2 Incompetent Robbers
I have been working on a rough outline of my “2 incompetent robbers” idea.
Logline:
Two incompetent robbers try to steal a very valuable hat, a prop from the James Bond films. Comedy ensues due to their ineptness, and they end up stealing the wrong, significantly-less-valuable, hat.
In a comedic video short, 2 (incompetent) Robbers are trying to steal an extremely valuable trilby hat from the James Bond Movie “From Russia With Love”. The steel-rimmed hat that OddJob wore in “Gold Finger” sold at Christies Auctioneers in 1998 for £62,000 so it is feasible that an original “James Bond” hat from a movie would be valuable and worth stealing. Unfortunately, due to their ineptness which we see demonstrated in the video, they steal the wrong hat. They only realise this at the end, when they stumble across the real hat, too heavily protected for them to reach.
The film starts off at night with a shot of a building then tracks back to show the arms of the robbers holding masks by the side of their legs, then the masks get lifted up and (out of shot) put on and they then walk out of shot as the building goes back in focus. Similar to the opening of The Dark Knight (2008).
We cut to see a door inside as a torch pans over the door and we hear some guards (we never actually see the guards, we only hear them) talking about changing shifts as well as some footsteps off screen which are the guards walking away. The robbers then creep through the door and sneak in the opposite direction to the guards.
The 2 Robbers will start to sneak around, then Robber 2 asks Robber 1 what the plan is, to which Robber 1 replies saying he had told Robber 2 the plan in the car already, but Robber 2 replies that he forgot, so as Robber 1 is going over the plan we see them do everything perfectly, at like 50% opacity, over a wide shot of them down the bottom of screen while the images (of Robber 1’s description of their robbery going perfectly) are being showed above them, as if these images are being projected onto the building.
We then see them start sneaking around in reality, same kind of motions as we just saw as Robber 1 describe, but not going as perfectly. Things start to not go exactly according to plan.
We are in a corridor, with Robber 1 walking towards us, past an open door, as they are looking for “the item”. Robber 1 is saying something like “right, it should be a bit further up on the right/left” and then Robber 2 looks through the door that Robber 1 just passed, into the room and goes “is this it?” Robber 1 turns round and starts walking back towards Robber 2.
We are now in the room that Robber 2 looked into, looking toward the door (similar shot to the last-but-one shot) where we see Robber 2 standing. In this shot we can also see a number of trilby hats plinths, blurred since I will be focusing the camera on the doorway and the robbers. We see Robber 1 poke his head around the door and look down at the map that he is holding.
We now see a close-up up of the badly drawn map that Robber 1 is looking at and then the camera pans up with their head and I do a motion blur cut into a track forwards into the object they are going to steal as we hear (words to the effect of) “oooh you tricksters, ha-ha, they thought that by moving the artifact they could catch us but oh no, it’s not that easy to trick the *insert duos name here*”
The next part of the scene involves them trying to overcome the security protection that is around the artifacts. The artifacts are a series of trilby hats worn by various “James Bond” actors in various “James Bond” films. The robbers are trying to steal a particular one of these trilbies, which is valued at around £60,000. I have yet to decide how to let the audience know of this value. A key part is that at some point the camera sees a sign saying that this particular hat is a replica of the original hat, which is kept in a different room, but the robbers do not see this sign, so they believe they are overcoming all this security protections to steal the genuine trilby.
(This next scene is done with instrumental music so that we don’t actually hear the conversation between the 2 Robbers even though they are speaking to each other, but it is obvious by their actions and expressions what they are saying).
From within another room, we then see a doorway onto a corridor, same shot as earlier in the hats room, except that this time we don’t see the item in the room. Robber 1 runs past (down the corridor), then we hear his footsteps stop and see him walk back into view with a curious and confused look on his face, followed by a look of realisation, then annoyance as he then leans on the doorframe and Robber 2 walks into frame, with the hat they just stole, confused as to why Robber 1 has stopped. They then look at each other and Robber 1 gestures into the room the camera is in and then Robber 2 looks where Robber 1 is gesturing and then realises why Robber 1 stopped, and then Robber 2 looks disappointed too. Then they look at what is in the room and look back at the hat that Robber 2 is holding. We haven’t yet seen what it is that Robber 1 pointed at in the room.
Robber 2 starts as if to walk into the room, but Robber 1 grabs him to stop him, and points at all the laser beams and other heavy protection stuff that we now see. We still don’t see what is being protected but we do see all the protection. Robber 1 makes it clear to Robber 2 (and to the audience) that, after all the hassle they had getting the hat that they do have, there is no way that they are going to succeed in getting past all that extra heavy-duty protection.
They start to argue, Robber 2 thinking that they should try to get whatever the other item is, and Robber 1 crossly indicating that it is not possible. Robber 1 grabs the hat that Robber 2 was holding, and Robber 1 then starts to angrily storm off. Robber 2 looks longingly back into the room at the unseen item, back down the corridor after Robber 1, then back at the unseen item. He quickly, reluctantly, comes to the same conclusion as Robber 1, chases after Robber 1, out of shot.
The camera then shows a label that says (words to the effect of, to be decided) “Genuine Trilby Hat worn by Sean Connery in the 1963 James Bond film “From Russia With Love”. Then the camera pans to show the real hat version of the Replica hat that the Robbers now realise they stole by mistake.
We cut to a view of the hallway that the 2 Robbers were just in, we see them as they run away and then the shot starts to pull back and goes black and white as we then see it is a CCTV camera security screen and the camera keeps pulling back to show some shoes on a desk and we hear a chuckle and then it cuts to show a security guard eating popcorn as he says “what a bunch of idiots” then keeps eating.
In the final shot, on the CCTV camera security screen we see a competent robber quickly overcome the security measures in the room with the real hat, and we see the security guard lean forwards towards the screen and go “Oh SHI-” and gets cut off as the we go to the credits.