We watched the opening scenes of American Pie, Police Academy and Meet the Parents.
The one we will be talking about is American Pie.
What did we see ?
In the opening scene of the film we see two people, a young male and female who are both white. They are both dopey looking and are dressed formally. The female has red hair.
Characteristics
Both of them are dopey and the female has slurred speech. She has funny facial expressions.
Young adults are being represented in this film.
Representation
Summary Of Lesson (16/12/09)
In this lesson we carried on with our planning.
We have already planned out the possible locations and will choose ONE of the location as our main setting. We have also planned out the actors we need for our C/W.
In the following lesson we will continue planning and plan on the costume and props.
Possible Locations For Our C/W
Here are all the locations that we have come up with to film in our C/W:
. Canary Wharf
. Mile End/Park
. Riverside
. Tower Bridge
We have come up with these locations because we wont need permission to film in these areas, these are also typical settings in a comedy film. Before we film our C/W we need to choose one of these as our main location.
Synopsis
Please Vote For ONE Synopsis on the right hand side of the page. Thank You
Closing Date is 25/12/09.
Research Target Audience
In our short film we decided our target audience will be aimed at teenagers and adults from the age of 13 - 25. This will appeal more to boys than girls because they tend to watch films that have sense of humour and entertain them. There's more of a chance of a person who's not so religious to watch our opening scene than someone who's really religious because they may get offended or show scenes against their religion. In terms of social class, we need to find a suitable audience to target and in Tower Hamlet we have a lot of working class people who are in a diverse community.
Typically, age ranges break down as follows:
- Kids 5-11 and mums
- Teen 11-14
- Teen 13-16
- 17-21
- 18-24 and 18-34
- 25-54
- 54+
These age ranges are important. A movie that entertains a 5 year old is not going to appeal to a 14 year old. The 18-
24 and 18-34 range makes up the largest movie-going segment.
Location Research
In a comedy film most settings are located in a busy area such as the city. As you can see in this picture, it is surrounded by buildings and and people around. These are typical locations in a comedy film.
As you can see again, the area is surrounded by buildings and cars, our location will need these sort of features for a proper comedy locations.
Character Research
This is Stu Price from the film hangover, as you can see from the poster Stu has a tooth missing and doesn't know how this has happened. This is a typical character that you would expect in our genre due to the fact that comedy characters tend to look idiotic. We will be trying to find a person that has similar characteristics and has a quirky look, we will also be trying to find similar costumes to represent our character. 
This is Ace Ventura Pet Detective, Jim Carrey plays as a madman who is a pet detective. He solves the crimes of animals and solves one in this film. As you can see he is dressed very silly and his hair style is very funky, which is not usual.
Group Evaluation
As a group we believe that we have produced our preliminary exercise very well because we all stuck to our roles and preformed them to the best of our ability. We all took part in the production and worked effectively as a group. We think that this is the reason our work had been better than we had expected it to be. In our opinion there wasn't a lot of problems that occured except for the fact that there was a lot of problems with meeting up to try and fix the problems we had with the first shoot. We also had problem which were we had extra people hanging around, causing distractions and noise. But we had sorted these problems out by moving to a much quieter environment. We believe we can avoid these particular problems by being more aware of where we shoot for our main task as well as what time we shoot.
Khalid and Nasima
Genre Research (Comedy)
Our five most popular films in comedy are:
1.Hangover
2.Scary Movie
3.Crank
4.Mr Bean
5.Mean Machine
HANGOVER
- On the IMDB website they class this film as a comedy. It is set in Las Vegas which is a city and a typical setting for a comedy genre film. The main characters are male and are not as good looking as a male would be in a romance film. One of the men is in love with a female character who is good looking. These are conventions that we found in this film.
SCARY MOVIE
- On the IMDB website they class this film as a thriller/comedy. Its location is set in a rural area, with the main character being a young teenage girl. She is being stalked by a serial killer. The narrator in the trailer has a common scary voice to get the audience thrilled. The shots are really quick but he funny shots tend to be slower.
CRANK
- On the IMDB website they class this film as a comedy/action/thriller. It is set in the city of New York and the main character is a male who also is not that good looking. Love is also presented in this film as the main character has a very attractive girlfriend. The sound is loud and quick because it is also classified as an action/thriller.
MR BEAN
- On the IMDB website they class this film as a comedy. The film is set in Los Angeles which is an American city. The main character is also not very attractive and is a lonely, dopey and really stupid man. Love i not presented in this film because he tends to live alone and very independent.
MEAN MACHINE
- On the IMDB website they class this film as thriller/comedy/crime. The main character used to be good looking, rich and powerful but lost it all and became the same as everyone else. The director the crime scenes as funny as possible, which hints out comedy.
Preliminary Exercise
This is our preliminary task, which we had to take on our own role to create this short clip. These are our roles:
Baki - Camera Man/ Editor
Khalid - Editor/ Actor
Ridhwan - Camera Man/ Director
Nasima - Producer/ Actress
Comedy (Genre)
Comedy is a type of genre that is humorous and amuses the audience.
Here are few characteristics of comedy:
.Humour
.Stupidity
.Funny
.Cheerful/Clumsy characters
.Setting usually in cities
Most comedy films are based in cities and usually about someones life. The main character is usually a male character (e.g. Chris Tucker & Will Smith). The woman is likely to be in love and the minor character.
we have been focusing on the comedy genre and we have found five typical aspects from comedy genre and they are shown below........
1. comedy films are generally made to amuse the audience.
2. Certain characters are used for particular parts of the film.
3. It is to provoke enjoyment.
4. Comedy genre humourously exaggarates the sitution such as language, action and characters.
5. They always have a happy ending although some of the humour may even have a serious side towards it.
A typical situation in a comedy is when the main which is usually a man falls in love with a woman he cannot get but in the end he eventually gets her.
Location-a typical location of a comedy film is in a city, as there are a number of people this enables character interaction. You would not expect a comedy to take place in a rural environment because these are the sort of frames you would expect to find in a horror/thriller film.
