Treatment - McCheese and Callaghan.

McCheese and Callaghan are two ex- cops that are now vigilantes taking down villains, now they face their biggest rival, as Evil N appears a super villain, planning on stealing a very precious and priceless jewel to buy a flying tank. It is up to McCheese and Callaghan to bring him down and return the jewel back to the museum.


In the beginning the screen shows the two faces of the protagonists, and fades to black. We both see them hiding in some grass looking for villains, they are both discussing their work, and arguing over relationships and discussing future jobs and relationships. They both notice weird figures moving around in the distance, they are all the same, and they both find this suspicious, and begin crawling closer to the weird figures to investigate further. McCheese realises that these people are henchman because of their similar uniforms, but they dont understand why they are the same. McCheese realises that its not the right time to discuss this and jumps out and see's a henchman, and throws a beanbag at his face, knocking the henchman out comically.
They both look up at each other and laugh, as Callaghan makes fun of McCheese's throw, commenting and saying that he could have done better. As they quarrel over the beanbag more of the henchman (Housleys) arrive at the scene, and leap out of the trees and bushes and run toward the two, spinning nun-chucks and screaming at the top of their voices. The two of them respond by standing in a stance and waiting for the henchman to get closer, as they do, they both fight off the henchman, kicking and punching them, making them fly all over the place in every direction, sometimes doing comical things such as hitting them over the head with a banana. This finally ends as there are dozens of henchman scattered along the ground unconscious. The two vigilantes look at each other and pull big grins, and high five each other in celebration of their victory.

The two vigilantes begin to walk away, as they discuss the possibilities for a meal at noon, but the two are interrupted by a cry for help by a woman. They run toward the scream, and see a woman there, who happens to be the curator at the New York City Museum of history. The two rush and stop McCheese stops too soon and trips over his feet and lands face first on the floor telling them that he is okay. He then gets up and brushes off the sand covering the front of him.
They ask her what is wrong, and they are told the story of the henchman getting away with a priceless jewel that she had found on an exhibition, which was meant to be placed in the museum for safe keeping. But it turns out an evil villain by the name of "Evil N" has stolen it for his own plans to cause chaos in the world. The two vigilantes respond by pulling horrified faces at what was just said about the jewel. Callaghan pulls McCheese aside to discuss something with him in private, he informs McCheese that this good be their big break, but McCheese is too busy eating his block of cheese to notice what Callaghan is telling him, eventually McCheese realises, but not because of Callaghan, but because he is slow and announces that this could be their big break. Callaghan sighs, and they both turn around smiling, they tell the curator that they will help her retrieve this priceless jewel, and take down Evil N and get him locked away for good. McCheese is still eating his giant block of cheese, and Callaghan asks the curator what she wants them to do. She is too busy staring at the peculiar site of a man eating a whole block of cheese, but finally looks at Callaghan and tells him that they must go to New York as Evil N is planning to strike there next, and as people have mentioned sightings of him around the destruction derby track in the New York area. The two vigilantes agree to do the job, and the curator agrees to meet them at the Museum. They both head back to their hotel and pack their luggage, forgetting that they have no money to pay for the room, so they decide to climb through the air conditioning vents to get away without the hotel staff realising. They both fall down in the kitchen of the hotel only to be greeted by the kitchen staff using sharp knives to cut food. The staff realise what they're doing, and the two vigilantes run for their lives, and jump out of the window which happens to be on the 20th floor of the hotel, and they both land luckily on top of an open truck with hay in it.
They both do rude gestures to the staff, only to realise that Callaghan has forgot his mobile phone.

The two of them arrive at the airport and present their tickets to the woman at the desk, she asks if they have packed their own suitcases, and they both smile and say no we packed each others. The woman stares at them, looking very scared, and asks them to hold one minute. The two vigilantes look at each other confused and shrug, suddenly two security guards rush out and tackle the men to the ground in an instant. After an hour of hassle and re-packing cases, the two vigilantes are aloud on the plane. Behind McCheese is an annoying 8 year old girl, who keeps insulting their facial hair, and keeps kicking their chairs. During the flight McCheese decides to tie her shoelaces together when she doesn’t notice, the girl gets up to go to the bathroom, and falls over, at this moment the plane is experiencing turbulence, and she slides down the path hitting the hostess's pushing them over and making them flail all over the place, the little girl ends up hitting the pilot in the face, and the plane starts to lose altitude. Luckily in the end everything is sorted out and the flight is back on track.

