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A Night At The Roxbury Opening Scene analysis

A Night At The Roxbury (1998)

Directed by John Fortenberry

In the opening scene it introduces the two main characters and introduces their personality. It show them driving to a club dressed in similar clothes.

MUST FINISH FINISH FINISH

This is our pitch.

SWOT

This is my SWOT analysis of the treatment pitch.

Treatment Pitch Feedback

Today we pitched our plan to the class and got a lot of feedback about it. We were told that it sounds like a good idea but it cannot really be judged until we come up with a script. This is because it's a comedy film and no matter how good the idea is it will not work unless it has a good, sharp script which has very funny moments. Also, it the set has to be right and we have to film it well rather than just relying on dialogue. We were also told that our opening sequence is too boring and regular to be effective. We were told that it needs a gimmick to set it apart from other comedy films. One idea we were given was instead of one guy coming down the stairs with his trousers off he should wake up in the park with his trousers off. We need more crazy ideas like that that will make the audience think "how did he get in this situation?" We've decided that we are all going to write scripts for next Thursday and see which one is funniest and most effective to use.

Treatment Pitch Plans

Here is the plan for our pitch:

Title: (Working title) Dude where's my hangover?
An original screenplay from Jamie Payne, Ryan Kent, Alisha Ward and Kayleigh Morris
Company name: (as of yet undecided)
Date: 21st November 2011

We present a comedy film about Brry and Luis two teenagers with an imagination that far exceeds normality. A third friend attempts to play the voice of reasonas the two friends discuss the insanity of the night previous, but really with friends like those two it's not hard to imagine that she's not really paid attention to.

As the story unfolds we discover that on their night out turned out to be far more than was expected by anyone. They encountered superheroes, dancing aliens, emotional turmoil, a bromance and even llama's? Throughout their discusion of last night several fights and arguments break out.

The opening sequence of this film would involve the third more rational person entering the room in which both Louis and Barryhave collapsed, gving the both of them a cup of teain order to sober the two up somewhat. From here a long discussion begins revolving around the unclear events of the previous night.

Think, Dude where's my car meets the hangover.

Our Production Company intends to make use of fairly strange mise-en-scene, for example the characters would be dressed very messily in the same clothes as they had worn the previous night, the props would  be objects such as empty drink cans, cups of tea etc. The lighting would be vibrant and bright at most/all times. We would use a fair amount of effects on the scenes, as well as a wide variety of sound and music that fit the situations. In terms of camera we would usea lot of close-up's and reaction shots. We would include all of this in order to create a sense of humour for the audience to react to. Our target audience would be around the general age ranges of 15-21.

Initial Ideas Homework

Title: Find a penny pick it up

• Two best friend guys.
• One of them is a smart and well thought out man who has a good business job and has a lot of savings since he was a teen.
• His friend is the opposite. He lives with his parents and lives much more carefree and tells him he should just spend all of his money.
• Louis (The wealthy guy)
• Barry (The poor guy)
• Barry hacks in to his Louis' ebay account and buys him an extremely rare and expensive penny that costs all of Louis' life savings.
• They go on a road trip to get the money back from the guy they bought it from.

Barry and Louis are best friends and have been best friends since their childhood. Barry has remained the same person as he was when he was 18. He lives with his parents, doesn't work and doesn't do anything. Louis has a very well payed business job and has grown up; unlike Barry. Louis has kept a life savings worth over £150,000 which he doesn't know what he's going to use it for. Barry complains to him that his money has made him into a snob and a bad friend. Barry then hacks into Louis' Ebay account and buys a £150,000 extremely rare and expensive penny. This was to teach Louis a lesson. Louis gets so mad that he makes Barry drive him all the way across the country to get his money back. The man lives in Russia. Barry and Louis now have no money to get plane tickets so they are forced to drive across the contry to get there. They take several different modes of transport where hilaity ensues, such as: Car; Train; Ferry and others. In the end they get arrested and sent back to England. Louis never gets his money back. Louis tells Barry that it was all worth it and that he has taught him to appreciate life.

