Genre Database Entry

                1.    Genre: 

         Romantic Drama

2. Genre conventions – content: Romantic drama films feature two people, typically of different social statuses, that fall in love despite their differences. A romantic drama tends to use things such as love at first sight, tragic love, love triangles, sacrificial love, and forbidden love. Along the way leading up to the two falling in love, they face obstacles that threaten their developing romance, such as family disapproval and different social classes. They must overcome these obstacles to have a happy ending, usually, with them falling in love.

      3.  Genre conventions – production techniques: Romantic dramas utilize many close-up shots. This is because in this genre of film the emotion must be captured effectively so that the audience can understand how the characters feel and be affected by it emotionally. Also, romantic dramas use many over the shoulder and shot reverse shot shots to effectively capture the dialogue and the reactions. These shots keep the viewer engaged while also making he or she invested in the developing romance. Non-diegetic sound is utilized to develop tone/the characters feelings. Diegetic sound is used to develop the story and romance mostly through dialogue and paralinguistic features. 

4.   Institutional conventions –  how is genre marketed: The romantic drama film genre is marketed to those either in love or those fantasizing about being in love. The movie posters usually have two people in an embrace, or together closely, with an iconic setting for that movie.

5.    Film/magazine sample #1: The film “Titanic” embodies the romantic drama film genre since an aristocrat falls in love with a poor artist. Her family wants her with a fellow member of the high class, but she wants the poor artist. Their love prevails in the end despite this social class difference, but sadly there was not enough room on that floating door for jack, cementing this movie as one of the most noteworthy tragic romantic drama.

6.    Film/magazine sample #2:  In “Beastly,” a curse is placed is on the main character, turning him from handsome to hideous. In order for the curse to be lifted, he must find true love and kiss. The hurdle making this a drama being the curse, which can only be broken by finding true love, making it a romantic film. 

7.    List of other film/magazine examples within the genre: 

The Great Gatsby 

The Fault in our Stars

The Notebook

Dirty Dancing 

Brokeback Mountain

A Star is Born

About

The beginning of it all...

     Hello, my name is Richard, Richard Arthur Leon, and welcome to my blog. Thank you for choosing to partake in reading what the "blogdog" has to offer, which is "rich" with interesting reads that document my journey to completion of this Media Studies project. The project I am tasked with is to create a film opening. My first hurdle is with brainstorming what genre to choose to convey and research. I vacillated between fantasy, drama, romance, action and even documentary (specifically "mockumentary") between drama and romance, which was a particularly hard choice to make since they are basically in the same grouping of a genre category. I decided to choose romance.  

     The purpose of this blog is to track my progress and show my work along the way, organized as a portfolio on this blog to facilitate following along. This will serve as my timeline until completing the end-of-the-year project around the month of April.