Deconstruction of 'Endless Love'

This clip is the opening scene to a film called 'Endless Love'. The genre of this film is Romantic Drama. I studied this clip as research into my horror film opening. My group decided to look at different genre's to get inspiration as to what to do for our coursework.  

CONVENTIONS 
While watching this clip and many others similar to this, I identified some features which I think are very conventional in the Romantic Drama genre. For example. 

• The main protagonist(s) are mostly always a male and female.
• There is always a best friend or someone to confide in that the protagonist can turn too. 
• The couple fall in love but there is something that stops them being together. 
• They couple overcome the obstacle or the complication stopping them and become happy together. 
• The opening scene is usually just introducing the characters and finding out their personalities and what they do in their day to day lives. They are not always familiar with each other and have very different styles of life causing them to fall in love as it is something new. 

CAMERA ANGLES

• The film starts off with close up on the main female protagonist Jade, this is to tell the audience that she is a main character, we can also clearly see her facial expression and the audience can connect with her from the minute the movie starts
• There is also a high angle shot which shows Jade taking a picture of her other classmates. This is effective as is puts the audience in a higher position than the characters which makes Jade look very small and inferior which is probably how she feels as she was excluded from the photo. 
• We are introduced the the male protagonist David, with a close up shot as well while we hear his thoughts about Jade. 

SOUND

• The diegetic sound helps us as the audience connect with him character and warm to him as they know exactly what he is thinking.

LIGHTING

• The natural light is used to show the realism in the film. As it is a bright and sunny day, it could portray that something good will happen later in the film and that there is a good atmosphere in this scene. 
• There is also a lot of soft light which could portray the delicateness of the protagonist.

MISE-EN-SCENE 

• The first scene is set at a school which shows that the characters are probably teenagers. 
• Jade is carrying books and walking with her parents portraying the typical good girl who follows her parents orders and doesn't get into trouble. The fact she was carrying books shows she is academic and takes school seriously. This idea is reinforced when she says 'I spent 4 years of high school getting ready to to get into the 4 years in college'
• The baby blue she is wearing connotes also connotes her innocence and purity and maybe the sadness she has experienced in her life since her brother died. Another connotation is the new life her and her peers are beginning since their graduating and leaving school.