Codes and Conventions
Hot Fuzz (2007)
Symbolic Codes
Setting
In Hot Fuzz the film is set in a countryside town in Gloucestershire as the Metropolitan Police service has decided to move police officer, Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), to a fictional place called Sandford. It is supposedly a place with no crime rate and has won 'Village of the year' countless times before and everyone is happy with the way things are. It looks like the standard, stereotypical countryside village where nothing particularly interesting or important happens. The atmosphere or mood generally we can get from the film is that everything is perfect until the story develops.
Mise en scene
In the shot below, there are a group of people in the film who want their village to be absolutely perfect and don't want people to ruin the reputation so they will do anything they can to keep it that way. In this shot the costumes they use are black cloaks that make them seem scary but as it's more of a comedy/action film; it's funny as these people are middle aged people and most of the time its young people who hide their identities. The set design makes it seem eerie and secretive, like how it is for most of the film, as they are in some sort of courtyard of an old castle and it's dark with an eerie blue colour (possibly from the moonlight) adding a supernatural element to it. The props they use are radios and torches and even though you can't see it in this shot, they have weapons underneath their cloaks. The group of people in the shot are already there and have been startled by the unexpected appearance of Sergeant Angel as they were having a discussion on what story to make up for his death which is why they are sitting down and he's standing up. Also if you were seeing this shot for the very first time you could tell that everyone sitting down are the hostiles to the protagonist.
Acting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cun-LZvOTdw
In this scene, the three officers have to go to a farm to sort out an issue with the farmer and cutting down other peoples garden hedges. The farmer has a very inaudible and strong west country accent making the scene humorous as Nicholas has to have what he's saying translated through the two other Police Officers. They are all very composed as police officers normally are and the farmer doesn't seem fazed or afraid of the police but he does do as they say. Nicholas' facial expression throughout this scene is mostly confusion as he doesn't understand what the farmers saying and he seems bemused by his mannerisms. Angel speaks with authority and seems calm in the presence of a man with a shotgun but conducts himself with a lot of experience behind him, not literally though.
Colour
As this film is quite a gory, bloody and violent film, I think that what the director decided to for this scene was to have the cloaked man lurking in an alleyway but use the red light as symbolism as the connotations of red is blood and violence and this man is holding a axe, which about twenty seconds after this shot, he uses to behead two people just because they were bad actors and having an affair with one another. Also the red and black colours can mean two things; the black meaning mystery and the red being violence and the people in this film who wear these cloaks, both share those things as they've been able to stop Sergeant Angel from finding out the truth.
Technical Codes
Camerawork
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMT2RwFFs_g
During the opening of the scene in the link above, Sergeant Angel has come back again to fight back against the murderers in Sandford and they weren't expecting him to come back or they thought that he was dead. However the camera angle they use on the villagers faces are close up face shots that have gradually zoomed in on them. They zoom in on them as this small part of the scene isn't fast paced as they are all fairly shocked/surprised that he's come back and it builds up tension until the first shots are fired.
Editing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoTThWeyR0Q
In this film, one technique that they use are quick shots and these can be to quicken the pace of a certain part of the film, imply that someone's in a rush or that it's a chaotic scene or to convey lots of information quickly. A good example of this is included in the link above when Nicholas goes back to the Police station to collect a range of firearms to fight against the group of village members and in the quick shots it includes things like opening lockers and doors, entering in a pin, grabbing shotguns and pistols and loading them with ammo.
Audio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMT2RwFFs_g
For the audio, in this scene they are using firearms so obviously they wouldn't let actors actually shoot real guns so they would have to include non diegetic sound effects to make it sound as if they are really shooting at each other. What might be diegetic is the sounds of the debris crashing and breaking as the shots are fired and they miss their targets. There's a tense audio noise that plays until Angel says "Morning" where it switches to an intense soundtrack as they start shooting.
Lighting
The lighting in the church fair scene is bright as it's a sunny day as it's a fair so it fits the mood for the scene as people will be enjoying themselves and having fun. The sun spreads all across the church yard on everyone in this scene so the colour of everything is brighter than if it was cloudy.
