Abroad

Since I had to rush abroad for a family emergency, I decided to use the films available on the plane to my advantage. I watched two films; one a romantic comedy starring Jennifer Aniston "The Switch" and a drama named "The Social Network".

The Switch was about an unmarried 40 year-old woman who turns to a turkey baster in order to become pregnant through a sperm donor. Seven years later she reunites with her best friend, who has been living with a secret, he replaced her preferred sperm sample with his own.

The overall mood of the film has a very light atmosphere, and the opening of the film has a starting very similar to "Love Actually" as Jason Bateman's character narrates a busy urban street of people rushing around, getting on with their day-to-day lives. In Love Actually, Hugh Grant narrates with a philosophical speech about "love" as different people embrace at an airport. In The Switch, Jason Bateman has a similar philosophical speech about the human race.




The second film I watched, The Social Network, has received a lot of a recognition, gaining an award for Best Motion Picture - Drama at the 68th Golden Globe Awards, and also won awards for Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Original Score. It has also been nominated 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

The film is a chronicle of the founding of Facebook, the social-networking website. Although the film doesn't exactly fit into the genre that we are doing for our film opening, I feel that certain elements of drama can be appropriate for our film as there are serious aspects in our film as well. The opening of The Social Network is very different to The Switch, as it jumps straight to a conversation between two characters. The lighting is dark and all the focus is on the two characters.

There is no setting of the scene and it is very straight to the point, even though the setting is very important in this film, which is Harvard; where Facebook was originated by Mark Zuckerberg. After approximately 5 minutes of heated conversation between the two characters, the character of Mark Zuckerberg leaves and it shows a long shot of the pub the characters were sitting in and the opening credits begin to kick in. Then the camera starts to focus on shots of the Harvard campus afterward. The title of the film is shown in the "Facebook font" style, to give recognition to what the film is about. After the title of the film, the credits then begins to introduce the actors involved in the film such as Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake. After panning over the Harvard campus, the camera cuts back to Zuckerberg's character running through campus until he reaches his dorm room and sits in front of his laptop. Everything in the first 10 minutes of the film is highly unpredictable and remains throughout. I think this is an important factor in the film.

However, it is important that certain elements of my chosen genre should be represented so the audience are not too confused.



Will post more later.