Video link: Ellen De-Not-So-Generous
Ellen De-Not-So-Generous was written and created by Andrew Hennessy, Peter Kyprianou, Cherry Lin and Isabel O’Riain
YUCK! Your Urge for Celebrity Knews! is giving you the inside scoop on the latest Ellen DeGeneres scandal, turns out, she’s De-not-so-Generous after all! Numerous accounts of workplace harassment, toxic bullying and abuse of powers have all been reported by our anonymous former Ellen show staff member who we sat down with! Plus, an exclusive apology video from Ellen herself! All this and more from YUCK, Your Urge for Celebrity Knews!
From the beginning of creating this piece, we knew we wanted to challenge the traditional format of satirical news shows, a format we dubbed the “man-in-suit-behind-desk” format, by creating a piece that parodies entertainment news reports and our obsession of celebrity culture as a society. This challenging of format developed as we branched into sketch comedy with our interview and apology segments taking artistic and factual liberties to try and broaden the meaning of ‘satirical news’ whilst still remaining educational and exploring toxic workplace environments and the double standards of celebrities.
During production we faced difficulties that we had to adapt to and overcome. This created a very agile workforce in our group as we were able to pivot into different directions depending on the challenges that we faced like working remotely and adding the parody apology segment after Ellen released her own apology. This also worked our creative muscles as we had the challenge of creating and filming this piece remotely. We took preventative measures knowing that we had to film during lock down by writing a script that facilitated filming from home as well manage our time and tasks efficiently as we were all working independently to create something as a collective. Undertaking this studio online meant that we were able to learn about traditional television satirical news shows whilst mimicking their experiences of having to produce a show from home. This proved valuable as it helped establish our understandings of creating media in a digital world that is moving away from traditional television broadcasting.