As a group we wanted our short film to have a lot of visual depth to it, being not just funny but also nice to look at, as we felt like a lot of comedy films often only focus on being ‘funny’ and not on any real visual aspect. One of the concerns of the studio was to think about how comedy can operate as a genre or mode in its own right, which I think directly ties into our want to make the film visually pleasing. Comedy is one of the few genres that are often looked down upon in both a critical sense and a scholarly sense, having much less of a focus on itself than other more ‘prestigious’ genres. In a 2012 study, Michael Arell had similar concerns, noting that he ‘always questioned why film comedy rarely seems to be recognised as possessing aesthetic value’ (Arell, 2012). One of the reasons Arell puts forward is that perhaps comedies are so diverse that there is no one-size-fits-all criteria to judge them, making it hard to discuss what makes one comedic film better than another. In my opinion, I think this is the most likely reason, much like how Horror films also struggle to get a lot of critical attention, again due to the subjective nature of that genre. Despite this though, even if the comedic elements of a film can be hard to judge, I don’t think this warrants not giving comedic films the time of day when it comes to the other elements that make the film, such as acting, score, cinematography etc. All this is to say that in the making of our film we wanted it to have artistic merit, not just in the comedy but every aspect, which hopefully ends up conveying the surprising depth of the comedy genre that we were taught in this studio.

If I were to keep working on our film, the main element I would ‘modify’ would be my acting, as I am not a good actor in the slightest and I think it’s very obvious in the film. Were we to have a longer shoot schedule it would have allowed more takes for scenes and for me to get my lines and delivery closer to an idea point, though I don’t think I’m awful in our final cut. Another aspect I would want to modify or improve would be making the hallucination scenes much more visually unique and interesting. I think in the time we had to film and edit our visuals were about as good as we could get, but were we to have longer, I would want to focus on creating cool and unique visuals that would give the film an extra layer of depth and flavour, which in turn would make it stand out among the other films from the class. Overall though I am very happy with how it turned out and I think it is a testament to my group’s teamwork with how much were were able to do in such little time.

the film Operation Super-Star from our studio, really communicated the use of comedy as a mode inside a larger narrative genre. Despite the fact it was a comedy it still effectively hit the emotional points making the bond between the 2 characters feel genuine and earned, showcasing how comedy can do more than just make people laugh.

Rouge another film from our studio, I think was a good example of a more straight forward comedy that excelled in using the cool architecture of Melbourne to create unique visuals in its story. Unlike some of the other’s in the class it uses comedy as it sole genre rather than hyrbridizing it which I think makes it stand out.

The Studio ‘Instinct and Intention’ stuck out to me as I have a level of a interest in editing, specifically film editing as It is something I tend to notice when watching films. Adi’s Edit Series specifically their first edit ‘Dames and Sea Smoke’ stuck out to me as communicating a good idea on what the studio taught. In this short edit, the editing slowly ramps out building to a crecendo of overlapping images. While simple I think this use of rapid cutting, as if the editing is trying to catch up to something, helped enhance the storytelling without any dialogue, showcasing the power of editing.