Learning how to Deconstruct a Film

Before we set off to deconstruct our own film openings in our chosen genre (romance) we need to understand how to deconstruct a film opening and what to look out for in order to obtain information about typical conventions of romantic film openings. As a class we deconstructed 'The Bourne Legacy'. This helped us investigate how to include enigma within our films by watching a film opening that is rife with enigmatic elements. We then recorded the conventions on a timeline (shown below) that was sectioned into 'Visuals' and 'Sound'. By sectioning the visuals and sound separately it helped us see how sound and visuals work together in order to help create enigma within a film.

We also deconstructed 'Forest Gump' as a class because this film opening had excellent use of a Mcguffin. In fiction, a mcguffin is a plot device in the form of some goal, desired object, or other motivator that the protagonist pursues, often with little or no narrative explanation. The specific nature of a mcguffin is typically unimportant to the overall plot. For example, like the feather in Forest Gump. The floating feather, which floats through town on a busy morning, straight up to Forest, represents the fact the story is going to be about his journey through his troubled yet exciting life.

We also then deconstructed a film from our chosen genre. We chose 'Love Actually' because this is a critically acclaimed romance film and would help us understand and note the conventions of a typical romance film, e.g. number of cuts, sound bridges and narrative.