Research movie #2

 The Notebook

The Notebook is said to be one of the best romance films of all time (in my opinion) so of course, we had to study it. 

Love at first sight, the main romance trope we will be using in out short film. There are MANY techniques, scenes, and elements within the Notebook that Mariana and I would like to use within our film. For starter, “love at first sight” In the Notebook, Noah attends the carnival with his good friend with no intention of finding his new love. After catching a glimpse of Allie with her friends, Noah finds himself deeply fond of her and does anything to get her to go out with her. He even climbs up a carnival Ferris wheel. 😱 Mariana and I wanted to do something similar in our film but in our case, Nati is Noah. They will be at the beach and while Howie is with his friends, she sees him with a love like glimpse in her eye. The only difference will be instead of Nati trying to get Howies attention, they will be brought to one another. 

Another element within the Notebook that will be used in ours is the obstacle of finding new people. In the Notebook, there is a point that the Allie and Noah divert from each other because of situational factors. (They both were going separate ways after school) Since they had to live in different places surrounded by new people, Allie and Noah were bound to meet new significant others.This obstacle is very similar to the one we wanted to implement between Howie and Nati. The fact that not only is Howie going to college, but he also already had an established significant other that Nati did not know about. In order to an achieve an attention grabbing film, there must be some sort of obstacles within.

A similar scene I had the idea of using because I saw it in the notebook, is the dancing on the road scene. When Allie and Noah are on their “first date” which is just the night they met, Noah takes her to do something spontaneous that she’d never done before. This is laying on the road until cars come. Stupid, yes. Romantic? Also yes (kinda). Later on, they end up dancing on the road together. This moment felt so romantic as dance is such a beautiful way to express, connect, and convey love. 

Since our story will be taking place at the beach, this scene will obviously be altered. My idea was to have someone playing music at the beach, maybe at a nearby restaurant, or maybe no music at all. Nati and Howie will be walking and similarly to Noah, Howie will introduce the spontaneous idea of dancing on the boardwalk of the beach. This was a formfitting adaptation and we’re hoping to find more. 

Regarding the technical elements of the Notebook, we really liked the color and visuals during the day

Example: 

It is so visually clear and vibrant, depicting exactly how love is supposed to feel and look. Pertaining to miss-en-scene and music, we won’t be using this film for inspiration, due to the fact that it takes place in the 40’s and we would like our piece to be more modern set in 2024. All the love, passion, language, and visuals, however, has been studied in order to strengthen our piece.