography and lighting, Tejal shared an excellent video with me about cinematic lighting in romance films. Here's the link: The Cinematography of Romance | 3 Cinematic Lighting Setups.
Since this is a romantic drama, it'll feature more stark and moody lighting than other romantic films. We'll use darker lighting to highlight the emotions of characters as well as a lot of closeups for the same reason.
Reflection
Overall, we pretty much have the creative aspects like plot and characters nailed, so now we have to focus on technical elements. Though before we fully move on from plot and characters, I want to do a little more research on the script writing process. I'm currently taking TV 4, which is a script writing class, so I already have a good bit of experience, but I still think it would be good to compile my findings. Now you know what to look forward to in my next blog post!
That's all for today's blog! Stay tuned in for my next blog post where I research the scriptwriting process so we can start writing our script. See you then!
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