Written Codes
Printed Language
As Nicholas Angel is a police officer, and the story is shown through his perspective, it would make sense for the audience to see most of the printed language be serious issues like him reading a sign about not serving alcohol to under 18's. Also the first thing that we see him sit down and read is the local newspaper where he as the new police officer in the village can update himself on what is going on and he could be looking to see if anything suspicious or criminal is happening. These local newspapers are used later on in trying to find out why the terrible things in the film happen.
Spoken Language
Most of the spoken language that the characters use in this film can be quite vulgar, most of it coming from the Police officers at the Sandford Police Force. Most of them are quite lazy, clueless and unexperienced which contrasts to how the Metropolitain police in London are like. They normally aren't concentrating on the job and are brainwashed into believing that basically everything bad that happens in Sandford is an accident. Some of their jokes and remarks are quite sexual or explicit but it is a Police service and those sort of words and phrases they use are used in workplaces. Some workplaces even have a swear tin were you put money in if you swear which is what they use but that is mainly used for comedy scenes.
Conventions
Form Conventions
We would expect in Hot Fuzz for the main actor, Simon Pegg (Nicholas), to be a joker and act like a clown or a showman for the whole film as it is an action/comedy but it's actually Nick Frost (Danny) who has those characteristics in this film. However as the film goes on some of those traits that Danny has rubs off on Nicholas and by the end of the film it is clear that they are best friends when at the start of the film they look like chalk and cheese. Also another form convention would be that the antagonist/s would be someone who we think it would be and then someone that we wouldn't think it would've been eg. Simon Skinner (expected) and Danny's Dad (unexpected).
Story Conventions
The common narrative structures in this sort of comedy film are that the serious one and the funny one would end up being best mates even though they're two very different characters. The two detective inspector twins who are both quite hostile towards Nicholas end up on good terms with him at the end of the film and also another one of the Police officers who is pretty useless and afraid of command ends up taking charge of the plan in the supermarket fight scene so there's character development there. Also Inspector Frank Butterman (Danny's Dad) who was made to look as if he was the good guy and the one to uphold the law was actually the one who started the group of people and the idea to murder people who ruined the good reputation of the village.
Genre Conventions
The genre conventions used in 'Hot Fuzz' for comedy could be the use of some of the actors that they use in other films, 'Shaun of the Dead' and 'The Worlds end', that director Edgar Wright made 3 years before 'Hot Fuzz. He uses Simon Pegg and Nick Frost a lot as well as Bill Nighy, Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, David Bradley to name a few. It's set in a perfect looking village but Nicholas works in the Police department so we see things through the perspective of a police officer surrounded. In like nearly every scene at least one thing someone says or does is normally somewhat humourous like in the scene where Nickolas and Danny are eating Cornetto's and Danny says "Whats the matter, brainfreeze?" and Nicholas answers "No, Brainwave. Get us back to the station, NOW!" and then Danny scoffs his cornetto quickly and then gets a brainfreeze. Also conventions for action are that there are plenty of car chases, killings, fights, explosions and also very graphic scenes.
The World's End (2013)
Symbolic Codes
Setting
The setting for 'The World's End is a fictional place called Newton Haven which is where a group of five guys called Gary (Simon Pegg), Andy (Nick Frost), Oliver (Martin Freeman), Steven (Paddy Considine) and Pete (Eddie Marsan) all grew up together when they were in school. They call it a boring town where nothing ever happened but it's changed since they all left school in 1989. It just looks like any average countryside sort of town but it looks more busy than the one in 'Hot Fuzz'. The mood at the start of their time back in Newton Haven is natural and everthing feels normal although this will all change later.
Mise en Scene
In this first shot, we can see four of the guys sitting outside the train station Gary said he'd pick them up from but he is late. For the set design; it's sunny and can be reflective of the fact that it is a reunion of five good old friends meeting each other again for the first time in a while however they are unhappy as Gary is about an hour late and the fact that two of them are checking the time and they are all sitting down rather than standing up and aren't holding their luggage implies their frustration. They are all wearing fairly smart, middle aged men type of clothes and this is in contrasts to Gary's clothes as they can come across possibly immature and young for his age but it mainly shows how different he is compared to his friends who have very professional jobs.
