Research Part 1: The Romance Genre

   For this first week, I plan to focus on overall genre research and the full planning and scheduling of the rest of the project.

    People sometimes assume that a romance film is simply a movie that happens to include some kind of romantic relationship. In reality though, for a film to fall under the genre of romance, the plot has to almost entirely revolve around the love/relationship between two characters. These loves can be presented using various tropes including love triangles, forbidden love, enemies-to-lovers, and love at first sight to name a few. 

    Romances don't always have to end with the starring couple being together, however. Movies like Casablanca, portray a protagonist who in the end cannot be with their lover due to outside circumstances which make the protagonist choose their lover's well-being over their relationship. This trope has always been intriguing to me, as it shows how people can put their wants and needs to the side for the sake of someone they really care about. Other movies such as La la Land, showcase two protagonists who fall in love but ultimately grow apart during their relationship and end up going their separate ways, and showcase the reality that sometimes certain people you come across push you to grow or be a better version of yourself in one way or another, and then grow out of it. 

    The latter is a trope I personally really like as it is something that happens very often in real life and I would really like to see if  I can incorporate this trope into my project somehow. I think it would be interesting to play with the idea of a movie that takes place after the fact of finding someone who helped you grow and has just left, almost like a show of the initial aftermath. I could include my idea of the love letters by having my protagonist read letters or even write letters to their past lover, updating them on their life as they parted ways, and are trying to move on.

 

Buffam, N. (2011, March 26). Romance. The Script Lab. https://thescriptlab.com/screenplay/genre/994-romance-sp-1570419489/#:~:text=Romance%20film%20can%20be%20defined%20as%20a%20genre,The%20tone%20of%20Romance%20film%20can%20vary%20greatly.