Saturday, 2 May 2009

Generic Conventions of Cop Comedies

Rush Hour 3
Establishing shot, starting high. Gradually zooms in and eventually cuts to mid shots.
Natural lighting
Begins with something silly to keep your attention. In this case it’s chris tucker as a policeman directing traffic and dancing in the middle of the road, song climaxes and cars begin to crash.
Non-diagetic sound is what’s in headphones.
Lots of commotion and things happening.
Lets two drivers off by taking them to dinner, which wouldn’t happen in the real world.
Realistic costumes.

Naked Gun 33 1/3 The Final Insult
Begins with over-dramatic music
Establishing shot of where we are.
Events gradually start to unfold but are totally ridiculous. A lot of the events seem quite random and include things like purposely breaking continuity for comic effect. (pistol runs out of ammo and when it next cuts to him he has a machine gun.)
Things go on in background that you might not notice first time round.
For the first few mins there is no dialogue, it’s all through movements.
Camera often zooms to extreme close ups of people’s faces to show expressions so words aren’t needed.
Again realistic costumes.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Natural lighting – bright and sunny
Light music but most of sound is diagetic – people talking and children laughing – at a fayre.
Camera travels through the scene and eventually finds the characters.
Something funny happens – child pretending to be hurt by a chainsaw and ruining the magic trick. Says she wants to be an actor.
Cuts to opening titles – created on a computer, progresses through certain scenes that represent places in the film. Backing music more prominent.

Hot Fuzz
Dim lighting.
Opening scene is over serious. Introduces main character who says how they’ve been trained. – quick editing
Cuts to station where main character is being transferred – humourous moment
- a series of events and comments that in the real world wouldn’t happen. Used for comic effect.
Lighter lighting and more natural – through windows.
No music in background, it’s all dialogue.
Realistic costumes.

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