The CCR Era! How does Bookworms challenge/use conventions and represent social groups/issues ? Part 2!

Along with going against what a stereotypical couple usually is, we also went against how a romance film should look.

During our genre research, we saw that many romance films have very ‘flat’ shots. They were very level, and to me, had barely any visual interest. Any visual interest came from mis en scene.

We wanted to shoot a film that would be visually interesting. I had also made it a goal to use more interesting shots and transitions.

Many romance scenes looked like the stills to the left, very flat, with both people very close to each other.

Our cinematographer wanted to take inspiration from a series outside of our genre: Arcane.

The series does contain a (not completely confirmed) WLW romance, but that’s not its main point. Aside from being LGBTQ+, both Vi and Caitlyn have character development, importance to the plot, and a mission, goals they want to accomplish. This point was also brought up earlier during research.

 

Our cinematographer also wanted to include shots from Arcane, specifically these two (Shown on the right). 

The wide shot was used in both the first version of our film and second. It came out like this:

 

(Newer version)                                                       (Older version)

Overall, I think we were still able to stay true to the genre and include flatter shots, while making them interesting. The mis en scene and camera movement is the main reason they seem to be less flat than other romance films.