Film opening research - Legally Blonde (2001)

Legally Blonde (2001)

Legally blonde is an American romantic comedy release on the 13^th July 2001.

The film was produced by MGM and directed by Robert Luketic featuring lead actress Reece Witherspoon. The film received many positive reactions, resulting in a total box office of $95,001,351 as of October 2001. The movie also gained positive reactions from award shows too, taking home a total of 6 awards, three of which were mtv movie awards.

With the genre being romantic comedy, the target audience would most likely be young females aged 12 – 18, however this doesn’t mean that its childish, as it contains some more adult jokes that only older people watching the film would understand, so the film is widely popular for any female over the age advised on the movie.

The narrative that we can see right from the opening is that the storyline is going to be following a popular blonde girl in America. This is a conventional romantic comedy of the time, and the preferred reading for the opening would be that the girl is somewhat ‘dipsy’ due to the emphasis on the colour of her hair, and people stereotype blondes who are obsessed with glamour to be dipsy. And this can be shown through the mise en scene of beauty products.

Right off the first matter of second on the opening of the film, we can see the film fitting the codes and conventions of the genre through the use of the typography. The writing it luminous pink, and like that of a teenage girl, which helps to set the tone for the film as being happy and girly.

The first visual shot that we get to see is around 20 seconds into the opening, and it’s a close up shot of a female brushing her hair. This is the first the audience will see of the character so is setting the first impression, which in this case appears to be trying to represent the stereotypical American teenage girl who will most likely be a daddy’s girl.

The following shots consist of long shots, tracking the character as she rides her bike around the town. This does two things for the view, it helps to establish the main character and the background characters, but it also helps to establish the location as we can see the areas the character is riding the bike. The girly mise en scene is carried on through the use of the character wearing all pink with hultiple pink accessories in the basket on the bike.

As for the sound, the sound is completely non-diegetic, being a up beat cheerful song. This is helping to set the mood for the entire film, and gives the preferred reading that the film is going to be light hearted. This is also fitting in with the codes and conventions of rom coms, as they all appear to begin with a happy song at the beginning with next to no diegetic.

The lighying in the scenes are all high key lighting which helps to add emphasis to the blonde, and carrying on the light hearted mise en scene to continue to give the audience an understanding as to what to expect from the film.

Once the shot has cut between the long shot of the character riding the bike, and the close ups of the character getting ready, we’re presented with a shot of the character on the bike riding past a group of boys. This connotates to the background of the storyline with it being college, as from the opening scene, we are presented with multiple groups of young teenagers, all of the appeared same age.

The opening scene very quickly establishes to the viewer the main characters, as well as the background to the storyline. This is successfully done by the quick succession of shots from the main character riding her bicycle around the town, back to the girl preparing herself for the day, so the audience can use stereotyping to guess what sort of person the main character is likely to be as well as what sort of story line they can expect. Overall the opening scene to this film is very effective as of the way it follows the codes and conventions of film openings, but also gives connotations through the use of mise on scene and props of what sort of film it is going to be, and the audience can expect to see what they were looking to watch, a romantic comedy.