As expected, comedy is so much harder to do successfully than I thought. I think a lot of people think that it’s ‘easier’ to do because it doesn’t necessarily require high quality cinematography in order to be funny. I did not feel this way as I have friends doing comedy and knew that it is a highly underestimated art. However, what I have learnt about comedy is that writing comedy is difficult and you often need to work with others in order to come up with a well-rounded piece of work. As a whole, my idea of comedy has become more informed, through learning about different theories, aka. the science behind being funny.

I think we very successfully created our take on the American Vandal format of mockumentary / comedy-documentary. Our short is filled with comedic bits and jokes and takes the idea of a true crime documentary pretty seriously. Upon showing our friends who aren’t in the studio our rough cuts, we got many laughs and that is the main goal of comedy, so I definitely think we succeeded in that. Our main theory that inspired us throughout the process of writing and planning was ‘Benign Violation,’ one of the key theories we learnt about in class. This refers to when something is gently harmful, like the body’s response to tickling, where it seems there is a threat to one’s body but it isn’t enough for there to be actual harm, which leads to laughter (Warren & McGraw, 2015). When coming up with an incident that happens on the set, we knew it had to be serious enough for a cast member to be kicked off set but not enough to require criminal charges or have severe consequences. I think this, paired with the fact that Mira takes the whole investigation very seriously adds to the humour and hybridisation of comedy in Situation Tragedy. We were also inspired by an episode of Brass Eye, which is a fake news TV series (Meikle, 2012) which had more of a public commentary on a serious topic; drugs, whereas our social commentary was a lighthearted take on celebrity culture and fandom.

If we had more time to work on our film, I think 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. I think this would have really sealed the deal for it as a believable Netflix-style documentary. However, I do think that part of the charm is the detail of the documentary being made by a Twitter fan and not a professional. I think we would have more time to iron out some of the nitty gritty details, such as having filmed interview scenes in two seperate locations. Fixing small issues like this would probably elevate the project as a whole as well.

Another aspect of American Vandal that I would’ve liked to trial in our project is the crew members taking a bigger role in the storyline. Since we were limited to 20 minutes, we did not have a lot of time to explore that side of things, but perhaps if we had cut down some other parts of our story we could have included more ‘behind the scenes’ footage and give our character Mira more of a chance to tell her own story. Mockumentary is all about “performing authenticity” (Wallace, 2018) and I think that what made our story effective as all of our actors took their roles seriously and as if their wacky characteristics were real. I think that if we had more time, we could flesh out this character more and give her a chance to be even more comedically authentic and overly serious.

Working with other people in this studio has been really interesting. In terms of our group sketches, working with different people made it clear how important it is in comedy to find people with similar visions and comedy styles. Everyone laughs at different things so each comedy media product is not going to make everyone laugh. Hence, I think it is important to find a like-minded crowd and be really dedicated with that comedic style.

Working with Nia, Zach, Yusuf and Lewis has been one of the most rewarding experiences I have had over the course of this degree so far. Situation Tragedy would not be what it is without each and every one of us bouncing ideas off of each other and being dedicated to our storyline and vision. Originally we were set on doing 2 episodes, and if I were the one to make all the decisions on my own, I wouldn’t think of linking them together to one episode like in the Brass Eye example we watched. However, Zach suggested this and it turned out to be a really effective idea in practise that I’m really glad we ended up doing. We did realise that ‘episode 2’ was basically third act and wouldn’t make sense as a whole episode. I do think the biggest difficulty we had as a group was stubbornness with the editing stage. We all had agreed upon most things before and during filming, but this was where we all had a few disagreements (although things never got heated) about the importance of different things and how they were portrayed in the final cut.

Overall, my experience in this studio has been unforgettable. I’ve met and worked with a lot of different people and have grown much more comfortable with pre-production and production. I’m so proud of Situation Tragedy and I can’t wait for people to watch it.

References:

• Warren, C. & McGraw, A.P. (2015), “Benign Violation TheoryLinks to an external site.” in Attardo, S. (ed), Encyclopedia of Humor Studies, Los Angeles: SAGE Reference.
• Meikle, G. (2012), “‘Find Out Exactly What to Think—Next!’: Chris Morris, Brass Eye, and Journalistic AuthorityLinks to an external site.“, Popular Communication, 10(1–2), pp. 14–26.
• Wallace, R., 2018. Mockumentary comedy: Performing authenticity. Springer.

Week 11:

We paced ourselves in the lead-up to this week as it was the biggest and most ambitious week so far. This week was finally filming week.

