Codes and Conventions of a Romantic Comedy - Bridget Jones Diary

For another part of research for a romantic comedy we watched 'Bridget Jones Diary' in lesson. It is set in London which is a major city which is a very busy. There was allot of old fashioned furniture in the mothers cluttered house. Bridget's flat was very old fashioned to as most of her furniture would of been passed down to her by her mother or family because she is young and does not have much money. In the mothers house there was tinsel all over the house, this shows that it is a very traditional home. At the party at her mothers house allot of people were drinking and smoking. Bridget was dressed by her mother in very old fashioned outfit. There is intertextuality with the character Mr Darcy. He is called Mr Darcy in 'Bridget Jones Diary' an he is also called that in 'Pride and Prejudice'. He is dressed in a very cheesy jumper with Rudolf knitted on the front. He was dressed by his mum which is like Bridget. They both have something in common which makes you think that there is a connection between them, what will happen in the rest of the film? In the scene of Bridget n her flat she is in her old fashioned pj's. She is eating chocolate and drinking wine on her own. There is magazines which are girls magazine and how t get a man. Both of these shows that she is depressed. She presses her answer phone machine and she has no messages. This shows that she has no friends and she is lonely.
There is allot of close - up camera shots as these show reactions on peoples faces. There is a shot reverse shot between Bridget and Mr Darcy. There is an establishing shot of Bridget's mothers house which shows where it is set. There is a two shot between Mr Darcy and his mother talking, and Bridget is in the background with a shift in focus. Mr Darcy and his mother are talking about Bridget and Mr Darcy is saying very nasty comments about Bridget. This shot shows that Bridget can hear what he is saying about her as she is faded in the background. After she hears what has been said about her she walks between them and speaks about the turkey curry to take the shame off her. It freezes on her face which shows that that was a very bad time for her. Then it goes into a dissolve which shows that it is past time. There is tracks and zooms with bring you into the scene and what is happening. When Bridget and Mr Darcy meet there is slow motion when he turns around. This shows that she wasn't expecting Mr Darcy to be as nice looking as he was. The scene when she is singing in her flat ends with a fade out which shows that that part of her life has ended and she is going to have a new start. The credits are written like a diary as it is Bridgets diary.
There is many songs such as 'All By Myself', 'Magic Moments'. 'Can't take my eyes off you'. All of these set the scene. There is also a narration of Bridget as if she is talking her diary out in her end as she is acting. This is sound editing.

Preliminary task

I performed in my preliminary task with two girls from my media class. As well as performing in the film i helped with sorting the way the camera was focusing and what shots we should have for each shot. We started with me walking up the stairs with the camera focusing on my feet. We then had a Ariel shot of me walking up the stairs of the top of my head and my hand on the banister. We had various different shots of me walking up the stairs. We then had shots of me opening the door. We then had shots of me walking into the room , we had a point of view shot of me looking into the room. Lorenzo also performed in our our preliminary task.
We had to do two attempts of of our film because the first attempt did not film. On our second attempt it worked fine. However we left 10 seconds at the beginning of each shot and at the end. So there is allot of gaps between each shots. We were not meant to do this, however the technician told us to do that, but he didn't know we were not meant to.
If we have time we will edit it, much that depends on the extra time we have.
We used different types of camera shots and angles throughout our filming.