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in unit 12 i heavily researched the genre of romcoms and how they portray ideas of relationships which has shaped the idea for my film. i wanted to portray the idea of love in a different way to most romcoms but taking inspiration from a lot of their tropes. for example, from my research i discovered that a lot of rom coms show an expectation for two people who meet to end up together and portray many unhealthy relationship dynamics especially relating to the consent behind the relationship. to combat this i wanted to show platonic love in my film. However, this idea didn't fix the lack of lgbt representation in rom coms and this is why i wanted to leave the sexuality of the characters up to interpretation as it isn't important to the plot if there is no romance. i wanted to do this because many romance movies portray a very stereotypical idea of gay and trans people which makes the films alienate their lgbt audience. so not having the sexualities of my characters stated means more people are able to project themselves and their own experiences onto the characters. with the switch to a focus on platonic love, i also hope the emotional impact of the film is greater than a romance movie where the same tropes occur constantly. it was important to me to portray love in a different way in order to connect to a wider audience, showing the "bromance" in a way that isn't harmful but helpful, in a way of showing the different types of love we as humans go though. with friendships, relationships, family and pets. this is shown in the first montage of the two characters playing video games together, to me this portrayed the start of their friendship. with this movie I wished to satirise the genre of romantic comedies, the best way I found to get my idea across was to take the romance aspect out of the movie. this would recontextualised the common tropes and dynamics shown in these movies and hopefully make the audience see the absurdity of this genre.

from my research into romcoms i also found some inspiration from directors such as richard linklater and his 'before' trilogy, marc webb (500 days of summer), and jason reitman (juno). i also took a lot of inspiration from certain actors' performances in other films, such as michael ceras awkward characters in scott pilgrim, superbad, and juno. and also timothee chalamet's portrayal of elio in call me by your name. these films all have a very similar portrayal of the two main roles which i want to include in my film with a different twist.

these films are typically very dialogue heavy, for my film I will be using lots of over the shoulder shots, shot reverse shot, and multiple angles edited together. Im going to include this so that the dialogue scenes feel more dynamic and retains the viewers attention. when it comes to the editing of these scenes I hope to achieve an engaging and stimulating experience for the viewers. however, with these shots I need to make sure I follow the 180 degree rule in order for the scene to not disorient the viewer.

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A common problem in romance movies are the tropes and relationship dynamics that are portrayed in many movies. I want to use these tropes in my film to satirise them and show how unhealthy the tropes portrayed in a lot of films can be.

an example of one of these tropes is 'love against all odds' which is portrayed in the notebook - 2004 directed by Nick Cassavetes. The film romanticises persistence to the point of obsession which creates an unhealthy expectation for romance as it can show that obsessive behaviour is okay and eventually becomes a social expectation for romance.

Another common dynamic shown in romance movies where one or both people sacrifice their ambitions and dreams for a relationship. this is shown in the film la la land - 2016 directed by Damian chazelle. despite the two characters nit ending up together and being able to follow their dreams, it can create an idea that romance and ambition are mutually exclusive which could reinforce the idea that one has to sacrifice either their relationship or their dreams instead of being able to have both.

I will use these tropes in the context of two friends to show the audience how unrealistic they are to how romance is in the real world.

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overall, throughout this project I believe I achieved most of what I set out to do. for this project I decided to work alone as I believe that's how I work best and I believe that was the best decision for this. it meant I had a lot more creative control and was able to follow through with everything I set out to achieve. however, once filming started and I started having other people there to help me out I feel I started to struggle a lot more which caused a few issues on the first day of filming and ultimately led to a full reshoot. I also wanted to be a lot more serious with my project compared to the last project which was too silly for a final project in my eyes. I wanted to make a comedy movie still but I believe the film takes it self a lot more seriously as I wasn't making it just to be funny.

In my research I delved into the issues with the rom com subgenre and how I can satirise them in my short film. I believe my research helped me out a lot with developing my ideas and for writing the script so I could follow through on the tropes and character archetypes. however I also believe that my chosen genre and the idea for my film was easily misinterpreted as just being a normal rom com. however I do believe that the message I set out to show in my film of platonic friendships being as important as romance was successful as putting common romcom tropes in the context of a friendship was a very different perspective to most comedy movies.

I think the biggest problem I had in the whole production was my planning and coordination. on the day of shooting we were figuring out what shots to film and how we would shoot them on the day which led to a few issues during editing as some shots were framed wrong and I had to mirror them in post production so I didn't break the 180 degree rule. however this mirroring then ruined the location continuity. but that wasn't a massive issue as it was a forest area so it was hard to notice any changes.

During editing I ran into a few issues such as my computer not running the software which led to me having a rushed rough cut with missing scenes and audio that was too loud or too quiet. however after getting feedback on my rough cut I was able to finish it off and create a Final Cut that I was proud of. the Final Cut did have some issues that I wish I could've fixed such as people being in the background of a couple shots or the film not being as long as I had hoped but I believed despite the issues I achieved what I aimed to do.

Another thing I struggled with in this project was time management. throughout my production I spent too much time on my scriptwriting and my idea development which led me to rush the written work I needed to do whenever I had a chance. in the future I would like to be able to work on this and have a good schedule set out as to not have problems like this in the future.