As they land in New York, we see another scene with Evil N laughing in his giant chair, stroking his pet henchman that for some strange reason has a collar attached to his neck. the villain laughs hysterically and speaks to himself about his evil plan with the use of the jewel, which happens to be to sell it to a black market to buy a flying tank to fly to his favorite destinations, and destroy towns and villages that he doesn’t seem to enjoy that much. He then hysterically laughs again and his butler walks in staring at him confused, and asks him why he is talking to himself. The Villain goes bright red and stands up and slaps the butler around the face, and pushes him into a angry wild boar pit for him to be eaten by. We see Evil N smiling as the butler is screaming for help and the boars are squealing, it then leaves the scene as we see Evil N laughing hysterically stroking his henchman’s head.

Then we see the two vigilantes leaving their hotel in New York as they are riding hired bikes to the museum, on the way they nearly get hit by a crazy taxi driver, and decide to give him some hassle. The taxi driver isn’t impressed and chases them down the street with a crow bar, shouting at them in Italian. Eventually the two of them reach the Museum safely, and meet the curator outside. The three of them walk inside, and start discussing the plan to capture Evil N and replace the Jewel. As the curator is walking along with Callaghan, McCheese shouts to him and tells him he is going to inspect the museum. McCheese walks around, eating a giant block of Swiss cheese as he stares like a little child at the different exhibitions on display.
McCheese reaches the bones of a T-rex, and decides to reach to touch it, but before he can poke it, the security guard grabs him and throws him to the ground, punching him continously in the face, until the curator and Callaghan arrive to stop him.
McCheese stands, ready to fight the security guard, but Callaghan stops him. They discuss the plan and the two vigilantes agree to meet at the destruction derby track at 6pm, as the curator has planned for them to race in it to get closer to the villain.

