This week was all about visual/silent comedy, which is in essence a style of comedy that relies on a visual punchline or action rather than any form of dialogue. This style of comedy is often seen in (obviously) films from the silent era, from actors such as Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin, more modern examples are actors like Jackie Chan who tends to inject slapstick elements in his films using his impressive physicality.,

When it comes to “visual comedy” I believe it is one of the hardest forms of comedy to effectively pull off, as I feel you need a good understanding of the genre to effectively use visual comedy without it feeling like some sort of cop-out. On a surface level, similar to incongruent comedy, visual comedy seems relatively easy to pull off, as many people find slapstick humour at least somewhat funny, though it has been around for so long that as mentioned before it often feels like a cheap way to elicit a laugh. A good example of visual comedy done right comes from the reading “The Logic of the Absurd” where the author speaks about a scene from the 1929 film “Liberty” in which a lift crushes a cop, turning him from a full-grown man into a ‘midget’. This scene though simple in theory demonstrates a very effective use of the visual comedy medium, using surprise and editing to create a gag that has no basis in reality if an elevator landed on a man he would be killed. In my opinion, visual comedy works best when it eschews the laws of reality to create a physically impossible gag as not many other forms of comedy can effectively do that in such a simple manner.

I was unable to make it to class for feedback on last week’s comedic video so I have no real comment on how I incorporated criticism into this week’s video. When it came to this week’s video I can’t lie, I had zero ideas and my final video was very last minute. While at the gym my friends were doing special ‘training’ that I thought looked funny so I simply filmed it and then edited it to very loosely mimic a Buster Keaton-style film, using only title cards and dumb music to elicit humour. Hopefully next week the brain juices flow a little more