Analysis of 2 Film Openings

For my film Analysis i have chose 2 films from completley different genres. I chose `The Holiday` which is in the romance genre and `Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire` which is Fantasy. I chose 2 different genres to see whether the conventions of a film opening change depening on the genre.

The Holiday was released on the 8th of december 2006 in the UK. The filming locations include, Brentwood Los Angeles, Chipping Norton Oxfordshire, London England and San Marino California. 
The budget for this film was an estimated $85,000,000 and during the opening weekend in the UK made £2,826,520 after being shown on 428 screens.
When seeing this film at the cinema myself, i remember seeing couples or groups of females aged 15 plus. I believe that this was the target audience of the film.

The film starts with a couple kissing, after about 10-11 seconds the camera zooms out and reveals a editing screen, giving the impression that they were trying to trick the audience into thinking that was the real thing. During this time the first title is shown.

More titles then appear after this, showing titles like `A Film By Nancy Meyers` in a very simple white font, fitting in with the film perfectly. After this the actors/actresses names appear in different positions around the screen. Using the entire space of the screen. 



Shot Reverse Shot



After the second title comes up, a voiceover starts. The voiceover matches the actors/actresses eye-line. They also use a shot reverse shot in the first minute of the film. It's used to show the characters are looking at each other, and by the way they look each other shows the relationship between the characters. In this case, its a young couple, looking in love.  They use the shot reverse shot technique alot in the first 2 minutes, to get the audience to know the relationships between people.

In the first scence, 8 characters are introduced to us, making the audience assume they are the main characters. The female character doing the voiceover talks about love. Comfirming the genre of the film. When the voiceover is talking, the scenes change matching the voiceover.
For example:
`It was Shakespeare who also said "love is blind". Now that is something I know to be true. For some quite inexplicably, love fades` When the character says this, a couple in a car are shown on screen looking sad, and un-loved.

Then in the next scene, an old man is shown, walking to his bed with a walking stick and then looking at a picture of what is assumes as his wife, at the this time the voiceover says `for others love is simply lost.` Following on from the previous scene.

The film follows the film conventions of a romance film. They use men and women as the main characters. Two people fall in love and something gets in the way, but in the end its a happy ending. Its set somewhere romantic, for example in this films its set in L.A and a small village in the english countryside. They have relaxing, calm music playing (normally classical) to set the atmosphere. Lots of close ups are used to show emotions and shot reverse shot are used alot.