WaterBoy

Waterboy is a comedy film that was created in 1998 by Frank Coraci, and featured Adam Sandler, Katy Bates and Henry Winkler. The story is about a boy who works as a water boy for his local football team and by chance discovers his talent for tackling and is put on the team, the rest of the story is about his rise to fame.

The film starts with a Touchstone Pictures title, as this company helped produce the film, in the background is the sound of someone scratching on vinyl decks. You then hear a noise that is associated with Australia, a bouncy sort of didgeridoo noise. A bass line then joins this and the first shot is shown. It shows a river on a sunny day, the camera is panning up to show the forthcoming river, it then flashes to the next shot, which is of the trees on the side of the river. Some of the producers name is shown on screen as well. The upbeat song, does suggest to the audience that the film is a comedy as the music isn’t quick, which would suggest Action, or scary, which would suggest Horror or slow and mellow, which would suggest Comedy. This then is taken of screen using a ripple effect, this links in with being on a boat. The next shot is looking down on the river, which is moving, suggesting that the audience is viewing from a boat. It then shows the directors name, and uses the same ripple effect. It then also shows Adam Sandler’s name, it does this as he is a famous actor and showing this to the audience might attract their attention even more as they know he is a good actor. The camera then pans up to show a football stadium and the title the Waterboy rush’s at the screen. The font is blocky, and reminisant of American Football team logos, but the colors do not correspond to any actual teams. The colors are bright and clash, which do give off a comical vibe. The next camera shot is then on the inside of the stadium, you can tell the team is training as a man runs across the pitch with equipment in the background and the stadium is empty. The music fades out quickly as the player runs past the camera. The camera slightly follows him to stop panning on to coaches. You can tell this from the way they are not wearing any football gear and they are holding a stopwatch and clipboard. The man says something, from this you can hear that he is from America and this suggests to the viewer that the film is set in America. You see a quick shot of some players training with some dummies. The shot after this is a group of cheerleaders practicing their routine. The rest of the shots until 01:03 are footage of the team training. While this is shown some more names are shown discreetly at the corners of the screen. This means that they are less important than the people at the start. A convocation then occurs between 2 men, the second mans accent is American, confirming that the film is set in America. This is strange, as you cannot really tell that the film is a Comedy as nothing comidical has occurred so far, this could mean that some comedy fans may loose concentration from the film. The 2 men’s conversation carries on until 01:27 when the shot changes to the tunnel. You can see the teams Waterboy walking out, this shot is used in many actual Football games, making the audience guess the plot a bit, and that the Waterboy will one day become a Footballer. The music starts again, but this time is a bit more rocky, as it is played on an Electric Guitar. The Waterboy sort of staggers out of the tunnel. The shot then switches to a huddle of team members. This is reminisant of what they do at the start of a game when they form plans, this suggests to the audience that they are plotting something, and as the way the camera shots are putting together it makes it look like they are looking at the Waterboy. It then goes back to the Waterboy and you see the first sign of it being a comedy. The Waterboy’s facial expression is crumpled as if he is making a face, but it looks like it is his face. Also the way he comically pumps his water machine suggests that it is a comedy. He then takes a sip of his water and tastes it as if it was a glass of wine, he then starts describing it, his voice is high and in a funny tone, making the audience laugh at him. The way he also describes it makes the viewers laugh as well, “its clean. Its cold. Now that’s what I call high quality H2O.” This last bit shows for sure that the film is going to be a comedy. I like the start of this film as it starts not showing that it’s a comedy and then at the last few seconds of the first 2 minutes, they show that it is a comedy. 

Killing Them Softly

This is the poster for the film Killing Them Softly:

• Again white bold writing on the black background following all the conventions of crime posters.
• Brad Pitt is clearly the main selling point as he is the only character on the poster and his name is above the others by the film title.
• No film release date for the film.
• the gun indicates the film genre.
• Names of the other actors underneath the character.
• Cannes film festival award recognition on the film poster which could indicate to the audience how good the film is. Cannes is a globally recognised film festival.

Evaluation Activity 3

 

 This is our directors commentary.  In this short audio tape we will answer the following specific questions.

 1. What does a production company do?
 

2. The idea of a distributor and who that might be and why.
 

3. Where the money might have come from for a film such as yours
 

4. Why the various people are named in the titles- which jobs appear in titles and in what order and how have you reflected this?
 

5.  What your film is similar to 'institutionally' ?

Evaluation Activity 7

Looking back on the preliminary task I feel that I have progressed a lot with the types of shot we should use and how to use them most effectively. I have developed skills for keeping continuity throughout the scenes which I fell is very important. Poor continuity would be very noticeable and would affect the quality of the film and reflect badly on us as directors.

I feel that I have learnt when to use the match on action shots to good affect and to edit it correctly so that you cannot see the difference. An example of this happened during the preliminary task when Alex reached for the door handle and he then  re-reached for it again so there was no continuity in then scene. Having watched the scene and identified our mistake we corrected it in the final product. This imporved the scene significantly which gave the scene an authentic look in the film .

 

I also learnt how to use the 180 degree rule. I feel that we used the 180 degree rule effectivley in both the preliminary task and in the final task. The correct implementation of the 180 degree rule made a significant difference in our tasks as you can see from the attached.







This scene is the over the shoulder shot which we used on the left in the preliminary task and on the right is our main film in our preliminary task. On the left we have shot the scene too far away from Sams shoulder which means that we are not giving the audience an insight into what Sam is seeing. Where as on the actual film on the right the way we shot the scene we give the audience a chance to understand my point of view.  I believe that by correcting the mistake that we made in the preliminary task we have made the shot more engaging. By doing this we are trying to make the audience feel like they are in the room with us.

