The Proposal film opening Analysis

The Proposal is a romantic comedy made in 2009.

• The first thing we see are the production, director and actors titles.  (Mandeville films, Touchstone pictures).
• The opening scene of the film begins with a view of someone running through a forest, the thing that helped us identify the genre as a romantic comedy and not a horror was the music.
• The music was upbeat and cheery suggesting that the situation in the scene wasn't intense or stressful.
• We then see a zoomed out camera shot showing us that it is a scene of it shown on the TV in an apartment where one of the main characters (the female lead) is up early exercising whilst flicking through work documents. This suggests that she is very organised, successful and very health conscious.
• The setting which takes place in this movie is revealed by certain signifiers which then help us figure out where the film is set. The signifiers in this movie were the big buildings (New York skyline) the female main character could see through her window, the cab peeping noises but also the busy sight and sound of the yellow taxis which immediately helped us figure out it was set in NYC.
• We are then introduced to the main male character which is introduced to show a huge contrast between the two characters but to also suggest that they may not possibly cross paths or get on as they are completely different types of people.

• In the shot where we are introduced to the male character we can see that he is an unorganised person which may not be in a very successful person, in this scene he is running late for work. In this shot around him we see that he is also very untidy as there are magazines and tv programme guides lying around which also reminds again of the huge differences between them as she seems to be more domestically prepared than he is. Furthermore, the level of success is also made clear to us as she has a very professional man whereas the first words that are said by the male character was a swear word. In addition, another thing that makes this clear is their living conditions as she appears to be living in an expensive, clean and well kept apartment whereas it could be argued that it is the complete opposite for him.
• We are shown straight from the start that these characters may even have a mutual dislike about each other and it is a completely non-romantic relationship.

• We are then shown a scene where he is rushing to Starbucks to get coffee, we get a sense of the type of character he may be as he used his appearance to get ahead so he wouldn't have to wait long in the coffee shop. We then see him rushing into a building where he seems to be well known/liked, we can see this from the other people who we assume are his work colleagues body language and attitude towards him.

• This shows contrast to how she is presented as she is shown as feared straight away due to the people emailing back and forth notifying each other that she has arrived to work ('It's here'), however, the non diegetic sound reminds us that although she may be feared in her work environment it is going to end up better as it resets the tone of the film for what it is (romantic comedy). 

• Furthermore, when she is in a room or is going somewhere the tone, opinion and attitude of people is set towards her by the change in music and the fact that everything seems to get quieter and the sound of her heels get louder showing that she is a stereotypically feared business woman that is very controlling.
• However, this film challenges the stereotypes as it shows that a woman is in charged and more successful than the man as he is then revealed to be her personal assistant. We can also see how feared she is even from the small gesture that he gets both drinks the same every morning which are the drinks she likes just incase an incident happens where her cup is spilt etc.
• The camera angles follow each character.