Youtube Video: https://youtu.be/P7_-FLsMZXo?si=hoO_cjlD1K44Eean

This week’s topic was hard to get my head around. Especially because our main focus has been to think in a comic frame for the past 5 weeks. This week was learning about how to hybridise different genres and use all the concepts we learnt in earlier weeks to add comedic elements to the work. 

In class the examples that were shown were documentaries vs mockumentaries. From my understanding of it, mockumentaries make fun of documentary conventions, using made up characters with exaggerated personalities, fake scenarios etc. On the other hand, documentary comedy is a documentary all in all, with real actors, real situations but utilises editing, funny people, timing etc. to show comedy. In ‘American Movie’ (1999), there were many times where post production helped with the ‘rhetorical continuity’ (Middleton, 2002) of the piece. A funny line or Mike Schank came onto screen and abruptly ‘cutting on significance’ (Middleton, 2002) to the next scene which emphasises the joke or dialogue. Relying on timing and post production to create the humour. I realised I’ve used this technique many times but never knew what it was called.  

This week my group and I decided to make an action film more specifically a fight scene. In order to keep to this genre we used fast camera movements, punching sounds, dramatic music, pov shots, in between fight dialogue, a villain (costumed with a black coat and dark glasses) and a hero. What made our video comedic was how there’s no real context to why our two characters are fighting, how serious the scene is even how regular our characters looked and knowing how to dramatically fight (breaking a norm or expectations). Our experiment took a lot of workshopping while filming, figuring out the best camera angles, lighting, and ways to keep continuity. Overall, there was a fine line between parodying the action tropes and hybridising the genre but I think our group did well in keeping to the genre. 

Over the past weeks, I realised it is easier for me to workshop ideas and jokes when it is a collaborative process. There’s times where I have doubted my ideas but it ended up getting laughs. I learnt that it is after you show someone your work or say the joke is when you know if it’s been received well or not. I am excited to make a short story for my final project because acting is not me.  

Reference: 

Middleton, J. (2002), “Documentary Comedy,” Media International Australia Incorporating Culture & Policy, 104 (1), pp. 55–66.

Smith, C. (Director). (1999). American Movie [Film]. C-Hundred Film Corporation; Civilian Pictures; Bluemark Productions