Week 3: The Comic Frame / Comedy Mechanics

Delving into sitcoms this week felt more up my alley compared to the sketch comedy shows that we have been studying so far. I found it very interesting to get into the science behind sitcom humour and sketches as I am definitely a huge sitcom watcher. Some of my key takeaways from this that I took into consideration when making my sketch was the focus on relateability and how the humour ties in with the story.

This week I got feedback from my peers on my previous sketch, which was really helpful in my approach to the third and final solo sketch. I was told that a lot of the humour in my second sketch was visual and I didn’t need to depend so much on the text. Basically I learnt that I didn’t need to do so much to force my audience to laugh and I could’ve had more trust in the visual aspects of my sketch.

Toplyn (2014) lays out the the structure of a story sketch as having a “beginning that gets you excited, a middle that grips you and an end that delivers,” which I used as a template for my sketch as I have 3 different shots in my sketch that fit in with beginning, middle and end. For my third and final solo sketch, I knew that I wanted to implement a lie that either gradually gets worse or more believable. I think that I ended up drawing from relateability within the context of having uni students as my audience. My sketch is about how extension requests are quite common but sometimes once given it we end up taking our time with the assignment until the new due date regardless. We were also sliding around the room in chairs before I came up with the ending to this sketch and it made us laugh so I thought it would work in video form as well.

Experiment #3: Situation Comedy – My Extension Request

Sound effects ‘Whoosh sub’ and ‘f_Synth_Whoosh_21.wav’ sourced from freesound.org

References:

Toplyn, J. (2014), “Story SketchesLinks to an external site.” in Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV, New York: Twenty Lane Media, pp. 221–238.