Preliminary Task Reflection

This is my piece of textual anylsis on the film clip we produced called Love Not Actually which is about a boy and a girl meeting for the first time, with all the conventions of a rom com.

The very first  thing you see on the screen is somone turning on some music (she drives me crazy by fine young cannibals) on their iphone. The use of this upbeat, 'cheesy' and relatively well known piece of music helps the audience to relate more to the film and helps them to remember it and enjoy watching it even more. Also the use of an iphone helps people to associate with the characters as most people these days have an iphone and helps us to set  the time period that the film is set. You then get a first look at the costume that the 'man' is wearing, which is a pink shirt with a blazer, smart black trousers and Nike trainers. The pink shirt  makes us feel relatively comforted as it is quite a nice, happy colour whilst the smart  trousers and blazer help the audience to decide on the type of person this is and where this person is going. The Nike trainers then remind us of the time period it is set and also the age of the person on the screen as you would not expect an older person to be wearing them. Through editing we were able to create a sense of enigma into our piece as we decided not to show the main characters face until the 23rd second of the clip. This keeps the audience interested as they want to know more about the character and this element of mystery that we have introduced keeps the audience questioning whether this is going to be the stereotypical rom com they were expecting. You then see the main characters face for the first time as he walks into a reception environment which then quickly turns into a over the shoulder shot which alternates between the main character and the new character of the secretary. We decided to represent the secretary as very geeky with glasses and braces; very much your stereotypical geek in order to contrast with the other character in the shot. We then had the man stood up and the secretary sat down in order to show the power within the scene and the representation of different sexes in the film world. The characters then had the conversation and we added in the edit of a black screen to show the passing of time which then faded into a shot of just the main man reading something. This then turned into a two shot of the man and the secretary, with the man walking towards the lady to show even though they were boyh stood up he still had the power in the relationship. Overall I think we portrayed our given genre well and used the stereotypes of the secretary and the business to our advantage.