Genre research presentation

Comedy

Gangster Films Research Homework

For my homework I had to create an idea for a gangster film and come up with an opening sequence.

Title: The Don

Characters:

• The Don
• Marco (Italian Guy)
• Leonardo (Italian Guy)
• Stefan (Italian Guy)
• Antonio (Italian Guy)
• Frank Zepherelli
• The guy

Setting: Brooklyn

Plot: The plot follows the four Italian guys trying to take out Frank Zepherelli. The Don tells the four Italian guys that whoever kills him will receive a large sum of money so they have a race to kill him first. However, he is well protected and the four Italian guys will have to use all of their cunning to get the hit on him.

Description of opening sequence:

• Very dark lighting, can only see the guys face.
• The camera starts off as a mid-shot of the back of The Don and slowly zooms in to the guys face.
• The guy is tied to the chair and is very scared and confused.
• The Don is explaining something to him.
• It ends when the guy screams "who the fuck are you?!" Then a loud gunshot is fired. The guy falls over dead and the Don casually says "I'm the Don."

5 key conventions of gangster films:

• Murder
• Rich gang bosses
• Heavy swearing
• Light humour
• Weapons and smoking

1 thing I will change is:

• It will be heavily influenced on comedy.

I received feedback from my peers.

Kayleigh said: "Maybe include comedy in your opening if it really is a big feature of the film."
Andrew said: "It sets up the tone of the film and is an effective opening to the film."
Alisha said: "It uses the usual conventions well, but the plot of the opening sequence needs comedy to show the change you've made to the genre.

Evaluating the Prelim

The  brief was to create a conversation between two people that was at least 30 seconds in length. We had to include match-on-action, shot-reverse-shot and the 180 degree rule. We managed to fit everything that the brief told us to. 

Here is an example of match on action. 

Me going towards the door.

 Me opening the door.

 Me entering the room.

 We also used shot-reverse-shot and the 180 degree rule.

I contributed to the filming by recording the scene with Andrew and Alisha as the Joker and Harley Quinn respectively. Other than that I played Robin during the filming. 

Overall the filming went very well. We managed to get all of the costumes and get it all filmed in one session. The only thing that didn't go well was that we didn't have a specific place to film so we had to walk around school and find a place to film. It all worked out well though and we found a good room to film in.

Editing and Finishing the Prelim

Today (Monday 7th November) we finished editing our prelim and uploaded it to youtube. Here it is. I play Robin.

Filming the Prelim

We filmed the Prelim on Wednesday. We looked for many places to film but finally settled on the meeting room in sixth form. We managed to get it all filmed within a couple of hours and finished with around 9 minutes worth of footage.

Planning the Prelim

On Tuesday we planned how we would film the Prelim. we created a script and a Storyboard. This was our planned script:

Robin: Holy moly Batman, I'm not feeling this costume.
Batman: So? I'm working. (Playing QWOP) God damn it what?
Robin: Well it's just that these tights are so tight that my bat bulge is showing. And it's attracting the wrong sort of thugs if you know what I mean. Look there's one now.
James: Hello. (Waves)
Batman: I've never had that problem.
Alisha: Hello. (Waves)
Robin: Lucky you, but my small bat package is only attracting thugs, even the Joker won't go near me. (Joker walks in)
Joker: I'm gonna rob a bank in - OH MY GOD. (Covers eyes and leaves)
Batman: Your point?
Robin: I need to look better! I look like a rent boy!
Batman: No.
Robin: I'm gonna go be Nightwing! (Runs off crying)
Joker: (off screen) Oh my God, Harley, he's back!
(Batman sighs)

This was the storyboard:

Start of Media Coursework

Preliminary Task


Today our group (Andrew, James, Alisha and I) began our planning for the preliminary task. We wrote the script and drew the storyboard. We will begin filming either tomorrow or Thursday. We also decided on the costumes. I shall be dressing up as Robin with a sock down my tights. Sounds fun.