Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer were two of the six
writers of Scary Movie. Every movie that they made after that had
marketing that made sure you knew. It
also helped that their movies have mostly tread on the same spoof and parody
territory. Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, and Superfast! all parodied different movies
in the way that Scary Movie took on
the horror of the late 1990s. As their
career progressed toward what would be their worst movie, The Starving Games,
they became less invested in spoofing a concept and more focused on referencing
as many pieces of “current” pop culture as possible (current is in quotes
because they were current when the movies were made but out of date when they
were released). They had lost any effort
that had once been put into their work.
That changed in 2013 when the writing and directing pair
released Best Night Ever, their first
movie that didn’t seem to be a spoof of anything. Sure, it was playing on an idea similar to The Hangover, but the movie was its own
thing, telling its own story. Four
friends went to Las Vegas for a bachelorette party. When they didn’t have the money to pay for
their penthouse suite, they found a cheap motel and new ways to entertain
themselves. There was stripping, robbery,
wrestling, and sex as they had the craziest, yet best, night they had ever had
in their lives.
That’s not to say that Best
Night Ever was a great movie. It was
okay. It had a lot of problems, with the
biggest being how it used the found footage style in which it was filmed. Found footage shooting and storytelling needs
to be carefully considered in order to work well. There must be many specific details met in
order to get people invested in something done in the found footage style. If any of those requirements are not met, the
entire concept could collapse, leaving audiences confused, or even worse,
bored. That’s why there are so few
successful found footage movies. It’s
difficult to get them right.
Best Night Ever
highlighted two of the problems that found footage flicks commonly have. It did not have the same “how did someone get
a hold of that footage?” issue that people have with movies that end in the
characters’ implied deaths. It had
different issues that chipped away the immersion it tried so hard to
create. One of the problems created
confusion. The movie was sometimes tough
to follow because of it. The other
problem was a simple technical issue that might only be noticeable to people
who work in some sort of movie related business. Both were troublesome and could have been
avoided were the movie not made in the found footage style.
The first problem, which was confusing when it happened, was
the point of view. There were four main
characters in Best Night Ever. The woman getting married was Claire (Desiree
Hall). She brought along her sister
Leslie (Samantha Colburn), her friend Zoe (Eddie Ritchard), and her dog groomer
Janet (Crista Flanagan). Between the
four of them, there was one camera. In
most found footage, one character is the camera person and they remain the
camera person until something happens to them.
In REC and Quarantine, that person was the
cameraman for a news crew. In Cloverfield, it was the guy who was
filming his friend’s party, and decided that he should then film everything
going down in New York. Even when
multiple people are filming, there’s usually something done to clarify who has
the camera. Chronicle did a fairly good job of making sure the audience always
knew who was behind the camera when many cameras were being used.
Best Night Ever didn’t
have that touch. It wasn’t always clear
who was holding the camera. In one
scene, one character would have it, and when it cut to the next scene, that
character would be on screen. Then it as
a wait and see who you could see so that you could do a process of elimination
and figure out who had the camera.
That’s a startling thing that audiences won’t react well to. The immersion is broken when an audience is
spending as much time trying to figure out who has the camera as they do
actually watching the movie. Best Night Ever didn’t try to bring
clarity to the camera operator. It just
tossed characters into that role and left it to the audience to clear it up
themselves.
The other problem with the found footage in Best Night Ever was something that might
only be noticed by viewers who study movies.
If you only watch for entertainment, you might not notice what was
wrong. As someone going through film
school (take a drink, I mention this almost every week), I noticed that the
editing didn’t line up with the format of the movie. Found footage done with multiple cameras can
have cuts between things that are happening at the same time. Paranormal
Activity 2 was able to have this cutting because there were cameras set up
throughout the home’s security system.
When there’s only one camera, the J and L cuts common in many movies
should not be possible. (J and L cuts
are when the video transitions to the next clip before the audio, or the audio
before the video, instead of a simultaneous cut). The camera in a single camera found footage
film should have to pan to capture the full conversation.
Early in Best Night
Ever, this editing rule was broken as the characters were talking in their
car on the way to Las Vegas. One
character would be talking and the camera would be on them. Another character would start talking and
then there would be a hard cut to that character instead of a pan over. That wouldn’t be able to happen with the
single camera found footage because there wouldn’t be the extra footage of the
first character to overlap while the second character is talking. There isn’t the added angle being filmed by a
different camera. The conversation
should not be able to be broken up the way it was in the movie, especially
since it’s continuous. The only way
editing would occur would be if there was some filler being removed, which
there wasn’t.
Both of these issues in Best
Night Ever kept it from being as good as it could have been. They broke down the found footage aspect of
the movie, through confusion and jarring cuts.
Not establishing who was holding the camera makes for a struggle for the
audience because they need to figure out who the cameraperson is. Cutting from one angle to another when
there’s only a single camera is breaking the realism of the movie. They were two simple mistakes that, if fixed,
would have made for a stronger work. It
would have been more entertaining, easier to follow, and better. Best
Night Ever, as it is, is just okay.
That’s all it is. It could have
been more, but it’s just okay.
Now for some notes:
- Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer directed Best Night Ever, as well as Date Movie (week 164) and Superfast! (week 229).
- Amin Joseph was in Best Night Ever. He was also in Freelancers (week 14) and Superfast! (week 229).
- Best Night Ever was the second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance for Paul Nygro, who was previously in Parental Guidance (week 27).
- Nick Steele returned for another appearance this week. He had been in Date Movie (week 164) before Best Night Ever.
- Finally, Jena Sims showed up in Best Night Ever. She was in 3-Headed Shark Attack (week 165).
- Have you seen Best Night Ever? What are some other problems with found footage movies? Leave any of your thoughts in the comments.
- I like to take suggestions for the Sunday “Bad” Movies and put them into my scheduling. If you know any movies that I should be checking out for the blog, let me know on Twitter or in the comments.
- When I watch bad movies, I sometimes share clips of them in my Snapchat story. If that sounds interesting, add me (jurassicgriffin).
- Next week, I’ll be heading back into the world of animation. Don Bluth was one of the biggest animation names in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1994, two movies he directed were released. One of them was Thumbelina, which will be the next movie to be covered in the Sunday “Bad” Movies. Come back in seven days’ time to see what I have to say. I hope to see you then.
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