Acting
For acting I chose the scene where Gary goes to Andy to invite him to come and join him and the others to go and do the golden mile, (the purpose of the plot) where they go to twelve different pubs and drink one pint from each of them, and this is because it shows the differences in them after all those years of not seeing each other. During this scene you can see the difference in the behaviour and mannerisms of these two men as Andy comes across as very corporate, sensible and businesslike whereas Gary is very childish, vulgar and immature. In the third picture down you can see that Gary is spinning around on his chair as he waits for Andy to respond properly to him as there is a bit of tension/awkwardness between them. In terms of their facial expressions, Andy's doesn't really change at all as he isn't keen on the idea that Gary has and he's not particularly bothered about talking to Gary or to send him away to leave him alone. However Gary uses his hands a lot which is a sign of someone with a lot of energy to give and is very excited and also the second to last and last picture shows that.
Colour
In 'The World's End' they use colours like blue and green and i think this because it is about an alien, outer space invasion and green can represent aliens and monsters sic-fi aspects of the story and then the blue can represent the fact that the film is about five guys on a night out and blue is more of a masculine colour but it can also be used because robots wouldn't have red blood as they aren't human so it makes more sense for them to have blue blood or goo .
Technical Codes
Camerawork
For camerawork, there is a lot of fighting in this scene but unlike a lot of stereotypical movie fight scenes there aren't lots of shots but longer continuous cuts of the main characters fighting like Andy, Pete, Gary, Stephen and Sam. Also for the framing, it focuses mainly on one of the main characters fighting and then in the rest of the frame it will have people in the background fighting and inside the pub objects will be flying around and there will be debris doing the same as well.
Editing
In this film, the normally use edits when they are explaining or trying to move the story on like when Stephen is taken away by Basil who explains to him what happened to the town, Newton Haven, when they left in 1990 and when he's explaining it cuts to shots of the girls that Gary, Pete and Andy suddenly fancy as it's related to what he is talking about. When Basil is telling him how the robots take control of humans it cuts to shots of them doing what he says like kissing, touching, and taking DNA off of them. Also at the start of the film they show what the five guys look like now that they're all grown up and it starts with Gary as the camera pans across the room and then it cuts
Hot Fuzz (2007)
Symbolic Codes
Setting
In Hot Fuzz the film is set in a countryside town in Gloucestershire as the Metropolitan Police service has decided to move police officer, Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), to a fictional place called Sandford. It is supposedly a place with no crime rate and has won 'Village of the year' countless times before and everyone is happy with the way things are. It looks like the standard, stereotypical countryside village where nothing particularly interesting or important happens. The atmosphere or mood generally we can get from the film is that everything is perfect until the story develops.
Mise en scene
In the shot below, there are a group of people in the film who want their village to be absolutely perfect and don't want people to ruin the reputation so they will do anything they can to keep it that way. In this shot the costumes they use are black cloaks that make them seem scary but as it's more of a comedy/action film; it's funny as these people are middle aged people and most of the time its young people who hide their identities. The set design makes it seem eerie and secretive, like how it is for most of the film, as they are in some sort of courtyard of an old castle and it's dark with an eerie blue colour (possibly from the moonlight) adding a supernatural element to it. The props they use are radios and torches and even though you can't see it in this shot, they have weapons underneath their cloaks. The group of people in the shot are already there and have been startled by the unexpected appearance of Sergeant Angel as they were having a discussion on what story to make up for his death which is why they are sitting down and he's standing up. Also if you were seeing this shot for the very first time you could tell that everyone sitting down are the hostiles to the protagonist.
Acting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cun-LZvOTdw
In this scene, the three officers have to go to a farm to sort out an issue with the farmer and cutting down other peoples garden hedges. The farmer has a very inaudible and strong west country accent making the scene humorous as Nicholas has to have what he's saying translated through the two other Police Officers. They are all very composed as police officers normally are and the farmer doesn't seem fazed or afraid of the police but he does do as they say. Nicholas' facial expression throughout this scene is mostly confusion as he doesn't understand what the farmers saying and he seems bemused by his mannerisms. Angel speaks with authority and seems calm in the presence of a man with a shotgun but conducts himself with a lot of experience behind him, not literally though.