Evaluation Activity 1

Top left hand corner: In this clip we have used a close up shot of my hand reaching out in a punching motion. We think that this is an effective shot because the audience are tricked into thinking that this will be an action film where it will all kick off from the start therefore grabbing their immediate attention however in reality it is a comedy. We feel the font is a good thing to have on a moving slide as it will not distract the viewers from the actual film and will also introduce them to a main character.

Top middle : In this shot we have a close up of Sam's face and the villainous sign he is making. We think this is a very effective shot as it gives the audience a chance to form an opinion on Sam's character and immediately identifies him as someone who has a bad attitude. We have also used a dark background behind Sam to re enforce with the audience that he is a gloomy dark mysterious character. It is important that the shot builds up the nature of the character without the need for words so that the audience becomes intrigued by what they are seeing. We have not centred Sam within this scene as we are trying to make the audience aware of the room Sam is in. This is because the nature of the room adds to the building of the character by the audience.

Top right : In this shot we have used a double the over shoulder shot. This is effective as it gives the audience the perspective of what me and Alex are seeing and makes them feel like they are in the movie with us. This is designed to keep the audience engaged with the film. We have centred the TV in this shot as our main focus as we wanted to draw the audiences attention to the fact that we are watching the television. This immediately makes the audience want to see the bad guy that me and Alex talked about earlier which means that early on we hook the audience in and they want to see more.

Middle left : In the middle left shot we can see that we have used an over the shoulder shot which gives the audience the perspective of the character and also involves the audience within the scene. When you compare it to the over the shoulder shot that we have used with the TV it is different as it has a character interaction. This shot is intended to make the audience switch on and pay attention to see what is happening.

Middle : Just like the previous shot we have used the over the shoulder shot as we feel that in this shot it is even more effective as we have the hidden Alex's identity and this makes the scene feel mysterious. We also feel that this shot gives the audience a real feel for the surroundings and allows the audience to see where we are. This is also where we first introduced my character into the scene.

Middle right : This is a great match on action shot as we have zoomed in on the mystery mans hand grabbing the door. This builds the tension within the scene and makes the audience focus as they are wondering what is behind that door, if the mystery man will reveal himself and why he is so secretive. This means that even though the hand is centred everyone the audience are aware of the dark scenery which gives them an indication that something bad will happen. This in turns builds up the audiences tension and anticipation therefore keeping them engaged.

Bottom left: We have used a new font and changed the positioning of our writing so not to take the focus away from Sam as he is our villain. We have used the writing to establish to the audience that we are watching the news from before. The lighting is low key to show the audience that Sam is in a gloomy setting and it adds to the villainous look of Sam. We have used a wide shot purposely for the reason that we want the viewers to see that Sam is in a evil villain lair. This is also how we introduce our villainous character Samuel .

Bottom middle : We have used a constructive shot which shows half of Alex's body. This is effective as it creates an increase in tension to the scene. We cut it there and did not show any more so that we could make the audience tune in and really focus on what was about to happen. I think that this can also encourage the audience to use audience to use their own imagination to anticipate what might happen next. We have also shown costume in this scene for the first time as we see a hooded figure. This is our first real introduction into Alex's character.

Bottom right: This is the title of Red Tornado, this is effective as we have centred the shot on the  massive explosion in the background which paints the scene of some violence in the movie which is what there is but in a comedic way with the super villains and the superhero. Again this is designed to grab the audiences attention. The Genre is not really given away in the first two minutes but Ii think that is effective as it allows us to have the tense build up at the start. We have decided to have the Red Tornado in the left hand corner as we are really trying to drive through the explosion which really gets the audience engaged.

Evaluation Task 2

 

This Alex Valenete and Spiderman's Toby Maguire

Similarities:

1. They both take the lead role in their films. Both characters start off as ordinary people in their roles and have no super hero powers to start off with. Neither of them start off with any intention to become super heroes.

2. Both characters are mysterious and hidden in the background. Both of them are social outcasts.

3. Their appearance is similar. They both have a clean cut look and would appear non threatening to an audience.

4. Alex has the conventional jokey attitude of a teenager. During the scene Alex tells a joke that is not remotely funny in a situation in which a joke was not needed.

Differences:

1. Alex has a sidekick in me where as Toby Maguire as Spiderman fights alone. The Spiderman character works alone where as in our opening two minutes Alex is always with me.

2. Alex knows his enemy from an early stage where as in  Spiderman there is a more in depth look into his family life before introducing a villainous character

3. Within our opening two minutes we don't know Alex's character well enough to know his persona. In Spiderman we know a lot about the background of his character such as family and friends.

Film Conventions

The film conforms to most conventions of a comedy film, especially comedy spoofs of super hero films such as Kick Ass. There are lots of things similar between the two movies, as well as other movies under the genre of comedy or spoof.

Final Media Project Film / Evaluation Activity 5

 

Our film Red Tornado has taken inspiration from other films such as the film called movie superhero movie. In the superhero movie it uses the same dramatic build up of music and scene sequences at the start that our film has used. We have a heartbeat which makes the audience switch on as it is engaging them to wonder what is going to happen. We have ensured that our rolling credits allows the audience to keep interest within the film while allowing them to see who is in the film.

We rotate between two scenes which are me punching and doing pull ups. Mixed in we have a dramatic and tense walk from Alex in which we follow Alex's foot steps. This builds up the tension as the audience are unaware of what is happening and where it will lead to. Alex then walks through the door to see me playing a game console. This then straight away puts the audience at ease as they see that it is a comedic scene rather than an action scene.

We also will link our film to Batman as we have two superheroes in me and Alex. We compare ourselves to the pairing of Robin and Batman the only difference is that me and Alex are not the conventional superhero and sidekick as we have a comedic twist to our roles. Where as in Batman they have a more serious look at crime and we have a more laid back look at it.