Evaluation of 'Love on The Line' Opening Sequence

Part 1

Love on the Line is a romantic comedy, which focuses on the lives of two people, Eddie Lee the male protagonist and Jessica Long the female protagonist. Our film is called Love on the Line, as it focuses on the lives of Jessica and Eddie who get the same train in the morning, but Jessica doesn't acknowledge his existence.

Our title sequence begins with Jessica Long our female protagonists waking up at 7.00am, the scene then shifts to our male protagonist Eddie Lee waking up at a later time, 8.30. This is used to portray and compare the characters behavioural habits, to show that Jessica is a well organised women compared to Eddie who is unlucky. This again is reinforced by the use of split screen.

The Establishing shot also gives the location of the film, which focuses on a office building on London bridge, to give the sense of an office romance.

Also the use of warm tones for Jessica Scenes give a more light atmosphere, showing she maybe a warm person, where as the very slightly bluer tones, show that Eddies life may be a little down, depressing slightly. 

Part 2

Love on the line is targets at 16-35 year old females, more particularly couples, or women in some form of relationships, as they are more stereotypical to watch a romantic comedy with their partner on valentines day, which would be the ideal release date for our project if it was put into production.

We pre-researched other romantic comedy in the production to see when they were released; mainly they were clustered around this date as it represents love and romance.

We also gave out questionnaires to see how our project would fit into the audience’s idea of a romantic comedy.

Part 3

With our project we researched different distribution companies to see which produced most romantic comedy films, we researched companies such as touchstone, Working titles, Miramax and paramount.

After looking into detail on each distribution company we found Miramax would be the ideal company to produce our film if it went into production. Miramax have produced romantic comedies such as Sliding Doors, Get Over it, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and Bridget Jones Diary. Also due to the high success rate of Miramax films, we fill that this would benefit us greatly as this company has dealt with award winning Romantic comedies.  

Part 4

Love on the line follows stereotypical conventions of a romantic comedy, as there are two protagonists, stereotypically male and female, where on tries to overcome a problem and try and win the girls heart. This related to Propps theory of characterization, where the male hero, tries to save the princess, which again relates to fairy tail endings. Also with the romantic comedies the protagonists the ‘hero’s’ in this project always win and the antagonist the ‘villain’ will always get what they deserve.  But the story must always have a happy ending.

However the subgenre is comedy, humorous elements are integrated into the production, where the protagonist is out into embarrassing, humorous situations, to which the audience can relate. Our genre is portrayed through the obvious romance between Jessica and Trevor. However the way that Eddie stops, connotes that he doesn’t really like them going out.

With our typography we used, typewriter text, which relates connotes our office environment, (office romance) however it’s blotched appearance to connote the comedy sub genre of our production.

With our editing we used different techniques to create the overall atmosphere of our film, we used spilt screen, shift transitions, flash transitions, cross fades, but we also used effects on our footage such as lens flairs and light enhancement.   We used our split screen to compare the lives of our protagonists, to portray their behavioral traits and the characterization. In this case, Eddie still getting dressed while Jessica is already on her way to get the train.

 A shift transition is used to make the jump from the train station scene more prominent and to ease the transition of location. When we filmed in London the weather was cloudy and dark, so when editing to create a happy, sunny atmosphere, I changed the colour of the lighting slightly to a very light yellow, but also I added a small lens flare, to mimic the appearance of the sun.

The music we used was from a royalty free site, we chose this music because it gives a romantic atmosphere, but still has an upbeat tone to the opening sequence, this is to portray the hustle and bustle of an office environment.   

For our mis-en-scene Jessica wore a red coat, to link to the idea of romance, and red is stereotypical the colour of passion and love, Eddie on the other hand wore a pink tie, again trying to slightly again portray the idea of romance.

Also during our title sequence we tried to use a lot of static shots, this is to make the title sequence flow more easily and more smooth.

Part 5

Our media production uses stereotyping in our production to portray the characters of Jessica and Eddie.

Our Male protagonist portrays the geek in this story, he is portrayed as having bad luck, this is shown through the use of mise-en-scene, when he wakes, up on the sofa, and finds he has slept in, and is late for work and the odd socks on his feet. Again this portrays his stereotypical character, Jessica on the other hand is stereotypically portrays as a organized office worker. This is shown through the mise-en-scene of her outfit, and her behavior, the neat office attire connotes she is well kept and organised. While also her behavior, portrayed in the title sequence supports this and she is on time and calm, in contrast to Eddie.  

Part 6    

I believe we have reached our target audience, as we approached people of our target audience, showing them our opening title sequence, to see if it grabs their attention.

Less successful was eddies home scene where the audience didn’t get why it was filmed in that specific location before we refilmed that scene. This was because, a long, high angle shot was used, however this did not connote the view we were going for.

Another thing that didn't work was the first piece of music which was used as it was too fast and heavy to be used with a romantic comedy. However this was replaced by the current one.

Part 7

During pre-production we decided to use my own Sony DCR-SX30 camcorder, in order to save time, so we didn’t have to keep booking out equipment at school, plus it would be a lot easier to edit. I also decided to use Sony Vegas pro 8, for editing as I am familiar with the program, as I have made several projects with the software.

For my graphic designs I used macromedia fireworks at home but adobe fireworks in school, as both programs are user friendly and supply me with the tools I need to make logos, mood-boards and animatics.

When we scanned our storyboard, the pictures became too small a blurry to see in full, so I redrew each shot, using a graphics tablet and macromedia fireworks, to make the pictures more clear and easier to interpret. Once finished I converted the ‘.png’ files to ‘.jpg’ files so they clearer. Then again using Sony Vegas, I placed each file in order and made a cross fade between them so they flowed more easily.  

Also during one point when my laptop decided to break, I tried editing with Final cut pro on the iMac, we given a basic tutorial on the program and found it much similar to Sony Vegas which I had used, however the only problem was that the commands were different, however I still edited using Sony Vegas as I felt more comfortable using that specific program. 


Also during this project I have learned how to make a split screen using different layering on Sony Vegas, and to have to separate credits playing at the same time. 

Part 8

I feel overall out production has been a success, we have gone through, actor, problems, technical glitches, to have finally produced our opening title sequence which I am overall happy with. I find overall happy with the editing that I have put into this project.

I also feel we put a lot of reseach and concepts into the production of our opening title sequence and trying to find different camera angles which gave the effect that we wanted.

When filming Eddie Lee scenes, the camera was shaky, so we had to redo those scenes but also try and find another actor in such a short space of time. Thankfully, we did manage to find another actor, who portrayed Eddies character very well. 

Also when we made our love on the line logo animation gif, the file kept saving it with a white background instead of a default one, however this could not be corrected. So this was changed to a default, credit text. 

In conclusion, I found the project hard but I am overall happy with the result made in the end, however if it wasn't for the problems with male actors, and technical glitches I think our project might have just been a little better, as we could of had more time experimenting with different shots.