Colour
As this film is quite a gory, bloody and violent film, I think that what the director decided to for this scene was to have the cloaked man lurking in an alleyway but use the red light as symbolism as the connotations of red is blood and violence and this man is holding a axe, which about twenty seconds after this shot, he uses to behead two people just because they were bad actors and having an affair with one another. Also the red and black colours can mean two things; the black meaning mystery and the red being violence and the people in this film who wear these cloaks, both share those things as they've been able to stop Sergeant Angel from finding out the truth.
Technical Codes
Camerawork
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMT2RwFFs_g
During the opening of the scene in the link above, Sergeant Angel has come back again to fight back against the murderers in Sandford and they weren't expecting him to come back or they thought that he was dead. However the camera angle they use on the villagers faces are close up face shots that have gradually zoomed in on them. They zoom in on them as this small part of the scene isn't fast paced as they are all fairly shocked/surprised that he's come back and it builds up tension until the first shots are fired.
Editing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoTThWeyR0Q
In this film, one technique that they use are quick shots and these can be to quicken the pace of a certain part of the film, imply that someone's in a rush or that it's a chaotic scene or to convey lots of information quickly. A good example of this is included in the link above when Nicholas goes back to the Police station to collect a range of firearms to fight against the group of village members and in the quick shots it includes things like opening lockers and doors, entering in a pin, grabbing shotguns and pistols and loading them with ammo.
Audio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMT2RwFFs_g
For the audio, in this scene they are using firearms so obviously they wouldn't let actors actually shoot real guns so they would have to include non diegetic sound effects to make it sound as if they are really shooting at each other. What might be diegetic is the sounds of the debris crashing and breaking as the shots are fired and they miss their targets. There's a tense audio noise that plays until Angel says "Morning" where it switches to an intense soundtrack as they start shooting.
Lighting
The lighting in the church fair scene is bright as it's a sunny day as it's a fair so it fits the mood for the scene as people will be enjoying themselves and having fun. The sun spreads all across the church yard on everyone in this scene so the colour of everything is brighter than if it was cloudy.
Written Codes
Printed Language
As Nicholas Angel is a police officer, and the story is shown through his perspective, it would make sense for the audience to see most of the printed language be serious issues like him reading a sign about not serving alcohol to under 18's. Also the first thing that we see him sit down and read is the local newspaper where he as the new police officer in the village can update himself on what is going on and he could be looking to see if anything suspicious or criminal is happening. These local newspapers are used later on in trying to find out why the terrible things in the film happen.
Spoken Language
Most of the spoken language that the characters use in this film can be quite vulgar, most of it coming from the Police officers at the Sandford Police Force. Most of them are quite lazy, clueless and unexperienced which contrasts to how the Metropolitain police in London are like. They normally aren't concentrating on the job and are brainwashed into believing that basically everything bad that happens in Sandford is an accident. Some of their jokes and remarks are quite sexual or explicit but it is a Police service and those sort of words and phrases they use are used in workplaces. Some workplaces even have a swear tin were you put money in if you swear which is what they use but that is mainly used for comedy scenes.
Conventions
Form Conventions
We would expect in Hot Fuzz for the main actor, Simon Pegg (Nicholas), to be a joker and act like a clown or a showman for the whole film as it is an action/comedy but it's actually Nick Frost (Danny) who has those characteristics in this film. However as the film goes on some of those traits that Danny has rubs off on Nicholas and by the end of the film it is clear that they are best friends when at the start of the film they look like chalk and cheese. Also another form convention would be that the antagonist/s would be someone who we think it would be and then someone that we wouldn't think it would've been eg. Simon Skinner (expected) and Danny's Dad (unexpected).
Story Conventions
The common narrative structures in this sort of comedy film are that the serious one and the funny one would end up being best mates even though they're two very different characters. The two detective inspector twins who are both quite hostile towards Nicholas end up on good terms with him at the end of the film and also another one of the Police officers who is pretty useless and afraid of command ends up taking charge of the plan in the supermarket fight scene so there's character development there. Also Inspector Frank Butterman (Danny's Dad) who was made to look as if he was the good guy and the one to uphold the law was actually the one who started the group of people and the idea to murder people who ruined the good reputation of the village.