The two vigilantes leave the museum, and stand there for a minute clueless, they both scratch their heads and turn to each other and suggest a massage. They both go to a massage parlour as a montage begins, McCheese gets an attractive young woman to massage him, and ironically Callaghan gets a fat old woman to massage him. Then the two of them get fitted for suits, they try on some weird and wonderful colours varying from green to pink, but both eventually get normal suits with ties. At the end of the montage they come out of a bar, tipsy, and realise that they should be at the destruction derby track in 45 minutes. They both rush for a taxi, but before they can, they are stopped by 3 of the henchman, reaching for their guns, they realise that they left them at the store where they purchased the suits. The two of them look at eachother, and then run to safety, they both run around the streets of New York, jumping over taxis, and stealing bikes to get away as fast as they can. The henchman chases them on motorcycles, so they decide to go down alley ways for safety, they both end up at a dead end with the henchman laughing and walking toward them slowly. McCheese starts to cry, but Callaghan realises that there is a gate next to them, and opens it and runs through, McCheese is still crying but eventually catches on.
They both run in through the door only to be in the place they were meant to be at, the destruction derby arena. The two of them run toward the main entrance to meet the curator, as they look behind them they realise that the henchmen have gone. They get to the entrance and see no sign of the curator, suddenly they hear a roar of an engine, and they see her standing there with two helmets and a beat up car next to her, she smiles at them. And they both laugh in disbelief, they both laugh at her and ask her if she expects them to drive it, the curator nods, and they both argue over who will drive.
Eventually the scene skips as we see Callaghan at the wheel sulking, and McCheese grinning, and patting Callaghan on the back, telling him that he'll have more luck next time. The announcer of the derby doesnt realise he is on the microphone, and is having a phone call with his wife, telling her vulgar things that the audience can hear, the audience all look up at the speakers on the poles, and the announcer see's them all looking up on the jumbo screen. He quickly puts the phone down, tidies himself up, and announces the event. Everyone is still staring at it in disgust, as the announcer counts down, Callaghan starts the engine and McCheese gets pumped up, shouting abuse at the other drivers, one of the rival drivers makes a kissing gesture at him, another slides his finger across his throat and points at McCheese.
The derby begins and Callaghan and McCheese are doing okay, McCheese starts shouting references from cowboy movies, and Samuel L Jackson movies, as Callaghan concentrates on avoiding the other cars and making them collide with another. In the end its just the two vigilantes and another car left, they both laugh, only to be interrupted by three black cars bursting and wrecking the final car. The two vigilantes stare at this and gasp, as they see henchman in each car, carrying semi automatics. Callaghan and McCheese panic as they are unaware of what to do, they check under the seats for something useful to use against the henchman. McCheese tells Callaghan to check the glove compartment, because there’s always something useful in there, he tells McCheese that it’s useless, but cannot finish his sentence as he opens it and finds a semi automatic fully loaded in the compartment. McCheese grabs it quickly, and tells Callaghan to drive; Callaghan drives around as McCheese shoots at the Housleys, hitting their wheels, hitting the engine, causing road blocks. McCheese starts screaming insults at them and laughing, and is interrupted as he sits down and realises that a car is heading straight for them, he turns to Callaghan only to realise that he is too scared to do anything, and has frozen. McCheese tries to turn the wheel but it is jammed, just before they collide, Callaghan and McCheese dive out of the car, as the two cars collide and explode. They both stand up, staring open mouthed at the car wreck, and quickly brushes them off and run toward the stands, but before they can do anything else, Evil N appears on his newly purchased flying tank. Again the two vigilantes stare opened mouthed at this ridiculous contraption as it hovers above the audience high in the sky. McCheese pulls a confused face and asks Evil N if that is a flying tank, Evil N stops laughing instantly, and responds angrily telling him that of course it’s a flying tank. The two of them argue over the stupidity of a flying tank, as Callaghan runs over to the curator, they both laugh and stop suddenly and stare at each other, they both then slowly kiss each other, even though there is a giant uproar about flying tanks. They stop kissing and laugh, only to find Evil N laughing hysterically, soon after the curator does, and Callaghan stares at her in disbelief and asks her why she's laughing. She responds by telling him that she isn’t the real curator, and that it was her plan to the lure them to New York so Evil N could get rid of them once and for all. Callaghan starts to cry as he is heartbroken by this, and drops to the floor in the fetul position rocking back and forth sucking his thumb. The (now fake) curator laughs and spits on him, and kicks him a few times, but he ignores this and carries on crying regardless. McCheese tells him to get up, but he is too busy crying and feeling too sorry for himself to notice. McCheese starts shouting at Callaghan telling him that he is pathetic and useless, only to be stopped as the bandaged up butler whacks him around the head with a brick and knocks him out. They are both put in a cage, as the flying tank takes them away to Evil N's Casino dungeon.
In the jail of the Casino dungeon, Callaghan is still crying and whining about the curator, saying that he loves her and saying that he knows because she grabbed his crotch. McCheese slaps Callaghan around the face with a conveniently placed book. McCheese keeps slapping Callaghan around the face, and reminding him of the time in gym class where he peed himself and the school nerd didn’t realise it was there and slipped and landed on his face, and the time where he had a date with a cheerleader, and he ended up grabbing her breast when he was meant to kiss her, but was too nervous and his mind screwed up. McCheese suddenly stops, as the key rolls out of the book, and screams and shouts that they are saved. Callaghan is in the corner shaking and bleeding from the nose and mouth from all the hits from the giant book. Callaghan stands up and drop kicks McCheese getting pay back for the book slapping. Callaghan picks up the key and opens the door, letting them both out, only to be welcomed by the curator. Callaghan lowers his head, and McCheese begins to yell, but Callaghan tells him to stop, and tells him to run to Evil N and arrest him. McCheese puts a thumb up to Callaghan as he bites a giant bit of cheese.

