Reflective Essay Charlie Parry I feel my project was able to reflect parts of the research I had carried out into the ‘buddy-cop’ genre however there was details that I felt that I had missed. Something that I feel that I covered well in my film was incorporating the thematic of a buddy-cop film. In my research I had learned the basics of the genre and this could be seen with how I planned out my film be it in the small details, such as the refusal of the handshake between the old and new detectives to represent the initial conflict between the two detectives that is ever present in this genre, to the larger parts in which I had deliberately put emphasis on, for example. I had made the decision to have the police briefing room to be a particularly large room to make the lack of other police even more apparent (also why I had the shot of Detective Jeff looking around the room). This was done in reference to the trope in the genre that the police (and as an extension the police station) to be quite dysfunctional. Emphasis is further put on this aspect as the superintendent is also as dysfunctional as his force is with him having a borderline stroke at the aspect of his only two detectives being called Jeff/Geoff. These subtle and over emphasised details build up the world that the film is set in. These parts are also key as the film could only be under 5 minutes, so I had decided to just introduce the characters, the personalities of them and the case they’ll be working on. I also set the tone of the film by having the odd joke to show this is going to be a light-hearted film which fits well in the genre of ‘buddy-cop’ films. I also had every character in the film to dress almost identically, aviators, white shirt, jeans and a jacket. This was deliberately done as in my research, I found that the two main characters normally wore this type of outfit and therefore I tried to turn it into a joke by having everyone (not including the criminal in the beginning) wear the same variation of the outfit. There are examples of films that fall in the buddy-cop, Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Stray Dogs’ was seen as the first actual entry to the buddy-cop genre. However, this film would obviously look completely different thematically and aesthetically to films in the same genre nowadays. Even films such as ‘In the Heat of the Night’ which was filmed almost 30 years later still would look different to recent releases. Buddy-cop films have more recently gone in the direction of comedy and moved away from thriller (as the theme of the previously talked about films) in a way to appeal to a broader audience. These more recent films are what I based my style and meaning film on. Taking a more comedic look on the crime genre in an attempt to parody the conventions used in these more serious films and therefore using the tropes as a foundation to base the jokes on. In crime/ buddy-cop films, the usual way of starting off these types of films is to have a segment of ‘passing of the old guard’ where an incident takes place where the old, experienced, trust-worthy detectives get involved in something that means they can no longer carry on with their jobs, incidents such as retirement, injury or even death (see ‘The Other Guys [2010] which starts with the original, better detectives ‘aiming for the bushes’ and promptly missing). As I was working with a much smaller crew, I couldn’t have both detectives die so I settled just on one. I then actually used this as a setup for the initial conflict between the new and old detective that I had covered in the previous paragraph. But to expand on it, the film in the genre needs to have this conflict to drive the narrative of the characters spending the runtime of the film trying to create chemistry them, be it through a discovery of a mutual interest (like in Hot Fuzz [2007] with both detectives wanting to be the best cops they can be) or gaining the knowledge of each other's backgrounds (like in Bad Boys [1995]). All these aspects come together over the course of the film so by the end of the film of it they can be what is described as best friends. This is why there needs to be that initial conflict and why I had the refusal of the handshake. I feel the way that my film may have fallen short of seeming appropriate for the genre could be the overall lack of quality that my film displayed. The audio was poor, which is surprisingly not a trope of the sub-genre. The music hadn’t been my finest choice and the quality of the briefing room scene could have not been so inconsistent. However, because I'm aware that these were in issue in this film I know if I were to do it again that this is something I would try to focus on to improve for the next time. If I were to try to adhere to the conventions, then I should of took more time with the audio recordings as jokes can come in all shapes and sizes, rather than just visually, and therefore I needed the voices to be clear as if the audience miss a part of the joke that is being said then the actual punchline to it would fall flat. Another way in which I felt my film fell short of being part of the sub-genre that is ‘buddy-cop’ is to have tried to fit more conventions of the genre into my film. A massive trope usually seen in these types of films is an identifiable car. The car almost acts as a third character within the relationship between the two detectives. Normally featuring a scene where the two protagonists argue over who gets to drive. This is one of the events that I briefly talked about before, when I mentioned that there needs to be these types of events as ways in which you can have two characters increase the chemistry between themselves. You can revolve whole segments of your film based around the car and maybe that could have been something that my film was missing. Not just ‘the car’, but more scenes in which these types of events in my film. To conclude, I felt that ‘Cop Out: A Small Medium at Large’, could be argued that it does fit in with the genre with the conventions that you can find throughout the runtime. There are certain thematic and aesthetic qualities that I feel that I have captured within my film. However, it can also be sensibly argued that it could be described as ‘entry-level’ and I could have further expanded on the conventions that I have talked about before.