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Common tropes for male characters are usually the nerdy outcast whos trying to get a girl, for example evan or mclovin from superbad (2007) or a stereotypical jock character who changes over the course of the movie. an example of this is troy bolton from high school musical (2006). these common tropes are going to be an important aspect in my film. for example the jock character is heavily inspired by troy bolton in the way that he starts off as a stereotypical jock who is heavily invested in sports but develops a new hobby that contradicts his popular sporty persona. in my film the jock is going to develop a love for gaming after meeting the nerd which makes him question everything.

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The Rom Com Problem (no date) UCC Express. Available at: https://www.uccuniversityexpress.com/latestissue/the-rom-com-problem (Accessed: 18 June 2024).

Tutunari, I. (2023). Rom-coms: The distorted reality of love. [online] The Michigan Daily. Available at: https://www.michigandaily.com/statement/rom-coms-a-distorted-reality/.

Jumphost (2017). The problem with romantic comedies. [online] The Queen’s Journal. Available at: https://www.queensjournal.ca/the-problem-with-romantic-comedies/ [Accessed 18 Jun. 2024].

Amaral, C.O.D. (2020). The Temporality of (Serialized) Romantic Comedy. Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network, 13(2), pp.78–89. doi:https://doi.org/10.31165/nk.2020.132.581.

San Filippo, M. (2020) “Radical rom-com: not an oxymoron,” New review of film and television studies, 18(1), pp. 3–7. doi: 10.1080/17400309.2019.1664060.

Babbit, J. (1999) But I’m a cheerleader.

Cassavetes, N. (2004) The notebook.

Chazelle, D. (2016) La la land.

Mottola, G. (2007) Superbad.

Ortega, K. (2006) High school musical.

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from the feedback I received from my rough cut, the most common responses were about the music volume and the confusing transition between the bench and hallway scene. to fix this I added the classroom scene and lowered the music volume for the Final Cut

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for the first 3 weeks I focused on basic idea development and research. this turned out to be quite productive as I had a basic plot outline and a lot of my research finalised which gave me more time to plan out what I need for the film.

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this week I decided to focus on my project proposal and my project context. this was productive and allowed me to figure out what technical things I want to consider using and what new ideas I want to try out for my final project

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during this week I created my presentation for my focus group and got it ready to show the following week. I also created a concept poster for my film during this week and started my search for actors as well so I wasn't struggling just before I started filming. a problem i faced here was that the people i wanted in my film didnt grasp the concept of my film and thought it was an actual romance, to fix this i had to explain the concept in greater detail so they understood it and agreed to the film.

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these 2 weeks I used for doing my focus group and then editing together the footage from these groups. however I faced some interruptions whilst pitching my idea which meant I had to rerecord that section and had a lot more editing to do this problem took up a lot more time than i was hoping because of editing a rerecording which meant i was running a little behind for the rest of the project

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for these 2 weeks I focused on script writing and planning the shots and locations I needed for my shoots. by this point I had my actors confirmed so all I needed was locations, pre production and a shooting date.

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this week I finalised pre production and started my first shoot the next day. however, this didn't go to well as we took ages to get a couple scenes and ultimately forced to scrap all the footage anyways as it got corrupted. in the future i could solve this project by making sure everything is copied and have a spare hard drive just in case stuff goes wrong. i could also have a more definitive plan for filming so i am able to get everything done that i need in one go without it being slow due to setting up and actor struggles.

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this week I spent planning out another shoot and re doing my pre production after the bad shoot the week prior. ultimately this week wasn't too productive. this week wouldve been less wasted and focused on editing if the problems in the previous week were prevented due to better planning

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this was the week we filmed and we managed to get everything done and had a rough cut ready for the end of the week to get feedback from the class. this was a very productive week. a problem i faced here was my computer at home was struggling to export my film which meant i couldnt get the rough cut ready in time so i had less time for feedback.

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this week I got a Final Cut done and published and started on my final evaluation. this was another productive week as the rough cut I had was very close to what I wanted for my final cut

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this week I managed to finish my final evaluation and check over everything I had left to do before the final submission.

there werent many problems this week as i had most things done which meant i wasnt rushing for my final deadline and stressing. if i had planned out my project better however, i wouldve had even more time to check everything without rushing my work

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for this practical experiment i was seeing what audio recording device was easier to use with a walking scene with a gimbal. however i decided that not using a gimbal and having a shakier camera fit better with my genre. this meant i could use a boom mic connected to the camera which was easier

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a lot of this practical research was focused on camera angles and how it affects the scope of the scene. i used a lot of close ups and over the shoulder shots in my film so this was something important to research. in hindsight, this wouldve been good to focus on before doing my film as practising different angles would have helped with problems i faced during filming. if i had done this it wouldve led to less time wasted figuring out my shots on filming day and i wouldnt have messed up my close ups during filming which meant i had to mirror it whilst editing so it wasnt disorienting.

from this researching i learnt that a lot of different camera angles and takes are needed to shoot a simple dialogue scene so that it doesnt get boring like a static shot would be. i realised i needed to focus on more camera angles after my previous projects where it was very static which led to people getting bored.