Mise-en-scene

 For this project and the overall genre action comedy, mise-en-scene will be very important and key to making the opening funny and realistic. I think mise-en-scene will be a really important thing to develop and it will decide if our film opening was good or not. 

To make the enemy's room we will use a dark room with a big monitor and tv. On the tv, there will be news playing about a big fraud going on and on the monitors it will be stocks and bank accounts to represent that there is a fraud going on with money. Along with this the whole house will also be dark and very lowly lit. 

We are also gonna have to make a news scene which will kick off the film opening. For this we will probably have a character on a desk with a glass of water and paper and pen. They will be reporting and most likely we would have to add a greenscreen of a news channel in the background to make it look realistic. 

Another set that we would need to work on is when the government officials are speaking and we have to make it seem like an actual meeting room where two officials are having a private conversation. For this we would probably use a dining table but we havent really figured out what to do for the background and on how to make it look like a meeting room. 

 

Character Development

 For the character development, we will have two main characters and one will be a smart one and the other will be stupid. We want to make one of them funny and the other serious. This helps the film opening to be an action comedy movie. Keeping the seriousness and humor is the first priority in our film opening.

The 1st character will be a funny guy who has no seriousness and is dumb. This will be like your typical clumsy character who drops things, makes loud noises and etc. This character will focus on making the opening funny and entertaining. This character will continously make mistakes while trying to capture the bad guy. He will also be overconfident and believe that he is super skilled but everything goes wrong for him.

The 2nd character will be the smart and actually skilled one. This will be the guy who is actually skilled and knows what he is doing. He is smart about what he does but also nervous a little bit. This character will be the guy who is super tired of his partners dumb actions and sometimes just wants to beat them up. To be funny this character will be sarcastic with his dumb partner.

A great example of this is from the 4 Lions, Omar and Waj. Waj is really stupid and doesnt know what he is talking about or doing. Omar is serious and knows what he is doing to an extent but he also is just tired of his dumb partners. 

Script

 We started to work on the script but have not finished yet, we discussed a lot of the shooting spots and how the story will be developed. We have started the scriptwriting and are only about 3-4 scenes in. Here is what we have so far:

SCRIPT FOR PORTFOLIO PROJECT 

Cast: 

News reporter: Antonia B. Muller 

Dumb: Joao 

Dumbest: Ranveer 

Criminal: Gavin 

 

Scene 1:  

(Extreme Close Up on News Reporter talking on a screen about the Major Fraud happening in the state of FL with a slow zoom out capturing the room with the person doing the Fraud and we can see his setup but face hidden) 

 

News reporter: “We are interrupting the regular program for urgent news that just came in, Investigators just revealed they have discovered a huge embezzlement fraud occurring right here in the state of Florida.” (Extreme Close Up)                                    

News Reporter: Agents and officials are moving fast to identify the person behind this major fraud 

(Zoom out to see “criminals” figure watching the news report) 

(News reporter keeps babbling and the sound fades out during the zoom out) 
 

Scene 2:  

(Low Medium Shot of Criminal in his dark messy room with multiple monitors and the tv screen playing the news and we can see him on the phone. Bank Accounts and Stocks on the monitors.) 
 

Criminal: “Transfer the money to my account in the next 3 hours”. (Very Low Faint Voice) 

Sound: Low intense music when camera fully zooms out, News channel still playing, Criminal Dialogue. 
 

Scene 3: 

(Medium shot of government officials in a room with low lighting talking about who to send to arrest and cuts to a close-up of the case files which shows the main 2 characters.) 

Government officials: We found the guy behind this, who are we going to send now; we must send the best. 

Government official 2:  The 2 best in Florida is already on a mission and KIA, the second option we have are these two 

Sound: dialogue with theme song as case file opens 

 

We will continue to complete this next week and plan to have it done by the end of next week.

Project Idea and Inspiration

 Our project idea is to do an action comedy, this will require a good story and good comedy scenes. At first we were thinking about doing a hardcore action movie and make it look realistic but then later realized that we would need a lot of resources for it which we do not have access to. Therefore, after a lot of thinking and brainstorming we came up with the idea to do an action comedy. 

