Naked Gun: opening Scene

The naked Gun is a famous comedy movie which had a great success. The opening scene to the film should be looked at to see how they created humor to attract the audience within the first few minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaGLZEdYDGU



In the opening scene, the non diegetic sound is very dark and eary. This tells us that maybe something bad is going to happen. This is even more evident when the person at the hotdog counter and the man at the top of the stairs both look towards there guns. We then see a man reading a newspaper, who looks up at the clock to see what time it is. The music is still tense meaning that it is almost certain something bad is going to happen. We then see the man reading the newspaper loook towards a woman struggling to take her baby pram up the stairs. He then goes to help her with it when another woman with two prams is struggling to get them up the stairs. He then calls for the man at the hotdog counter to go help that woman. As that man helps the woman with two prams, another woman with a pram is having trouble taking her child down the stairs. Humor is created here because the audience is still thinking that there could be some gun shooting very soon, yet the three people are trying to be nice civilians and help out.



The next scene we see is of 5 men at the top of the stairs, who the audeince pressume are the "baddies". As they start walking down the stairs, the man reading the newspaper notices its the people. They both meet midway on the stair and then look at each other with close ups of their faces. Then the shooting happens in slow motion, showing the three people forget about the prams they were helping to carry. This creates humor because they were wanting to help the ladies with the prams and have now left them to go straight down the stairs where the babys could potentially be killed. We also see the man at the top of the stairs struggling to take his gun out from his leg. This creates humor because its not often you say the good people sturggle when doing something.

Next, we see One of the woman miming " My baby" as the pram goes down the stairs. We then see the hotdog counter man chace after the pram, with a lawn mower behind him and a guy with a rake in his hand. This creates humor because it is totally random to see a guy with a rake and a lawn mower coming down the stairs. Then all the focus goes onto the babies, while the shoot out is going on. Then the present and the pope appear at the top of the stairs. This creates humor because it comes from out of the blue and the reaction on the face of one of the good people is totally confused.

Nearing the end of the opening scene, the person reading thew newspaper runs out of bullets. They cut back to a shot of the baddies and then somehow he has ended up with a machine gun. This creates humor because in reality there is noway someone could find a gun in that shorter space of time. Then whilst this is happening, we can see in the background the hotdog guy saving all the babies. The last baby he saves he starts dancing and celebrating with and is about to throw it on the floor when a woman stops him. This creates humor because in reality you dont hold a young baby with one hand and you would most not likely want to throw it on the floor.
In the end this is all just a dream. This is a good example of a opening scene and we should look at this when we make our opening scene.

Evaluation

Our film is about two boys who live together. They are both slobs and don’t have jobs. One of them wakes up and is going to a job interview at McDonalds. The other stays in bed. They are trying to get jobs so they can get a decent flat as all they have at the moment is a one roomed flat with one bed which they share. We had loads of ideas for our work. We started to film a different one about two girls going home from a party but because of the weather and other problems we changed our idea. This is a link to our opening: http://hannahemilynileshjohn.blogspot.com/2009/02/emily-has-downs.html. We have represented teenage boys in our opening; it shows them how they might live. The camera work in our opening was okay but not we could have used a lot more shots we used a variety but needed more to make it better. The sound we used was good but we should have done it over the top instead of filming it. We now know that we should have done this and know to improve it next time. Our target audience would be teenagers as it is relevant to some of their lifestyles and they would find it entertaining. We chose this because we are teenagers so we know what we enjoy and we are able to relate to it. We tried to show this by doing as many things that were funny as possible. We only used a camera and a tripod to film our work but if we had had more money it would have been good to have other equipment e.g. a track to film a tracking shot. The preliminary helped us a lot with the main task as we were able to practice using the camera and the program on the computer. We had an idea how to use the camera but was good to practice and none of us knew how to use the computer work so it was extremely helpful to learn that before we did our main task. Overall I am happy with our opening but we know that there are a lot of things that we would change if we did it again. For example using more shots and doing something different with the music.