Genre Conventions
The genre conventions used in 'Hot Fuzz' for comedy could be the use of some of the actors that they use in other films, 'Shaun of the Dead' and 'The Worlds end', that director Edgar Wright made 3 years before 'Hot Fuzz. He uses Simon Pegg and Nick Frost a lot as well as Bill Nighy, Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, David Bradley to name a few. It's set in a perfect looking village but Nicholas works in the Police department so we see things through the perspective of a police officer surrounded. In like nearly every scene at least one thing someone says or does is normally somewhat humourous like in the scene where Nickolas and Danny are eating Cornetto's and Danny says "Whats the matter, brainfreeze?" and Nicholas answers "No, Brainwave. Get us back to the station, NOW!" and then Danny scoffs his cornetto quickly and then gets a brainfreeze. Also conventions for action are that there are plenty of car chases, killings, fights, explosions and also very graphic scenes.
The World's End (2013)
Symbolic Codes
Setting
The setting for 'The World's End is a fictional place called Newton Haven which is where a group of five guys called Gary (Simon Pegg), Andy (Nick Frost), Oliver (Martin Freeman), Steven (Paddy Considine) and Pete (Eddie Marsan) all grew up together when they were in school. They call it a boring town where nothing ever happened but it's changed since they all left school in 1989. It just looks like any average countryside sort of town but it looks more busy than the one in 'Hot Fuzz'. The mood at the start of their time back in Newton Haven is natural and everthing feels normal although this will all change later.
Mise en Scene
In this first shot, we can see four of the guys sitting outside the train station Gary said he'd pick them up from but he is late. For the set design; it's sunny and can be reflective of the fact that it is a reunion of five good old friends meeting each other again for the first time in a while however they are unhappy as Gary is about an hour late and the fact that two of them are checking the time and they are all sitting down rather than standing up and aren't holding their luggage implies their frustration. They are all wearing fairly smart, middle aged men type of clothes and this is in contrasts to Gary's clothes as they can come across possibly immature and young for his age but it mainly shows how different he is compared to his friends who have very professional jobs.
Acting
For acting I chose the scene where Gary goes to Andy to invite him to come and join him and the others to go and do the golden mile, (the purpose of the plot) where they go to twelve different pubs and drink one pint from each of them, and this is because it shows the differences in them after all those years of not seeing each other. During this scene you can see the difference in the behaviour and mannerisms of these two men as Andy comes across as very corporate, sensible and businesslike whereas Gary is very childish, vulgar and immature. In the third picture down you can see that Gary is spinning around on his chair as he waits for Andy to respond properly to him as there is a bit of tension/awkwardness between them. In terms of their facial expressions, Andy's doesn't really change at all as he isn't keen on the idea that Gary has and he's not particularly bothered about talking to Gary or to send him away to leave him alone. However Gary uses his hands a lot which is a sign of someone with a lot of energy to give and is very excited and also the second to last and last picture shows that.
Colour
In 'The World's End' they use colours like blue and green and i think this because it is about an alien, outer space invasion and green can represent aliens and monsters sic-fi aspects of the story and then the blue can represent the fact that the film is about five guys on a night out and blue is more of a masculine colour but it can also be used because robots wouldn't have red blood as they aren't human so it makes more sense for them to have blue blood or goo .
Technical Codes
Camerawork
For camerawork, there is a lot of fighting in this scene but unlike a lot of stereotypical movie fight scenes there aren't lots of shots but longer continuous cuts of the main characters fighting like Andy, Pete, Gary, Stephen and Sam. Also for the framing, it focuses mainly on one of the main characters fighting and then in the rest of the frame it will have people in the background fighting and inside the pub objects will be flying around and there will be debris doing the same as well.
Editing
In this film, the normally use edits when they are explaining or trying to move the story on like when Stephen is taken away by Basil who explains to him what happened to the town, Newton Haven, when they left in 1990 and when he's explaining it cuts to shots of the girls that Gary, Pete and Andy suddenly fancy as it's related to what he is talking about. When Basil is telling him how the robots take control of humans it cuts to shots of them doing what he says like kissing, touching, and taking DNA off of them. Also at the start of the film they show what the five guys look like now that they're all grown up and it starts with Gary as the camera pans across the room and then it cuts
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