Creating a Joke Sketch
Reflection
Out of all the sketches I’ve collaborated with my group and peer members, it was in the end my sketch that we all agreed on to start filming and finalizing. What started out as one’s personal idea evolved a combination of others and the original’s writer’s ideas. I wrote the first draft for my sketch, ‘Creating a Joke’. The premise and concept of the sketch is that we look into the mind of stand-up comedian and the process they go through to come up with a joke for their audience. Now imagine the the mind is a boardroom filled with many different personalities giving off ideas to form one joke. That is a premise of the sketch, where we have multiple characters who represent different types of comedy of the comedian and they try to come up with a joke for him, something similar to ‘Pixar’s 2015, Inside Out.’ Where different emotions inside a character’s head operate the outside character. So this particular sketch’s plot is about multiple characters discussing in a meeting of what joke to produce for the audience.
How does this sketch work for feminism? The whole original idea of this sketch was to make it flexible, because when I came up with the idea initially, I wasn’t thinking along the lines of feminism, I just wanted to produce a simple sketch where characters are just going through the process of making a joke. So when the theme became about feminism, I made the stand-up comedian character tell a joke about women, and we hop into his mind as his different personalities try to come up with jokes for and about women. We stereotyped the characters, as we believe the best representation of the different characters inside the minds are just different portions of stereotypes. The whole idea was to make the characters and sketch very straight forward and simple, because I believe the simple visual will be strong enough to bring out the comedy, hence why I created simple characters, “A lot of comedy uses very simple characters, often quite stereotypical, because they’re easily recognized.” (Bown, 2011). The idea of the sketch is bring about awareness to how women a portrayed in the public and how they are stereo typically seen by men. I try to write about how the characters wanted to come up with a joke about sexism and how women can get away with things, that men can’t and a lot more complicated problems that women have to face, but notice how it’s actually the female characters in the sketch that come up with it. I wanted to raise awareness that men see women differently, and so the main punchline, was the male character couldn’t speak for on the behalf of women, so he says a simple boob joke, because this will show how men can be simple minded. Because the characters in the sketch are actually more stereotypical towards races, I had to draw a fine line between some racist comedy that was written in the script, I had to write it in a way so it’s funny, but not too racist. But since stereotypes are such a key component to racial comedy, I had to make sure there was some truth in it, “Stereotypes are important in comedy because not only do they help to establish instantly recognizable character types but such character traits and stereotype-based jokes also constitute a source of humor” (Bowes, 1990; King, 2002). Because there has to be some sort of truth towards the stereotypes in the writing, it’ll make the characters more believable and recognizable for a wider audience. The sketch goal is raise awareness for stereotypes and feminism, while trying in a comedic way address how stereotypes and feminism are portrayed by the media.
The process of this sketch started out as my idea for sketch, until the group all agreed we will try to produce this sketch, as it’s probably the most feasible sketch we can produce as a group. So the script has gone through many iterations the group has collaborated and came up with ideas on how to put the concept onto screen. Initially on our first table reading, we couldn’t really get the reaction we wanted, as it was confusing and the premise was not written in a way that is easy to understand. So we had to rewrite it so that the detail and premise is simpler to understand. Which is understandable, because my original script was very simplistic and I admit wasn’t great writer on how I want the concept to be. But the whole idea and feedback we got was make the punchline and message easier and harder to hit. Going through the latest draft, the way we approach some of the jokes in the sketch we gave more directions and changed the ending so our punchline is delivered in a much more comedic way. We wanted to showcase chaos in an office setting, but I didn’t write that specifically in the original script, as it ended with the characters all agreeing on an idea and then the punchline is delivered. So in the new ending, we make the character’s can’t come up with an idea in the chaos and so punchline is delivered suddenly, which we believe has a stronger effect than the original.
Working in a group has made process of writing this sketch easier on myself, because if I was working by myself I wouldn’t be able to come up with ways on how to deliver certain situations in the text. With the help of my group members, I am getting more and more satisfied with the script and able to visualize more the vision I have, but’s its not only me who is visualizing, everyone is starting to visualize it to. Because I’m not good with writing actions in script, we have members who are good at that, so the more members we have, the more grounds and weakness we cover for each other. But the main thing is having more heads give out ideas and feedback is what really helps the script writing process. We are able to work off feedback and get a sense of where we want to head as a group. More heads are better than one. Kind of like the script, how we have multiple characters coming up with one idea. If you think about it, this sketch is just literally our group trying to come up with an idea of ‘Creating a Joke.’
References
Bown, L 2011, Secrets to Writing Great Comedy
Ji Hoon Park Nadine G. Gabbadon Ariel R. Chernin, 2006, Naturalizing Racial Differences Through Comedy: Asian, Black, and White Views on Racial Stereotypes in Rush Hour 2