Week 6: Genre Hybridisation / Documentary & Reality Comedy
This week’s topic was probably the most confusing to differentiate from parody and other comedy forms. We focused on hybridisation, and essentially how comedy is added to another non-comedy form or genre. One of the examples we watched in class was ‘American Movie‘ (1999), which was a documentary-comedy hybrid. What differentiated it from a mockumentary or parody was that it was a real documentary but the comedy was found mostly through the unique characters and edits such as cutting right as someone finishes saying something, turning it into a punchline.
As for our sketch, we were tossing between choosing romance, horror or crime/mystery as our main genre. Eventually, we settled on making a crime/mystery sketch where the focus is an interrogation of a few bizarre subjects. This was also inspired by Middleton’s discussions of how “‘offbeat character studies’ alternately position viewers to laugh at and laugh with the subjects,” so we really honed in on these characters and tried to make them believable within the mystery genre.
Some advice that our group was given when confused about what hybridisation meant, especially in comparison with parody, was that you have to imagine being in a world where the sketch we make would be a genuine show and not intentionally funny. From there, it was actually a bit difficult to not add in an excessive amount of jokes. However, I do think that we successfully differentiated our sketch from a parody sketch and it was definitely my favourite sketch that I’ve made since starting this studio.
Now that we’re about to start working on our final products, I have been thinking about making a mockumentary for a while, and I’m so excited to continue collaborating with my classmates as that has led to some sketches that I’ve been really proud of.
Genre Hybridisation sketch: murder, she won’t
References:
- Middleton, J. (2002), “Documentary ComedyLinks to an external site.“, Media International Australia, 104(1), pp. 55–66.