Response to Greg Potter

Greg: I thoguht the scene was a clever way to star a film it portrays the main character early but doesnt give away the genre, it than slowly sneaks visual gags into the scene and we than become aware of this comedy. I liked the opening sequence, opening the door and walking through the house, i thought this was great use of a point of view shot. The only criticsm i have of this sequence is the use of zoom, i felt although with a proper film camera can be effective, in this instance it did not create an effect that i felt suited the film.

Hannah: I agree what greg said about the zoom and feel that we should have re done this shot. This would have improved the comical effect as making it more realistic. I also think that a better variety of camera shots would have been nessesery (stated in other comments). This would have improved our film dramatically. We also take note to when the door is opening you can see an arm. We understand that this makes it unrealistic and theirfore we would have tried 2 perfect this better. We are glad that most people enjoyed watching our film and hope to make more soon.

Evaluation

Introduction

Our final film piece is called ‘Brian's life’. It was made by myself, Emily, John and Nilesh. It stars John (As Brian) and Nilesh (As Dave). Our initial idea was to make a horror film but due to weather conditions, as we were filming outside this was not capable. We started filming this and everything was going well including editing but when we started to film our second part the snow came and dead lines were meeting so we changed the idea completely.
Our new idea was to have a comedy, something inside and something that could be filmed in a realistic environment. We filmed at Nilesh’s house and I believe really made the comical effect work. Our work is on our blog and on YouTube.

Representation

We used John as the main character being Brian as he was the funny character, the one that was laughed at. We made him symbolize a man that isn’t very well off, lazy, possibly a student due to the surroundings and having a funny attitude towards his life. We made the place seem more realistic to surroundings by having lots of rubbish around, messy and having one single bed for two people represents lack of money. The time period it is set in is modern day. You can see this by having casual clothes, Michael Jackson playing, classic student attitude and the house living in.
At this point there are only two people involved. This is because we really wanted to focus on John and make him stand out from the other characters. You only briefly see Nilesh as we wanted him to be more in the background.
We made our film as realistic as possible by having a student room, the language spoken is modern day and having no un-realistic happenings.


Audience

Our target audience would be the YouTube generation. This is because they can relate to the people in this small clip. This is also because they are more attracted to the comedy genre. It would not be for an older generation because they may find some of the language offensive. We came up with this decision by us being able to relate to these people ourselves.
We analysed and researched our film by watching beginning of films with the genre of comedy. We analysed together as a group Superbad, Dodge ball and Knocked Up. We also watched films individually on the comical effect to give ideas on what we were going to do.

Camera Shots

Our camera shots used are quite limited so therefore we should have used more varied angles and shots. Especially when getting out of bed when he gets up from falling, this is not linked very well and this should have been re filmed at a previous date to connect this better. The shots could also have been a lot steadier when zooming in and out (clock scene and house zooming in). We could have perfected this by slowing the zoom in and steadying the tripod. This would have also added to the comic effect due to having smoother actions.


Sound Editing

We also could have made the whole film silent when the music begins to play, and then have the soundtrack played over the top. Then match up his miming in the editing suite. However this would have an extreme amount of time and we as a group personally feel, having the music on the tape sounds reasonably good.


Final Evaluation

Overall I think that we as a group did well, however some parts could have been improved. Shown above the sound editing and camera shots would have been a must have to improve. I enjoyed making and editing our film and feel that we as a group did well in the task.

final evaluation

Introduction

we started off our film initially to be a horror genre. But due to weather events and light problems, filming was very difficult. We then decide to make the film to a comedy genre. the outline idea to the film is 2 room mates are struggling for money so they only have 1 bed to sleep in. But the main charactor gets a job interview at a fast food restaurent and the humor developes from there. The main charactor is Brian, a student whos life is being represented in the film. This why we called it "brians life".

Here is the link for our film http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiA-P65pXTY&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fhannahemilynileshjohn%2Eblogspot%2Ecom%2Fsearch%3Fupdated%2Dmax%3D2009%2D04%2D21T02%253A05%253A00%2D07%253A00%26max%2Dresults%3D7&feature=player_embedded.