The main story of our project is that there is a huge fraud going on in Florida and the investigators have figured out who it is and where they live. They have to send in their best agents to capture him but the two best are already on a separate case so there are only two left which are two dumb characters. They have to go and capture the guy without making any mistakes. One of the characters is serious and the other is kind of stupid and dumb which helps to make it more funny. The criminals face is not gonna be revealed until the end of the opening film clip which will make it mysterious. Overall, we will try to make this as funny as possible and interesting at the same time. 

We took inspiration about the action comedy genre from the movie 21 Jump Street and about the characters in which one robber is serious and the other is dumb from Home Alone. 21 jump street is really funny and has good humor. The movie combines action with dumb characters, funny jokes and etc. Home Alone is also similar but one character is serious and the other one is dumb. These 2 movies are perfect examples for action comedies and they really stood out to my group and I. 

Media Theory Incorporation

 Media Theories are incorporated into movies a lot and they play an important role. Some people think why are media theories so important? Media theories help us to understand why the movie was made, how the audience reacted to the movie, and also what is the theme of the movie or what message it is trying to convey. It helps directors and movie makers to make the films better because they have an understanding of the audience. It helps them to make audiences more interested and think more about the movie rather than just watching the movie. It helps them to see the morals, themes or a message that they are trying to point out. 

I also want to incorporate a theory in my film opening and I will use the Uses and Gratifications Theory. This theory basically says why people watch certain types of media. It says that audiences are active viewers and they pick the films or media because it will be something that will entertain them. The audience doesnt just watch whatever but something that will entertain them in a certain way. Some will watch to relax, some for entertainment and others for thrills. I think this will fit my action genre because a lot of people watch this to escape their lives and entertain themselves. I will use funny moments, some serious scenes and etc. to keep the audience engaged using the theory. Overall, Uses and Gratifications will be a perfect fit for my movie and I will use this theory to keep my audience on the edge of their seats and enjoying the opening scene. 

A movie that incorporates the media theory Uses and Gratifications well is The Truman Show because in this we can see that people in the film are actually choosing to watch the truman show for entertainment and to just escape and relax. 

 

Group meeting discussion

On 2/2, we had a group meeting discussion. In this meeting there was a group of 5-6 people and we all discussed our ideas about what our plan was for the portfolio project. The main purpose of this meeting was to get some advice and helpful tips for our projects. The other people were from other groups and they had their own different ideas. I presented my idea about an action movie and got some very helpful tips from other people. Our idea was about an action movie and I pitched some ideas that I had for the film opening. My ideas got a lot of feedback and they told me that I should have a good costume for the movie and I need good props. They also said that the story sounded good and it could be a good film opening if it was developed or produced well. I also shared tips and advice to other people, they also found it very helpful and appreciated the tips.

Overall, this group meeting discussion was a really great thing and it helped a lot. It helped to get extra tips and feedback from other people. The thing was that most of the people were very honest and it was not like anyone was trying to be mean but they were trying to help. It was constructive criticism which helped to develop the film opening and make it more interesting. I think the other people in the group would have also really benefited from this meeting. They would also be thinking on how to improve their project and this meeting could have provided what extra things they were looking for to improve their opening. 

This is a photo of my group and I during the discussion

House Raid scenes

 House raid scenes are very cool and are commonly used in action movies. My group and I want to do a house raid film opening scene. These scenes are really popular and they usually involve the military, special forces, or police. These scenes show a team entering a building to eliminate a target or an enemy. These scenes are popular because they show characters in small and tight places where there is a lot of danger and it can come from anywhere. This shows the characters as anxious and alert and it makes the audience also feel like that. There a lot of close up shots used, low lighting or sometimes night vision and they used handheld cameras to make it look realistic.

A movie that did this house raid scene really good was the movie Zero Dark Thirty. This scene shows how the U.S. special forces infiltrated Osama Bin Ladens home. The scene focuses on making it realistic, tension and small details instead of making it dramatic. The sound makes it seem more realistic with the sounds of the boots, guns, breathing and also them whispering into the radio. The scene is shot in darkness and some clips in night vision as well. They start the scene off slow to build tension and then it starts to get faster but not like chaos. This is how they keep it realistic and less dramatic.