My Best Friends Wedding: Film Opening Analysis

This film was released in 1997. It had an age rating of 12 meaning I believe it was targeted at young adults and adults. This means it was quite mass market. From watching the opening scene, I would also say that it looks to be targeted at females more so than males. This is because the women dance and sing wearing bridal outfits. Therefore not being considered manly and something men would stereotypically want to watch.

It can be classified into two main genres, these are:

• Comedy
• Romance

This is shown throughout the whole opening scene because by the pink background and bridal dresses this can show love and passion yet the almost micky taking song shows a comical side to it too.

It was produced by Tristar Pictures and Zucker Brothers Productions in association with Sony Pictures who then distributed the film.

Mise-en-scene is used to instantly help aware the audience as to the genre of the film. This is because instantly we see the pink background. This connotes love, passion and desire which are all common traits of the romance genre. The four woman wearing bridal dresses who are dancing and singing adds to the comedy whilst keeping the serious romance side of the opening scene. We also see bouquets of flowers and a wedding ring. This informs the audience of the genre and helps give them an idea of the storyline.

Pink background, bridal dresses and flowers- all connote love, marriage and romance.

Lighting is high key throughout. This makes the four woman seem angel like and pure. This also makes it easier for the audience to be able to understand the storyline and see that these four girls are being portrayed as beautiful, young woman. The lighting remains the same the whole way through from beginning to end.

We have two fade to blacks. This is a form of editing. These can be seen at the very beginning and the very end. They are used as a transition from one scene to another. It makes the audience feel as though they are moving through time slowly. Other than that, editing is continuous making the opening flow and easy to watch as an audience with nothing to intense which could confuse them.

Sound is used in the form of the song we can hear them sing for the whole opening scene. It is a very basic opening scene but is a good way of drawing the audience in as they watch intently thinking something may happen during. The song is basically the woman saying how to keep a man. This could be an ideology put in place by the director. It could be a hidden message to the audience and potentially aimed at women saying that the best way to keep your man is too 'kiss, hold and give him what he wants'.

Camera is used effectively by using a range of shots. They use long shots which shows all four of the woman and we can see their whole body, which gives the audience an idea of their clothing and their appearances. They also use close ups of the protagonist as she rubs her leg, the camera tracks her hand then pans back up onto her face. The shots are quite basic and tend to show either the woman's whole body or just their heads and shoulders. We see a close up also on the brides ring and at the very end a close up and then the camera zooms in on the protagonist as she looks up as though looking at the sky. We also see a birds eye view in which all four characters lay down and sing into the camera. This gives off the impression that the audience are looking down on them .