Representation

We have tried to make a scratch idea for our film. We noticed that not many comedies start with a charactor going to a fast food resaturant for a job. so we thought that would be a good idea as it was original. We decided to set the film in my house, because it is quite small and compact, which can be simular to what students live in at university, We though at in this time peroid, students are always straped for cash, so makin 2 people sleep in one room can represent the poorness of nowerday students.

We have creating a scence of realsim of making the house look messy as students tend to live in a messy life style. Also the opening shot you can here rain falling, maybe suggesting that this is going to be like any other day, misserable and a long.

We wanted the parts of the mise en scene to be realistic but parts of it to be unrealistic to create the humer. The music was Micheal jackson-billie jean, and we see Brian (john) start dancing to it as soon as he wakes up, this unrealisticness creates humor because its something that wouldnt usually happen. Also we see brian hitting over the ready made jenga blocks, this was unrealistic because its not usually a game a student would play but alo realistic because it wakes up the other charactor in the room which happens often in students lives.The mess that we see on the tracking shot to the room shows lots of different objects making it look realistic because it is messy just simular to a students house. We used camera work to represent the who the main characters were. There are mainly only shots of brian to suggest he is the main character but we did not use many camera shots which is what we could have improved on. There is not much to much dialogued used, which wasnt o important in creating the humor as it it came the actions of the charactors.

Audiences

I think our targets audince was the youtube generation and for males and females aged 15-25. this is because we wanted the film to be based on views who would enjoy the comedy genre, people who use recent technology like youtube alot and to people who may have been through simular events like students being poor in the film. We came up with this decision because its all something that all of us in a group had a good idea about and we could share our knowledge to try create a good opening scene.
for our reserch we whatched a couple of comedy films, but we though the opening scene to "dodgeball" was good to what we were wanting. Also we saw that alot of youtube viewers were of a young age, so this helped in the pre production process becuase we knew we had to make a film which will attracted these viewers.
when sampling our film on our target audience, we got different responces. Some said that they got the idea that it would be a teenage comedy movie but they said that camera work wasnt that great. Others said that the camera work helped but the dialogue and mise en scene wasnt that helpful. We learned that our next film we would have to get both problems corrected to make sure the audience knows what the genre is for sure.

Progression from the preliminary task to the main task

the preliminary task got us using the cameras. This helped us when choosing the type of camera shots to take of the characters. It also helped us with music and sound, we used two types of sound in the priliminary task but only one in this task.

In the primilinary task, we made the mistake of not wearing the same clothes sometimes and a big mistake of one of group having a hair cut. which can be found on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6dfdHACHU4&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fhannahemilynileshjohn%2Eblogspot%2Ecom%2Fsearch%3Fupdated%2Dmax%3D2009%2D01%2D28T03%253A31%253A00%2D08%253A00%26max%2Dresults%3D7&feature=player_embedded.

Final evaluation

in conclusion, i think the film was not a bad success. Analysing the comments that have been said about our film has helped us choose what we would do to the film to help improve it. When i first saw the finished film, i saw mistakes which were shown in the comments. I did like doing the comedy genre, it was fun to do and all our group enjoyed working together and our ideas were shared through out the group. I wouldnt change the genre of the film but i would like to have taken more camera shots for the film so we had more choice on what we put in our opening scene and maybe spent more time on pre production and post production, but this was effected by the weather events and lighting that stopped us from doing out original idea.

Institution possibilities and audience

I think if our film was to be preduced, it would be done with working title, because it is a scratch idea and is done on a very low budget of nothing, it also contains actors that are young and arent heard of.

Our target audience would probably be older teens and young adults. It would most likely have a rating of 15. We came up with this desicion beacuse there is alot of films with the same target audeince, such as Dodgeball or American Pie, and we could use some of the ideas from other films. Also most of the ratings for our film would be students from our class, so we made our film to target them and todays humour.

Mikel's Evaluation

nice :) easy to get storyline and good use of shots. i know there was some controversy about the music being copyrighted but you stuck with it and i hope and think you should get a decent grade for this :)
(blog may need more detail) i enjoyed watching :) genre didn't need explaining, showed what you wanted to show. Nicely done guys ^ _ ^