I think our main goal with Situation Tragedy was to make people laugh. I have had people contact me and my other group members telling us how much they loved it and thought it was hilarious which has been the most rewarding part of screening this film.

I hope everyone in our group is recognised for their specific efforts on all parts of the process of making Situation Tragedy, and that we successfully made a media product that is more informed by comedic theories and forms than if we made it prior to taking part in this studio. One thing I’m super proud of is that we were voted second audience favourite despite not being screened on opening night, so that means we were able to reach more audiences than expected. I just hope whoever watched Situation Tragedy had fun and laughed.

The main things I would develop if we had more time to work on Situation Tragedy, we would have put more thought into the timing and editing stages, to ensure that it looks even more like a genuine true crime documentary. Basically, we would work more on the true crime aspect of the genre-hybridisation. I would have also liked to pay more homage to the American Vandal format, with more focus on the behind the scenes aspects of the documentary. For example, we could have included Mira, the Twitter fan / detective in more scenes for comedic effect, like if she was losing her mind over finding out who put the condom in the sandwich.

Our Beyond a Joke, Beyond a Genre studio produced a lot of hilarious work and it is really cool to see how each group produced something different to each other, with different styles and forms of comedy.

Rogue, a spy-comedy by Zoe, Chloe, Anna, Bobby and Oscar was a really well-done execution of hybridisation and was hilarious. Reminiscent of Mr Bean‘s physical comedy and Men in Black‘s sci-fi, they did a really great job of using forms of comedy and sci-fi to create a new entertaining product. I loved the camera work especially in the fight scenes, it really felt like the group had worked on their craft to make sure it was believable. Also poking fun at modern Melbourne and demonstrating it from the perspective of someone who came from the 1960s was super fun and creative. The subtle hints at previous works the group members made in the studio was also very smart and a nice way to demonstrate how far we have come since our sketches.

Trip Up by Angus, Giorgio, K, Ben and Saskia was reminiscent of The Hangover, and did a really great job at creating believable comedic characters.  I also love how they just used really random ideas like looking in really random places for Millie Bobby and Kevin being fully submerged into the sea, as it was so funny to watch as it had a shock aspect and also got laughs out of the audience when it was screened. I think my favourite part about Trip Up was the group dynamic. I think that the group had great chemistry and it made it feel more genuine and believable as an audience member.

From the Visual Blueprint studio, one work that stood out was Unhinged, a horror short about a first date gone wrong. There were a lot of really aesthetically pleasing shots and the use of colour, particularly red in the murderous scenes really conveyed the somber mood and atmosphere. The dramatic cuts between the interrogation scene and date scenes were really interesting and I believe it was successful in evoking anxiety and fear. The acting was also really great and the contrast between the character Jarrod during the interrogation and date scenes was quite haunting and uncomfortable (but in a good way). I did help out with some of the sound operations on set so I got to see how differently this group operated compared to the process of our comedy short. Since Visual Blueprint was more about the visual style and ‘showing, not telling,’ a lot of time on set was spent on filming each scene over and over from different angles. This did give the final product a more cinematic and visually compelling outcome.

This semester has genuinely been my favourite of the course so far and I’m so excited to take on the skills I have developed into the next studio. Seeing a lot of works from other studios has given me a lot of inspiration and I’m ready to start brainstorming ideas!