Romance Cliches

According to popular lore, the romantic film is based on a simple formula: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl again. But that is not true. For the most part, the boys have nothing to do with it. The cliche that actually serves as the infrastructure of the classic romance is that the female lead almost never ends up with the man she was originally supposed to spend the rest of her life with.

Romantic films wend their way to the altar as inevitably as action films lead nowhere. Powerful, ubiquitous cliches associated with the genre include the bride or groom suddenly getting ditched at the altar (The Philadelphia Story, The Graduate, Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Runaway Bride.)

Romantic films frequently feature the pushy but lovable mother, the harried, befuddled father, the fat, mouthy but highly supportive girlfriend who wears glasses and has never had a date, and the gay neighbour or co-worker who knows what you're going through because he's had his heart broken so many times himself. In a number of contemporary romances, the male lead has a best friend who is a lovable slob.
Teen romances have their own separate cliches. Actually, they have one separate cliche: teens from out of town find it hard to fit in so they start hanging around with social misfits or goths or beatniks or vampires suffering from social anxiety disorders. In teen romances, the jocks are invariably portrayed as cruel, self-absorbed idiots.

Crime Cliches

Most of the essential,indispensable cliches in films about crime - the police are as bad as the gangsters, just try find an LA cop who's not on the take-were established many, many years ago, and films that ignore them rarely succeed in the box office.
Crime movies almost always have a rat, and sometimes several. Gangsters have a hard time identifying the rat in the crew, even though the rat is always the newest and best looking member of the gang, and never seems to belong to the same ethnic group as everyone else in the gang.

Gangster movies often include a scene in a restaurant or nightclub where somebody says the wrong thing to the wrong guy and later regrets it.
In crime movies, there is usually one straight arrow whom the gangsters respect because he is not completely crooked like them.
The crime genre must also be looked at from the perspective of the cops. For a crime film to work, there must be a wizened, cynical cop who is close to retirement and has seen it all. There must be a young cop who just got married, and who will almost certainly die. There must be a full-dress funeral service, preferably in the rain.

Finally gangster movies would not be gangster movies without the crucial scene in the hospital where a good looking young cop comes on duty to replace the cop who is guarding an important witness, and then turns out to be a hit man.

Action Cliches

Many cliches in action films are too obvious to mention however here are some.
The Classic action film features a small group of world-weary asassins or Green berets or Navy Seals or mercenaries who assemble to pull off one last suicidal mission,after which they will retire.
In the contemporary  action film, the villains are either heavily accented Russians, Serbs, or unidentified, all-purpose eastern European sociopaths.
The women in action films tend to be promisicuos femmes fatales or crusading journalists or medical support staff or hapless rebels or vitims or miscast.
Nobody drives a car in action films:off-road vehicles only.

PICTURES

Tonight I will be taking pictures of the main settings. The pictures will be an alley way, the outside of the house, another alley way near a motorway and the inside of the house.
I will be uploading them and putting them on my blog.

CHARACTERS

In our film the characters will be played by either ourselves or drama students at our school.  If we used drama students the film may be more effective although if we needed to rehearse or schedule times to do a scene it may be harder to gather everyone.
We are asking George Bayman to be the killer in the film as we feel he would carry out the role the best.
There will be two girls in the house acting as the scared,vunerable teenagers. The characters will be played by Emma and a drama student to balance out the acting and they will be the lead roles in the film.

Different Film Genres

We've been looking at different genres in film such as horror, romance,action and crime. We will be looking at sci-fi next lesson. It is helpful as each group doing a different genre has an idea of the stereotypical features of that particular genre.
As our film is a horror movie we have been looking at the typical cliches included in the film. Horror movies divideinto several different categories : slasher,zombie,vampire,mainstream horror and Asian horror.
All of the subgenres rely on worthy,battle-tested cliches. Horror is the one genre in which the absence of cliches would ruin everything.

Cliches in a horror film is that the children are often evil and the setting is rural. The resason for this is because rustics are scary in and of themselves, and because there are lots of frightening farm tools on hand, and also because there are no neighbours to beg for help. It is always a bad idea to go to sleep in horror films, or accept a ride from strangers, or respond to a personal ad. It is an even worse idea to get in an elevator , a popular hideout for the promiscuously dead.

Horror movies do not work well in places like Holland, because horror films require basements. Linen closets and tidy storage areas are suprisingly common in Asian horror films, which may have cultural ramifications that go over the heads of moviegoers in the west.
These were some of the cliches we had been looking at.

SORORITY ROW

This clip is the opening four minutes of the film Sorority Row. We will be using a similar opening as the girl's start off normal but then gradually realise something bad is happening. This is stereotypical for a horror movie as it's often used to build tension. The audience know there watching a horror movie so the happiness and laughter will not last.

The age of the girls will be similar to the age we will use in our film so the target audience will be teens to adults. The purpose is to scare and the clip is very fast paced. We will also use fast paced clips as it creates a sense of mystery however it also ensures the audience is captivated.

The girl's in the clip appear confident and carefree. This is a good feature for an opening seen to show the character's free and happy as most probably it wont stay like that for long.
Close-ups are used to show the emotion on the character's faces and synchronous sounds of the keyboard and car.
Long shots are often used so it looks like someone is watching what is happening which is a feature my group will use as it is very powerful. It gives the sense that although they do not know they are being watched they most likely are. This is common in horror films.

Establishing shots are used showing the sorority house and also the stranded park. The stranded park is stereotypical with horror films as it shows anything could happen when no one is watching. Rural settings work best for horror films.
Murders happen quickly in the film which is a feature my group will be using as the main storyline is quickly introduced. It also ensures the audience is enthralled straight away.
The characters personalities are conveyed quickly. There is the vunerable girl, the bitchy girl, the follower and the 'normal' girl. This is so the audience have an idea of who is likely to survive and who will end up dead.
We will be introducing our characters personalities quickly in our film.

The costumes present the girls in an attractive and seductive way cosequentley appealing to the male audience. The lighting is mostly dark throughout reflecting the horror vibe. There are some light scenes at the start of the movie but it only gets darker. Most of the murders happen at night which is stereotypical in horror movies. The setting is always in one place which is the soriority house, we will probably be using the same idea. The setting also appeals to the teen audience.