My partner and I created a poster that reflects the Rom-Com (Romance Comedy) genre.

When trying to think through the genre’s repertoire of elements, we immediately thought of events that occurred frequently across the films we’d seen: the first being showcased in the top left, a scene where one of the protagonists is going to catch a plane to move away and their love interest runs into the airport to stop them and confess their true feelings; and the second being showcased in the bottom left, where the two lovers share either a kiss or a date in the rain.

Another one of the generic conventions of Rom-Com’s is a plot based around a wedding, so we drew that in the centre. Clowns and hearts were added to convey the comedic and the romantic elements respectively, and the beach at sunset came up as a generic setting for a lot of romantic scenes, so we included that.

Additionally, when we began to discuss generic characters in the genre, we found that a common trope was having a female’s initial love interest be stereotypically attractive yet lacking any emotional depth, while her male ‘best friend’ character, while being physically inferior to this initial love interest, actually loved her for who she was all along, and was, in the eyes of the film, the right person for her all along. This is depicted in the drawing on the centre-right of our poster.

Finally, a common situation that we thought characters found themselves in was having an unexpected pregnancy, so you can see a woman in the top right with both an unborn baby and a very surprised facial expression.