Evie Calaby AS Media: The Hangover Part 1

We were given the task of remaking the opening few minutes of Todd Phillips’ famous 2009 comedy, ‘The Hangover’. The film is A Las Vegas-set comedy centered around three groomsmen who lose their about-to-be-wed friend during their drunken misadventures. They must then retrace their steps in order to find him. The remake had to be a true shot for shot remake and we were told to get into a group of six. My group consisted of myself, Bill Mumford, Jake Brownbill, Ben ‘Gary’ Hurst, Nicole O’ Malley and Beatrice Norman. In class, we planned to have allocated roles (such as director, producer etc.) but we then decided that it would be far more efficient if everyone did a little bit of everything. We watched the opening of the hangover several times and made a list of what we would need in the sense of props and cast. We would also need to purchase the song ‘It’s now or never’ by El Vez to go over our titles.

Cast:

Phil – Ben Hurst
Stu – Ben Thorpe (a friend of ours)
Alan – Bill Mumford
Black Doug – Jamie Saunders (another friend)
Tracy – Becky Easter (another friend)
Tracy’s father – Ben Hurst’s dad
Tracy’s mum – my mum
Bridesmaid #1 – Nicole O’ Malley
Bridesmaid #2 – Me

Props:

Wedding dress
Bridesmaid dresses
Mannequin
Mirror
Wedding cake
Phones
Aviator shades
Convertible
White bath robe
Flowers
White van
Clothes rail
Lots of white chairs
Hairbrush
Magazine

Obviously, with a budget of absolutely nothing, putting all of this together wasn’t going to be easy. We asked around to find close matches to the props that we needed. I was able to find my old bridesmaid dresses from when I was younger and my mum had a few formal dresses and a white bath robe she was willing to lend us. I was able to make a smaller almost replica of the wedding cake, Bill’s dad has a 1966 Buick Special which he kindly lent us for a shoot along with some sunglasses. Jake said that he would be able to get flowers, a mannequin, a magazine and possibly a clothes rail though if not I would be able to get one from my nana. We could use our own phones for the shoot and we could use either Bill’s dad’s friend’s van or my uncles for the opening shot. Chairs were the big issue. None of us had lots of identical chairs and we were not sure how to overcome that problem.

We wanted to start shooting as soon as we could and after hearing that the weather was going to be terrible on the day that we had planned for, we rearranged the date and headed to a field just opposite Melton Road in Wymondham for our shots with Phil on the phone. The field location wasn’t ideal but as we didn’t have a desert nearby, we had to compromise.

5/10/11

Today was the day of our first shoot and the thing that worried us immediately was that the weather wasn’t anywhere near as nice as it was forecast. It was dry, but it didn’t resemble a hot Nevada day in the slightest. We thought about rearranging again but the weather for the rest of the week was forecast as worse so we decided that we would have to settle for what we had. We all met up at the field at 4.30 with the Buick waiting for us. We set up the car and Nicole and I sorted out Bill, Ben T and Jamie’s clothing as they looked way too smart to be stuck in the Nevada desert so we had to make them look a little scruffier. I also had to create a fake cut on Ben H’s lip using red and black biros as just using red made it look too bright and unrealistic so I added a little black so it looked dirtier and the result wasn’t too bad (which you can see below). Jake was filming, Nicole and I organised shots and the rest of the boys were acting and I think that they all did a great job. I haven’t seen much of the footage as yet but I trust Jake’s judgement when he says that it all looks ok!