Influences

Audrey Hepburn in 'How to Steal a Million' (1966)

Films such as 'How to Steal a Million' and 'The Notebook' along with others guided my decision in choosing to do a romance as they often include iconic buildings set in famous places such as Paris and New York where scenes will contain an eye catching New York skyline background which many people will recognise and link to the film. I also noticed that particularly in romance films the use of mise on scene played an important part within determining the character and making the film look more magical. For example the shot of Audrey Hepburn in 'How to Steal a Million' shows she is wearing distinctive eye make up and light lipstick against a cream outfit which is likely to influence the audience into doing the same and also looks eye catching, fresh, and pure which is possibly the image which the director was trying to capture.

The majority of romance films are usually fairly obvious as to what they're going to be about if you already have background knowledge on the film such as an advantage through knowing it is a romance film. However, when watching the opening scene to a film such as 'The Last Song' which is a romance film, it is a fairly enigmatic sequence. There is no clue as to who the person being dragged out of the fire is or who caused it or where it is but you assume that it's going to be related to or is the protagonist as otherwise it would be irrelevant.



'The Notebook' is another example as it also contains no dialogue in the first few seconds and so the audience sees it as a bit of a mystery to where the location is, who the people are within the scene, what the relevance of this is to the movie,.

However, the opening to 'Dear John' is fairly more obvious through containing a narrating over a scene and once this scene ends and Channing Tatum says 'You' the film goes through a non-chronological order and shows John played by Channing Tatum and his first meeting with Savanna played by Amanda Seyfried and so it is fairly obvious that the romance within the film will be based on these two characters. However, it also leaves the audience wondering whether Channing Tatum survives from the first scene with the narrating over the top.