This week we looked at genre hybridisation, which in simple terms is adding comedy into a non-comedic genre, e.g. documentaries or horror films. In class, we mainly looked at documentary examples which confused me initially as I didn’t realise the clip we watched from ‘American Movie’ was a real documentary and not a mockumentary so I initially struggled to draw a line between parody and hybridisation. However, I soon wrapped my head a bit more around it. Modern big-budget cinema I feel tends to lean toward comedic hybridisation a lot, from Superhero films to a lot of recent horror there is an effort to add comedic elements. These can often be very hit or miss as the writers are not often as comedically inclined as they think they are, because of this I am often surprised when a non-comedy movie ends up being funny which is more often than not films that don’t try that hard to add these comedy elements.

In the reading ‘Documentary Comedy’ by Jason Middleton he talks specifically about combining comedy and documentary (as the title reveals), specifically mentioning how documentaries tend to ‘cut on significance’, referring to the tendency to cut away after a meaningful statement is made to a scene that comments upon and reinforces this statement. Middleton goes on to say, that comedic documentaries can make use of this, subverting the audience’s expectations and ‘cutting on the absurd’ which rather than reinforcing a statement often goes against it humorously. This is mostly used in Mockumentaries which are parody rather than genre hybridisation, though ‘American Film’ is also shot like this which blurs the lines between fiction and reality, heightening the comedic elements.

For this week’s video, my group had some trouble coming up with ideas specifically an idea that wouldn’t veer into parody. Eventually, we came up with a drama of sorts that only reveals the comedic elements in the end. This was by far the hardest to film as acting somewhat seriously would just lead me to laughter, along with this, making the shots somewhat mirror a drama show also proved difficult. When figuring out the dialogue we had to balance it in a way that remained similar to what you’d see in a drama while also setting up the final joke. I think we did a pretty good job though I don’t think I’d do a genre hybridisation again.

In the past 3 weeks, I’ve learnt a decent amount about my comedic sensibilities turns out I’m not the worst comedic actor which is nice to hear though I still don’t enjoy being one. For the major product, I think I’d most likely want to make some form of parody or satire as I find it most comfortable to work within a set aesthetic, and also find it easy to make fun of current events and similar stuff.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-KX5H8HibzeVQxohFBbRn9p2VyCsrMs7/view?usp=drive_link