Our studio was booked from 9am-4pm so we knew we had a tight schedule to follow. To ensure that we could set up the studio and put everything else in the dressing room, the crew met on campus at 8am. All of our amazing cast members arrived by around 9am and had time to get into their costumes. At first, we were falling slightly behind schedule, but after we finished the opening sitcom sequence, we decided to have a lunch break. We had already arranged catering ahead of time, so we knew that our actors were comfortable and fed before the next few scenes. After this break, we got back to work and were on-time and on-schedule again. Despite the stress of getting everything done on time, we all had a lot of fun on set and made many fond memories.

As for the second day of filming, we just needed to record a few extra behind the scenes footage and interview scenes. This led us to our second location – the Reach Foundation in Collingwood. There was no need to set up much other than lighting, the camera and a chair for the interviewed characters. We finished filming here before expected and were now ready to export footage and audio before post-production. Everything went smoothly and this is attributed to all the planning we did in the pre-production stage, especially with the call sheets that Nia made ahead of time.

Then, Nia and Zach got to work on the first rough cut (I would’ve loved to be there but I was given more shifts than normal this week), but I was told that the continuity sheets helped the initial syncing process much easier and we were looking good in terms of finishing our film before the due date.

Week 10

This week was probably the most stressful week for our group, as we were knew how big of an undertaking this project was and we really wanted it to align with our vision. We started off the week by presenting our idea, vision and progress in making our final media project for the studio. We had made a vision board, character profiles and had a very clear direction we wanted to go in for the final product.

We also outlined the roles each member of our group would take in each step of the process towards finishing our product, which we have decided will have the title ‘Situation Tragedy,’ a play on words of situation comedy (sitcom) and to playfully dramatise the story.

My favourite part of this presentation was the table read of our second episode. It was very validating and rewarding when our peers laughed at our jokes and narrative. We purposely redacted the information surrounding the incident so they could find out through the script what happened. It was super validating hearing laughs from people in the audience as it meant that it wasn’t just funny to us but to other people who are well-versed in comedy.

Then, we needed to finalise the casting of the actors, make sure we have booked the studio (we actually struggled to get a response from them so we may need to work with our studio leader to get in touch), and making sure our filming dates are locked in with our cast and crew.

Yusuf, Zach and Nia ended up speaking to those in charge of the studios as it was difficult to digitally get in touch, and successfully booked in a time slot for us to film our sitcom scenes and behind the scenes footage. Once this was set in stone, we put together all our final pre-production documents and sheets we would need during filming (such as continuity/editing), and finalised our shot list. We knew this would be vital for us to utilise in post-production as this was already a very big project with such little time and we wanted to make the process as seamless as we possibly could.

Week 9

We really got the ball rolling this week. Lewis wrote out the first draft for our second episode script and we were so happy with the results. He turned our brief synopsis and character profiles into a hilarious and well thought out story that fit in exactly with what the rest of the group and I had envisioned.

Yusuf took the initiative in location scouting. We were really keen on getting a realistic sitcom set for 0ur film as we knew a lot of our scenes would be on the sitcom set and we wanted to make the opening scene feel like a genuine sitcom. We had a look in the studios at RMIT and the props department and sure enough, it seemed the perfect spot to film a believable sitcom scene. The studios are pretty high in demand at the moment though, so I’m really hoping we can successfully book a time to use it.

I was tasked with confirming filming dates with actors. We first used lettucemeet to schedule when all or most of the crew was free to film as we really wanted to have as many of us on set at all times. We really see this as more than a university assignment, and all want to be a part of it every step of the way. I also took on the role of costume design. To do this I made a google slides and got to work on Pinterest. I took a good look at the character descriptions we had typed up as a group and pictured them in my mind.

Overall, everything seems to be going at a good pace, and we’re looking forward to presenting our script to the class next week when we present our idea and work so far. Nia’s setting up some slides to present and some character descriptions so that we can give the class and the industry representatives a better idea of our vision and plans for the mockumentary.

Week 7

This week we screened our final group sketches for Assignment #2, and begun the passage towards our final media product. Based on previous group sketches, Nia, Zach, Yusuf and I knew we would have a similar vision and comedy style that we wanted to emulate in our final project for the studio. I had been set on making a mockumentary since before semester had begun, so I was elated when my group were also down to make something in that realm.

We were heavily inspired by the comedy aspects and style of the series American Vandal, a comedy-documentary about an incident that occurs at a high school and the students that uncover the truth surrounding the crime and other school drama along the way. As we are also a group of sitcom-lovers, we wanted to include that as an aspect of the film, also making sure our narrative didn’t overlap with that of American Vandal too much. Hence, we settled on the premise of an incident occurring on a sitcom set, centred around a set of wacky characters with humorous secrets. We have not yet ironed out the details of these characters or the incident that occurs, but we have currently decided that we want this story to take place over two 10 minute episodes so it would feel like a series.