As McCheese runs away, the curator runs at him with a mace, swinging it around and screaming random battle cries. Callaghan calmly stands there, and before she can do anything her grabs her hair, and slaps her around the face. The curator looks at him angrily, and swears at him furiously. Callaghan tells her to shut up, and hits her around the head with a chair leg. Some how the two of them end up in a wrestling ring, as they brawl with eacother, scratching and biting and pulling, and punching. Eventually the curator is on the floor, and Callaghan climbs onto the ropes shouting things at the curator, Callaghan prepares to do a 450 splash, and as he does it, the curator tells him that she was never evil, she was just undercover trying to help, and that she loves him, and that she's sorry for what she did, but at this time Callaghan is somehow flying through the air in slow motion as she is still in normal motion. Eventually he lands on her, and a loud cracking noise is heard. He cries out for her, and turns her around, he's confused at the fact that she's dead because it wasn’t that brutal, but through further inspection he soon finds out that a fork was stabbed through her somehow, and it was the fork that killed her. Callaghan sits there crying and hugging her, and sucking his thumb.
After this we see McCheese coming out of a bathroom, zipping up his fly and whistling the Indiana Jones theme tune to himself, as he looks up he see's Evil N playing on Viva Piñata, McCheese shouts at him, and notices that he isn’t wearing anything but underwear. Evil N quickly puts his outfit on and laughs hysterically, jumping onto his flying tank and starting it up. We can hear the tank stalling a bit, as McCheese stands their staring at it in confusion, eventually it starts after all the stalling and foul language coming from Evil N. McCheese leaps on the tank as it flies away crashing through the ceiling. Evil N's pet charges at McCheese, but McCheese steps out of the way, and the pet falls off of the tank yelling "I regret nothing!”
Evil N comes out of the tank with a longer moustache for some reason, that touches the floor, he then throws a sword to McCheese, and stops and looks at his hands only to realise he just gave his weapon to the enemy, he then smiles as he pulls out a hand gun. McCheese does a roll to dodge the bullet, and the sword falls off of the roof of the tank, Evil N looks down at McCheese and laughs hysterically asking him if he has any last words, McCheese hesitates, and see's the control panel that moves the barrell of the tank. He thinks to himself that he only has one chance, and throws his last remaining cheddar cheese at the control panel. The Barrel picks Evil N up by his cape, and swings him around a bit, giving him wedgies, and revealing a tattoo of Dora the explorer on his left cheek. The Tank then sucks in, and Evil N's bum gets stuck on the Barrel, which leaves him a tough spot, with no where else to go. McCheese stares at this in disgust, and laughs hysterically at the outcome. He climbs inside, and somehow pilots the tank back to the roof of the building, to be greeted by Callaghan standing there waiting. McCheese gets out of the tank, and laughs and jumps down to high five Callaghan for their achievement. They find out that the jewel is actually still there, and that the tank was stolen, they find the jewel hidden under the garbage bin in Evil N's pool area, which seems to be quite ironic. They both laugh, and are interrupted by sirens and a police helicopter light shining on them. As both of them are blinded by the light, they drop the jewel, and it falls off of the building, and lands on a stray cat, crushing it from the pressure. The police rush in handcuffing Callaghan and McCheese, and they are dragged away and placed into police cars. We then see a montage after their arrest of them in the questioning room, being interrogated, we see funny clips of Callaghan crying, and McCheese spitting on the cops, and him eating random blocks of cheese from every nation, as the montage ends we see them leave the police department, as they both discuss that they are glad that their story was finally believed by the police department. They both stand there staring at the floor shuffling their feet, and ask each other what they should do, after a minute of discussion, suggesting SeaWorld, Wendy’s, or Starbucks, they decide to walk off into the sunset, to Florida, to see Shamu at SeaWorld performing her show. We then see them walk off into the distance as the sunsets, and as they fade away, we see the angry Italian taxi driver come into the scene chasing after them with a crowbar.

Storm Breaker and The Woman in Black.

Im going to analyse Storm Breaker and The Woman in black, and then compare the two, and see how they differenciate from one another, with conventions titles etc.

First of all Stormbreaker, was a slow opening, but quite fast paced as it went along. It starts with a blank screen, with titles, and there is then a sound bridge of a man speaking as the shot fades into the class, panning over the students. The camera then pans onto Alex, and we hear the diegetic sound of the teacher asking Alex to come to the front, and Alex responding. We can hear tense non-diegetic music in the background, we see Alex speaking, and it then cuts to his uncle (Ewan McGregor) light a fuse, this is shown through a low angle shot. We then see Alex speaking again, and from his dress code we can see that he is a typical middle aged teenage boy. We can see from the other students reactions that he is disliked because of his looks and dress code, as one particular girl. This film is mainly aimed at teenagers, as there the protagonist is shown as a teenager in a secondary school, and alot of teens could relate to his struggle etc. The yellow lettering on the bottom of the screen, connote action and adventure, as it is what you'd expect to see in an action film. Its a very engaging opening, keeping the audience interested, and fits perfectly within the spy genre.

The woman in black starts directly, and the media language portrayed automatically tells us that we are watching a thriller/ horror. The titles are white and simplistic with a black background, the white starts to fade and as it does this we can see little chunks of the words start to dissapear. Also at some points, there are really noticeable things occuring in the opening, the thing that is most apparent is a visible black shadow/cloud effect moving across the words on screen.
The weird corrupt font, connotes the fear, and the mysterious atmosphere, something wrong. This will be immediately recognisable to the audience as iconography associated with the thriller genre. A typical teenage or adult audience would find this opening interesting, as they enjoy the intense and pumped up atmosphere created by thriller/horror movie openings, and they could watch this and enjoy it.

