Video link: https://youtu.be/dBXBMeDpU_Y?si=0Dam_yfDawtPnmtf

This week’s topic was satire and reality comedy. It was quite hard for me to understand exactly what satire was because although I have come across satirical media before, I often get it confused with parody media. I learnt that satire and parody are both modes of comedy, it can be adapted to different genres. Where parody is using the product of the piece of media already, looking inward, satire looks outward to social issues in the world to mock and attack said issues. 

What helped me understand this more was the three examples shown in class all surrounding the same idea but using satire in different ways. The social issue they all tackled was drug use. The one that stuck out to me most was the episode of ‘Brass Eye’ (1997). Where it satirised the cliches of British television programs with dramatised scenarios on drug use; the kids in the addict school, absurd graphs that have no correlation satirising scientific research, casting celebrities to play on the satirical nature of the episode. 

Therefore, with this knowledge, it helped us inform our direction for this week’s hybridization experiment. Keeping in mind the overall feedback in class, I think this week our group did well with our audio and camera quality. We were able to use Zoe’s DJI camera which had an inbuilt gimbal and handheld microphone. Putting aside time outside of class to discuss our roles and formulate ideas was very helpful in getting everything done and how we liked it. 

One thing that we did implement from last week’s class was the hat-on-hat concept when writing our script. To not over-complicate and overcompensate our jokes because sometimes less is more. Our script was also very unserious but Zoe was able to present it in a serious way and therefore that contradiction turned out to be funny. We used a voiceover, absurd facts, b-roll footage and ‘live’ interviews to emulate news programme’s conventions. Our chosen topic was to satirise the fact that the news and media always finds new ways of reporting on things that can give you cancer. The overall social issue of the media’s role in perpetuating a problem and simplifying research studies into bite size information. While the target of our satire was the medical industry and their research. 

References:

Morris, C., Baynham, P., Linehan, G., Mathews, A. (Writers) & Cummings, M., (Director). (1997, February 5). Drugs (Season 1, Episode 2) [TV series episode], Brass Eye. Talkback