The biggest comedy theory we discussed when brainstorming ideas was benign violation. We want to take both genres of sitcom and mockumentary and commit to the tropes of both. This is especially the case for the documentary parts of the short film as that’s what made American Vandal so successful as it really takes the tropes of documentary/true crime seriously whilst cutting on the absurd to have comedic effects.

Our group contract and vision board: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rHSXvnQhAbTrI2WDlKHQ5PsEFaJ1cez-6AsBTcBd1DQ/edit?usp=sharing

References:

1. Warren, C. & McGraw, A.P. (2015), “Benign Violation Theory” in Attardo, S. (ed), Encyclopedia of Humor Studies, Los Angeles: SAGE Reference.

Week 4: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/chloe-roussy/2024/04/05/beyond-a-joke-beyond-a-genre-week-4/

Week 5: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/chloe-roussy/2024/04/14/beyond-a-joke-be…d-a-genre-week-5/

Week 6: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/chloe-roussy/2024/04/21/beyond-a-joke-be…d-a-genre-week-6/

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:

1. Middleton, J. (2002), “Documentary ComedyLinks to an external site.“, Media International Australia, 104(1), pp. 55–66.

Week 5: Comedy as a Mode / Satire

Figuring out the difference between parody and satire as forms of comedy was quite confusing for me at the beginning, but in class it was described as a broader commentary on a certain topic. The explanation of this that made it make the most sense to me was “where parody, draws on – and highlights – aesthetic conventions, satire draws on – and highlights – social ones” (Neale, S & Krutnik, F., 1990). Greven (2014) highlights this and notes that the reason both forms are usually confused is that they can function together.

The examples that we discussed three examples of satires that were commentaries on drug use/policies. First was Brass Eye — episode 2, “Drugs” (1997), the second was Chappelle’s Show — “Tyrone Biggums” sketch from season 1, episode 2 (2003) and the third was Corey White’s Roadmap to Paradise — season 1, episode 10, “The War on Drugs” (2018). We compared the three and I realised that all three were based on the same topic but it was debated within the class which one was the most ‘effective’ in encouraging change in terms of drug use/policies.

When planning our next group sketch, we found that our ideas fit more into the parody form so we had to build upon a more relatable experience (the use of dating apps) and the bad experiences associated around it. This week my group (Nia, Bobby and I) put more time in filming and editing than all the previous weeks of sketches. There were quite a few different bits and segments that we wanted to do and for it to all reinforce the central idea: the cycle of dating apps negatively affects us yet we still continue to use them, and that’s comedic in itself. I’m very happy with how it turned out, and I think we successfully created a satire sketch, the only thing I would’ve fixed if we had more time is some editing issues (the transitions could have been smoother).

Sketch: UNHINGED

References:

1. Greven, D. (2014) Book Excerpt: Psycho-Sexual: Male Desire in Hitchcock, De Palma, Scorsese, and Friedkin by David Greven, Roger Ebert website, accessed 14 April 2024. https://www.rogerebert.com/features/book-excerpt-psycho-sexual-male-desire-in-hitchcock-de-palma-scorsese-and-friedkin-by-david-greven 
2. Neale, S. & Krutnik, F. (1990), “Definitions, genres, and forms” in Popular Film and Television Comedy. London: Routledge, pp. 10–25.

Week 4: Comedy as a Mode / Parody

This week we explored parody. I learnt that parody is about being aware of the conventions of a certain genre and working with them in a different way to create comedic effect. Toplyn (2014) describes it as “the concept of commenting on the original work” so it is vital to be aware of the conventions of a form before making an effective and comedic parody of it.

This was the first week that we did sketches as a group and I really enjoyed riffing off of Zach and Nia’s ideas to come up with a parody sketch. We decided that a form we already find funny is the reaction videos that have been in abundance on platforms such as YouTube. In order to make our parody close to the original form, we used ‘funny videos’ that are commonly used by reaction YouTube channels in it to stay true to the form and Zach’s commitment to the character made it all very believable. We flipped the form/genre by using incongruity and making it seem like the YouTuber had a stalker. In order to make it still fit within the genre, however, we made a plot twist at the end, where it was all a planned ‘prank’ by the YouTuber.

Our parody sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxHbgMgsxNE 

This week we also had comedian, writer, and performer Hannah Camilleri come in to talk to us about working in the industry, and we watched her web series Little Shits which was a series of short episodes that introduce a few characters who live in a share house. I was quite inspired by the form, and the small ensemble, which is something that I want to consider when it comes to the final project for this studio.

References:

1. Toplyn, J. (2014), “Parody SketchesLinks to an external site. to an external site.” in Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV, New York: Twenty Lane Media, pp. 239–261.

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.