Storm Breaker and The Woman in Black differ greatly, Storm Breaker is a young teen spy action film, and The Woman in Black is a thriller/ horror movie.
In Storm Breaker the conventions and titles connote an action movie, due to the computer type text of the titles, and the dress code, accent and body language of the protagonist of the story. From this we can tell it is a more, fast paced, and exciting film that may keep the audience at the edge of their seats all the way through.
Where as in The Woman in Black, it is aimed at an older teenager to adult age range, the conventions and titles connote fear, which gives us the impression of a thriller/horror movie, due to the black background, and eerie non-diegetic soundtrack added to the opening, merging with the mysterious white font fading in and out. From this opening we can tell that The Woman in Black is a more involved,slow and involved psychological film, which will take more of an understanding for the audience to indulge themselves into, that is why it is aimed at an older teenage, adult age group, being more sophisticated.
This how the two films compare, Storm Breaker is more fast paced and exciting, most enjoyable for the younger teens, and The Woman in Black, a more involved more complex film for a older teen/ adult age, which takes some understanding and patience to get into.

Tropic Thunder.

Today we looked at an example of an action comedy that has recently been released, known as Tropic Thunder, we analysed the titles, convention, representations and audience of the film.

Titles : The titles are very simple, and try to avoid a complicated way of opening a film, to keep the audience interested, the titles show the name of the film, in a rugged, worn style of writing, this connotes the idea of things being war torn.
This engages the audience immediately, as it gets straight to the point, and the audience can read the signs, and understand that this is not a sombre and serious look at war. We may take in this method, and encorporate it into our own ideas, and maybe film, to follow to the methods that this comedy action film uses to keep their audience interested.

Representations:
The representations in Tropic Thunder vary, and are all men.
There is mainly a stereotypical representation of men, which means arrogance, rudeness, anger, stubborness, violence and persistence.
Some of the men are also represented as scared, weak and timid, which is associated with the typical nerdy character that we see in most films.
Finally some of the men are shown as confident, yet slightly fearful, and the leader kind of character that we see in most action films, but because of the comedy element, fear is added to show their soft side.
We can use these representations in our film to create characters that follow the typical ways that actors are in most comedy action films, using the stereotypical representations to put forward humor, and violence, sticking close to the comedy action genre, making a successful comedy action opening for a film.

Audience:
The typical audience for a comedy action film, would mainly consist of Older teens varying to middle aged men, and for those who enjoy that kind of mindless comedy, with vulgar references, violence, and humor. Which would be a typical teenager.
We can follow the typical audience and their interests, and formulate ideas that consist of their likes and dislikes, and encorporate these into our films, to help follow the tastes of todays normal audience, making a successful film opening, that pleases the audience, using representations that they have a liking for.

Conventions: There are many conventions of comedy action in this film, some small things, but alot of obvious ones that are easy to notice and are clear to the audience.
These consist of: Guns, explosions, tension, music, camouflage, men, fire, blood, helicopters and Death.
We can use these conventions to makea successful kind of comedy action opening.

Action Comedy.

Today we have researched the genre of action comedy for our set coursework, we have found out certain things that will benefit us in our project of creating the 2 minute film opening.

First of all we researched the kind of narratives that one might see in a comedy action film.

Some include:

Wars, Gangs, sports, and police investigations.

These are the main narratives in an action comedy film.



Secondly, we looked at the settings.

The setting usually used in an action comedy consist of; War grounds, such as the jungle, Schools, streets, Bars, pubs and clubs.

We can incorporate this into our ideas, and maybe use some of these settings as a base of our film.

Next, the stock characters. These are the characters in the film that you either hate or love, and they are all mainly stereotypical.

The typical stock characters in an action comedy are: The stupid one, the smart one, the leader, the foolish one, the naive one, the seductive one, and the bad guy.

We will also use this research on the characters, in our planning, and filming to follow the genre of Action comedy correctly.

The main Iconography's of action comedy movies are;
Bad guys
Gun fights
Violence
Suits
Car chases
Explosions.
Yet again, we may incorporate these into our ideas, keeping to the genre as much as possible.

The audience for films such as these may vary, but they would mainly be of a teenage age, stretching out to middle aged. Maybe the more nerdy, sarcastic and in scene kind of audience may enjoy this film genre more than anyone else.

For the films that I have researched, I found these statistics, based on the

income of the film. These were ther results:

Tropic thunder - $188,039,665
Pulp Fiction - $213,928,762
Drillbit Taylor - $49,686,263

Snatch - $83,557,872

Action Comedy films use a wide range of editing techniques and shots, to create complex, funny and fast paced scenes. They dont stick to a few, they dont keep it simple, they make it complicated, but this makes the film more exciting for the audience.

The main techniques used are:
Fast pans, cuts, zooms, headshots, establishing shots, low angle shot, high angle shot, long shot, and mid-shot.