Being my final studio, I hope my group’s major project was well received, and what we were aiming to do with genre hybridisation and understated comedy came across. In the theatre, I heard a few scattered laughs, some at moments that were intended to be funny, and others that were more in response to inconsistencies in quality (I had to laugh too, as some of it was honestly hard to watch). Despite the occasional drops in quality or random cough left in the audio, which was a result of filming within hearing distance of a childcare centre, I’m impressed with our efforts in putting together Milk Run, with long shoot days and hopefully enough to show for it. In terms of comedy, we wanted to highlight the range of the form, from observation, to absurdism and benign violation, and how these modes compliment the coming-of-age genre.
As mentioned in my previous reflection, I would like to extend upon our characters Max and Charlie, giving our audience a greater insight into their world. There was room to turn up Charlie’s absurdism a few notches, but it’s also worth keeping in mind that we didn’t want to go all out on the absurdism, being more of a subtle commentary on living with an odd roommate as most other options in the current climate are exhausted. In terms of presentation, I would like to assist in further editing the film to create a consistent visual style, with a clearer sense of tone, and clean up the audio. Lighting is also varying in quality, so I would use a wider range of lights if we were to film again.
In the ‘Beyond a Joke, Beyond a Genre’ studio, other groups produced really great quality and genuinely funny projects. Two standouts for me are Operation Superstar by Alex, Claudia, Jaden and Luciana, and Rogue by Anna, Bobby, Chloe, Oscar and Zoe, as a lot of love was clearly poured into both short films. Operation Superstar felt like a weird and wonderful fusion of cyberpunk, homoerotic friendship, and visual and satirical comedy, and it was a real joy to watch on the big screen. They effectively satirised Melbourne culture with mention of odd fashion trends, an effective balance of incongruity and relatability, without being too on the nose.
Rogue is more character driven, with some clear inspiration from Mr Bean and similar comic characters that are placed in unfamiliar situations, which is always good fun watching how they interact with their surroundings. I appreciated the intertextuality, referring to the ‘microwaves cause cancer’ sketch a few of the group members worked on in previous weeks. Having an existing body of work you can refer to in your film that your audience will understand is super impressive, and its clear they’ve gotten a lot out of the studio in terms of varying comedy practices.
The short film Decadence by Spring Li, Taylor Zenelovski, Andrew Tan, Nadia Harari and Josephine Gaal from the Visual Blueprint studio really impressed me, as their attention to detail was unmatched. The camerawork, sound, editing, costume and overall production design is so precise, and not at the expense of the story, which I imagine would be hard to do while being so focused on presenting something visually striking. The shift from an unassuming and sweet story, to something darker and unsettling, was really well done, and I hope the crew submits this short film to other film festivals.