THE NEWS IS A JOKE: Reflecting on ‘Early Afternoon’

I’m definitely pleased with the outcome of our comedy news program ‘Early Afternoon’, but in evaluating the use of satire and structure of comedy news, I do have some thoughts.

Although the show has comedic tones and elements running through it, after seeing the final cut and watching back the clips on their own, the comedic aspect is slightly drowned out by the informative content. This simply could’ve been because of the timing of the production of this show, with many of us working on other assignments simultaneously, but I also believe planning and allocation of roles was certainly detrimental to the outcome. Our team of writers by the end of the show came to roughly 4 people, and if I’m honest I don’t think it was enough. Maybe to even out the playing field, everyone, or at least the majority of people should have been allocated to a segment each, yes that may be excessive but I feel that having one, maybe two people writing one whole segment proved to be challenging. Yes, Early Afternoon is a news show, but it’s also a comedy news show, and unfortunately, when reviewing the final cut, the comedy doesn’t come through as strong as I’d hoped for. As I’d said earlier on in other blog posts, we all seemed to admire and find entertainment in John Oliver’s show, and we each seemed to want to strive for a John Oliver style show. Although we did incorporate jokes and humorous EVS and graphics, I feel as though the comedic tone may not have come across as much as we wanted to in all the segments, and an incorporation of more jokes and humorous banter would have certainly increased the comedic value.

A section of our program that I believe works quite well, is the ‘Political Climate’ with Anhar and Ryan. The cuts back and forth between a calm Ryan and an anxious, angry and afraid Anhar work well in balancing information with comedy, and I believe that is due to performance and tone of voice, which really proves to be crucial in distinguishing between comedy news and regular news.

The use of two hosts in the sports segment is what I believe worked the best comedy-wise. The contrast between Zac and Julian and their ‘characters’ in the segment allowed for some witty and natural banter, and with Ryan intervening in the beginning and almost making a joke out of his own co-hosts, a further comedic layer was added to the show. If these passionate personality’s and personas had been taken on with each of our hosts, then possibly the lack of super comedic dialogue would be made up for in personality and delivery.

I am pleased with the outcome of ‘Early Afternoon’, I know many of us were putting in a large amount of effort and time into preparing and presenting the show and for many of us being first years, I think we did well. Although I’m pretty happy with it, that doesn’t mean there aren’t things that I wanted to be better. As I’d mentioned, I think the comedy aspect of our show wasn’t entirely consistent, I do understand that we also wanted to include the information so the segments made sense and had structure, but in future I’d like to spend more time on incorporating John Oliver esque or even Samantha Bee, Stephen Colbert or Shaun Micaleff humour and style. I think having more time to work on the assignment too may have resulted in a better outcome, as there was almost a rush to complete the show in 4-5 weeks, even an extra week may have been beneficial but I guess it’s hard when we only have 12 weeks in the semester. I do feel that more group collaboration would have assisted us greatly, with writing and in general. If we had a larger group of writers working from week 7 onwards and communicating with us to gather responses and ideas for jokes and general script structure, maybe ‘Early Afternoon’ would’ve felt more comedic.

As for the final outcome, I believe Julian, Jack, Hao and Joseph worked well on the edit and it came together well, but to me, the out of time graphics and monologue like scripts really stand out. Overall though, for such a large group project that was put together in roughly 5 weeks, with many people being absent, Early Afternoon came together well and I think each of us should be proud of our efforts.

While some areas of the show might not have lived up to my expectation or standard I would have liked, I’m still very fond of the show. As a class, we made sure to prioritise the essential aspects of comedy news that are inciting critical thinking and using satire to educate and inform, and I’d say we executed this fairly well.