The Pitch - Opening Scene Synopsis

Our chosen genre is romantic comedy because all members of our group enjoy the genre and have ideas of how we can recreate romantic-comedy to form our own opening scene. We have begun to research the genre’s codes and conventions and have applied them to our ideas to create a plan for an opening scene.

We plan to begin with a shot showing the inevitable ending of the film which when researching the genre of romantic-comedy we found is quite common to do. Some examples of films that employ this technique are; American Beauty, The Fault in Our Stars, and Love Rosie. We think as many rom-coms have quite simple narratives that take a while to get into, starting with the ending will provide us with a hook to draw in an audience and will make the beginning of the film more interesting.

For our opening scene, the ending of the film (and so the first shot) will show the couple finally ending up together and demonstrating their love in public. The shot will open with a close up of the couples combined hands and the camera will then pan out to reveal the couple is in fact two males and the protagonist of the film will be revealed. We plan to film this shot in the town centre with the backdrop of the shot being picturesque to make it more romantic, we also hope to display the idea that it is winter/Christmas as many romantic-comedies are set at this time of year and so we can stick to the convention. The shot will then fade to black and here we will introduce the title of the film. It will then rewind to the beginning of the chronological events and the screen will display *6 months earlier*.

The next shot will be an establishing shot of the school which the rest of the opening scene will be filmed at and the majority of the film would feature. At this point the soundtrack which we plan to be quite lively and playing prior to this point will begin to fade out ready for the dialogue in the scenes to follow.

The next shot will be a POV looking down toward a phone screen which will display messages to another character. Although the shot will only be brief, we plan to portray the idea that the recipient and sender are in a relationship by using hearts in the messages so even as the audience don’t get the chance to read the conversation its intention is clear. The shot will then show the phone being taken out of the sender’s hands and then will quickly cut to a shot showing a table of male characters laughing.

At this point, the person who took the phone will begin to read out the conversation and our protagonist will be mocked and clearly embarrassed. We plan to have the protagonist on the edge of the table to visually represent how he is at the edge of the friendship group; he doesn’t quite fit. When the other characters mock the protagonist we also want to display the idea that they think he is straight, emphasising how they believe he is texting a girl. This shows the audience he is currently ‘in the closet.’

At this point the dialogue for the protagonist begins, however we hope to have already portrayed the idea he is insecure by this point.  We plan for him to make a comment asking for his phone back and then an excuse to leave the table.

As he is walking away from the table, the camera will pan backwards following his movements and we plan for him to be looking miserable/annoyed. However his phone will then ping and he will lift it to read it and a small smile will appear on his face and that will be where our opening ends.

The enigma for our opening is how does the protagonist come out? And how does he end up with the other character? Although we aim to stick with the conventions of the romantic-comedy genre, we hope we can challenge them by using a homosexual couple as our protagonists rather than a stereo-typical hetero-sexual couple.