Romantic Drama

I have a fair idea of what a romantic drama is. But it is defined as 'Romantic Drama film is a genre that explores the complex side of love. The plot usually centers around an obstacle that is preventing love between two people.' That is as taken from http://thescriptlab.com/screenplay/genre/romance. This does show however that Romantic Drama is not a genre, but rather a subgenre within the largers genres of Drama and Romance. I think this is possibly good for us, because it allows us to be more specific in what we want to do. I think overall, that the general target audience of this genre would be teenage girls or women. Often so well known as 'chick-flicks'. I think this goes back to the suggestion that women are the more emotional beings. This idea goes back as far as elizabethan times when it was believed that women would require constant reassurance. I'm not saying that this genre is specifically designated to them, you get emotional men ofcourse! However, i think that ultimately when it comes to marketing, it would be more feminised. I would generally think that Romantic Drama's would be a successful area, especially when looking at a film like Titanic. It is rated as number 2 in the all time greatest films, grossing world wide $2,185,372,302. It was nominated for 14 oscars, and won 11 of them. This is indeed a relatively standard film to choose, but it shows the success thata good romantic drama can have. Above is the opening credits for titanic. I really like the simplicity of these credits. I also think it is very clever how James Cameron worked into it original clips. This i think helps maintain audience's attention. I think the music choice, was very clever also in this instance. This music has become world wide representative of the titanic brand. For me the music could be seen to represent the freedom, or calmness of the sea. It is calm, but it also quite emotional, and therefore could also represent the emotional scenario that was titanic. I took the below table from http://boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=romanticdrama.htm I think this could be useful in research because it shows the top 20 Romantic Drama's of all time. The original on the website shows the top 200 but i think it best we focus on the top 20.

As can be seen from this table, Romantic Drama's overall have grossed quite well, showing too that there is always room in the market for a romantic drama. The reason for this research into Romantic Drama is simply to give me an idea of how successful this type of movie is, and what type of plot has worked best.