Textual Analysis

In this part of the research i had to analyse 5 openings of 5 romantic comedies. The 5 openings i looked at were Just Like Heaven, What happens in Vegas, P.S I Love You, The Holiday and Hitch. In all of these i found out that they had similar openings which included a non diegetic sound track in which the sound track was a love song of some sort either mellow and relaxed or upbeat and happy either way the songs were related to love. In each opening there was always a male and a female protagonist which helped bring the story line together which having a male and female protagonist helped us recognise the codes and conventions of a romantic comedy.
Codes and conventions of a romantic comedy included high key lighting which represented the atmosphere and also the moods of the characters as so i believe. The setting was always in an open place such as in a city or in a work place or even someones home, these settings help the audience relate to the characters as the opening of these films shown everyday life.

After this stage i then narrowed it down to three of the romantic comedies which were What happens in Vegas, P.S I Love You and Just Like Heaven. I then analysed the key scenes of the three films in my analysis i included todorovs theory and propps theory, in that all of the films included a female protagonist who was normally the princess in need of rescuing and the man was the hero who happens to rescue the princess and then there always seemed to be a villain of somesort who blocked the quest of the hero, this applies to propps theory, i also analysed todorovs theory in which i managed to find a pattern in which everything starts off okay then the equilibrium is disrupted following a realisation that the equilibrium has been disrputed which finally follows with a way to re-establish the equilibrium to a new equilibrium being established.
In the three films i analysed the todorovs theory but happened to notice this theory did not apply to P.S I Love You as this film already had the equilibrium disrupted before the film had even started so this film challenges todorovs theory into taking a risk, this film didnt follow the conventions of todorovs theory.