Now that Milk Run has wrapped up and is submitted for our end of semester exhibition, I hope that our audience of confused 20-somethings navigating Melbourne-living feel recognised. I also hope our film extends to other age groups and communities who are struggling with the cost-of-living crisis, often having to resort to uncomfortable living situations and uncomfortable requests for others just to get by. We chose to hybridise coming-of-age with comedy as both a genre and a mode, through dry absurdism, observation, and a thematic focus on inconveniences and our responses to them.
Modes of comedy were mostly foreign to me before this studio, or at least, I didn’t completely understand how they function and exist as their own entity, e.g. parody, just with a common relationship to comedy. I initially had a pretty surface level understanding of comedy, seeing it as a practice that was either effective or not, depending on varying senses of humour and ability. I’ve since developed a larger appreciation for the “formal diversity” of comedy (Krutnik & Neale, 1990, p.10), as it often exists in unexpected places when grouped with non-comedy formats.
As our comic approach changed in the pre-production stage of Milk Run, we struggled to narrow down a particular genre and form that complimented the group’s ideas. In the ‘60s, “critics argued for a series of different and distinctive genres… to deliver a coherent way of understanding cultural products” (Mundy & White, 2017, p. 130). Understanding and pitching our film as a coming-of-age film first, and a comedy second, has helped us group where it stands comically and hopefully justify a potential lack of laughs. Constant laugh-out-loud comedy was never our intention though, but in the case of poor reception, we can always slap on the coming-of-age genre to save face. In all seriousness, I think our attempt at genre hybridisation was effective, and “cutting on absurdity” (Middleton, 2002) is an evident approach, which is a technique I hadn’t noticed or used prior to this studio.
He Died with a Felafel in His Hand (2001) is a source of inspiration I found myself returning to during the script writing process, as it explores interstate share house living presented as a black-comedy, but “its narrative and structure suggests a prolonged coming-of-age for those living in Australia in their mid to late 20s” (Maher, 2024). Thematically, Milk Run and Felafel share similarities, and I think the dry absurdism shows in our artefact. I didn’t have my co-writer Harper’s anecdotal experience of studying interstate and living in an inner-Melbourne share house to write from, but I understood his approach and I think we worked well together as writers, despite having different styles and comic sensibilities.
If we were to keep working on Milk Run, which is honestly a real possibility if we’d still like it to be show-reel worthy, I’d like to set up the story more effectively with a wider range of shots and a tighter edit. Having little resources and often poor filming conditions, our editor Daniel (who was already swamped with executive producer duties) did what he could with the footage we had, and the both of us spent hours on end trying to repair the audio in the mix. We managed to salvage most of it where there weren’t better takes available, but we had to leave some of it as is due to time constraints. As the sound person, in hindsight, I really should have briefed my cover on recording levels when I wasn’t available for part of a shoot, but at least I now know for future projects. Editing audio files in Audition with noise reduction soon became my best friend, and with the knowledge I have now, there is a lot more I’d like to improve.
In terms of story, I’d also like to extend upon each character’s arc, particularly Max’s, as we only get glimpses into his world and the people surrounding him. We only really see him observing, which I suppose we could get away with being a stylistic choice, as he seems like quite the flaneur, walking through the city of Melbourne and people-watching rather than participating. If given more time, I’d have one of us write up a tighter script rather than splitting the load, further flesh out our characters and world to keep everyone engaged (crew and audience), hire more professional equipment and try our best to camouflage the ‘student’ energy in ‘student film.’
All in all, the studio in its entirety was a great opportunity for collaboration, and working with different people taught me a great deal about the collaborative process in all stages of comedy-making and general film production. Having something to laugh about together in each project from week 4 onwards made the whole process so much smoother, and there’s nothing more rewarding than learning a concept and putting it into practice effectively, so I’m grateful the studio was structured for us to work iteratively, allowing us to see our progression and move forward as learning comedy-makers.
References
Krutnik, F., & Neale, S. (1990). Popular Film and Television Comedy. Taylor & Francis Group.
Maher, A. (2024). Constantly Coming of Age: He Died with a Felafel in His Hand. Senses of Cinema (108). https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2024/film-genre-now-rmit-university-student-dossier/constantly-coming-of-age-he-died-with-a-felafel-in-his-hand/#fn-47641-4
Middleton, J. (2002). Documentary Comedy. Media International Australia, 104(1), pp. 55–66.
White, G., & Mundy, J. (2012). Laughing matters : Understanding film, television and radio comedy. Manchester University Press.