Opening Scene - Notting Hill - Rom Com

For my third film analysis I studied the first 15 minutes of Notting Hill, 1999 British Rom-Com. During the opening scene I identified camera angles, editing, mise en scene, sound, characters and the overall story in the scene to see whether I could spot common conventions in the romantic genre.

The plot and storyline of Notting Hill is a typical Rom-Com story convention of Boy meets girl, we meet both our main characters on separate occasions so we find out background information and what kind of person the character is, and then they first meet together by bumping into each other around a corner.

We are introduced to our first character, Anna, in the form of a video montage which is portraying her life as what seems to be a celebrity. The montage is pieced together using dissolves; I thought that this was used to get across how her celebrity life is always changing and never normal or the same. The different clips and shots in the montage are all filmed under artificial spotlights and there a constant camera flashes, this helps show her glamorous celebrity life and the artificial lighting portrays her fake, fabricated life and that maybe she can’t live a normal, everyday life.

The opening credits roll over the video montage. The credits are stylized and coloured to match the emotions and genre surrounding the film. The credit style is very curly, round and feminine, this expresses to the audience that the film may appeal more to the female gender specifically and that the film will be full of love, romance and fun, these emotions are also expressed by the colour range used throughout the credits, light blues and greens and soft pink and lilac are common and help portray the genre and mood of the film.

In the opening 15 minutes the audience experiences one soundtrack, Elvis Costello ‘She’. The choice of the song heavily impacts the mood and genre of the film and expresses to the audience what kind of film it will be. ‘She’ is a very romantic song which includes lyrics such as ‘She may be the mirror of my dreams, the smile reflected in a stream’. This genre of song is a typical rom-com convention as it brings more romance to the film and links more to what is being shown on screen. The song also however links to the film in more depth as one of the lyrics says ‘’ She may not be what she may seem inside her shell’’ this could be trying to express the main woman character who during the song is being shown on screen and how her glamorous lifestyle acts as a shell or barrier to her real self an inside that celebrity lifestyle she is someone completely different.

Throughout the film there are constant close ups of each main characters face, particularly the mans as we are experiencing his life through the narration. The close ups are used so the audience can see his reactions and emotions in different situations during the clip, such as when he is talking to her in his book shop, we get an immediate close up of his face as the director wants the audience to see his happiness and emotions when he is with her, from this the audience can establish that he is the main character and that his facial reactions should be focused on.

In conclusion the main conventions that occur throughout Rom-Coms are feminine pale, light colours during titles, credits and openings. Reaction and close up shots to grasp and portray the emotions of characters and romantic sound and music with lyrics and instruments to match. All of these conventions are used to match and portray the style and genre of the film. In Notting Hill’s case they are used to represent the love, romance and emotions of the two main characters.