Genre Research: 'Love, Simon'

 Genre Research: 'Love, Simon'

Deciding on romance, my group and I looked at four movies underneath the genre. Starting with Love, Simon, we chose a movie closer to our obscure image. Being LGBtT+ representative we thought it would be a good movie to examine. This movie is also labeled under the genre of drama.

Screen Behavior: followed the previously listed conventions for a romance film, featuring fades for the opening and exiting scenes, jumps cuts, wide shots, two shots, with close-ups, over the shoulder shots and included an aerial shot (or high angle). We saw many shot-reverse shots along with crossing to move along dialogue. The film also made use of inserts when the characters "texts" (really emails) came into play.

Sound: The film, for the most part, relies on diegetic sound, only using non-diegetic music when transitioning from one large plot tread to another, (In the entirety of the film, non-diegetic sound only appeared twice.) and voiceovers present to accompany inserts

Makeup: No over the top makeup was used, being kept at a minimum

Setting: High school, home, party, and fair 

Elements of the Genre: The story was fairly compelling, being that it was of two young men who had fallen in love without knowing one another. With a clear obstacle, the film seeks to resolve this a bring the lovers together in the end. The mood is set to be happy with moments of sadness to provoke the audience to root for the couple.

Mis-en-scene: The color blue, both in name and color, represented the second lover in the story and presented itself whenever a person would be assumed to be said person.

Missed elements of the Genre: Unlike most romantic films, we aren't truly introduced to the other half of the love story until the end. The story was written with an element of mystery, keeping the audience guessing along with the characters in the film. Along with that, this story was not the classic male and female love story the genre is used to seeing, and rightfully so due to its intention.

Elements of the film I liked: LGBT representation is big; going against the convention of the genre speaks volumes. I also admired the progression of the story and how the audience wasn't thrown into these characters but rather got to know them over the course of the movie until the reveal. 

Elements of the film I disliked: Even though it was intended I didn't like the selfishness of the story's perspective; it was isolated and limited to the one person instead of two, or less common for the genre none.