Analysing three romantic drama films.

Pearl Harbour

• In the first two minutes of the film Pearl Harbour you get a lot of information. The first shot you see of the sunset is quite a dramatic setting, the colours aren’t black and white but neither are they bright and shocking. We only really see the colour of the sun, beneath the land is dark, to me, this gives sense of mystery, that the film is not going to be as straight forward as you may have first thought. The shot of the fighter plane is a convention; it tells you straight away that this film is set during the war, which is a code of pain, murder and heartache, which all bring drama. It is going in slow motion and we see a close up, which allows you to focus on it. Throughout the whole two minutes the colours stay pretty dark, the only bright colour is the red of the plane, this draws your attention to it. The setting of the barn, fields and crops show us that the characters living here may not be very wealthy, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  At the time that the film was set, 1923, money wasn’t the biggest issue you could live rather happily not earning major amounts. 
  
• The non-diagetic music is slow and peaceful, this is a code for sorrow but it also shows the difference between being at war and being at home for example. Being at war you expect loud sounds and maybe no music just the sounds of guns, voices shouting and explosions etc. But families back at home are not experiencing it, their lives carry on. 
  
• You then go on to see two young boys, from this we can see that they are best friends, them being the first two characters we see tells us that they are important and the film will focus around them. The fact that they are playing in one of the planes is a convention, it tells us that they enjoy and have an interest in this sort of thing.

Brokeback Mountain

• From the opening shot of Brokeback Mountain we are told that the film is going to be a western, the music is a convention of this. The landscape also tells us this, it is a bit misty and a rural location and you can see the sunset in the distance. The fact that there are electricity masts and a vehicle is a code for civilization. The first image we see of a person is when Heath Ledger jumps out of the van and his clothing is a convention of western films, he is wearing a cowboy hat, jeans and boots. We then get a sort of point of view shot; we are watching him but the train crosses our field of view.