Category Archives: Assignment #2 Experiments

The Divorce-Hybridisation Experiment #3: Genre Hybridisation

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This Week of the comedy studio we focused on Genre Hybridisation. Looking back at other weeks, this week was challenging in comparison. Genre Hybridisation is when a piece of media that focuses on a specific genre and then enhances this slightly with comedic themes and elements, it is not supposed to rise full of comedy or else then it would just be a parody(this can also not involve comedy as well). During this week of class we watched the documentary film ‘American Movie’ which follows the story of a cinephile named Mark Borchardt and his passion of cinema in the making of his own projects. This documentary is special because through the editing, it provides foreground into a hidden genre that is outside of the documentary sort of style, which was comedy. Through the reading ‘Documentary Comedy’ by Jason Middleton, he explored on the idea of “cutting on the absurd” (Middleton, 2002, page 57) in these types of comedic documentaries, for the audience to gain laughter out of a documentary, ‘American Movie’ cuts from scenario into interview immediately to provide “a juxtaposition that contributes to the film’s overall argument” (Middleton, 2002, page 57), this idea is promoted in the documentary to give higher emphasis on the unique dialogue of characters such as Marks friend Mike Schank. The interesting part of my groups media artefact this week is that we hybridised the drama genre by including a divorce, a very hard time to then introduce the comic form at the end of the piece significantly to then provide a punchline. We attempted to use dramatic style cinematography like shots from ‘Succession’ and also a tight little room to signify the emotions in the room. By making this sketch, i think comedy’s relationship can be applied anywhere in any genre and ours obviously does the same by possibly not realising it is a comedy all until the end, which was our aim. We also included a hint or two as well to slowly pave the way. I think in these past three weeks of working collaboratively, with more people, more than one brain, my comedic sensibility has improved week after week, i started off dragging myself to think of ideas and realised we need to work together to go step by step in a process which would then gradually improve not only myself but everyone’s comedic way of thinking.

References:

Middleton, J. (2002) ‘Documentary Comedy’, in Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy 104(1), pp. 55–66.

N.A.A.R.M.Y. Hybridisation Experiment #2: Satire

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Satire is a very intriguing aspect of comedy and this week i had an educational and hilarious time participating in class and through our sketch of the week. My understanding of this weeks comic form is pretty significant to my sense of humour. I enjoy satire comedy hugely through comedies that basically smartly trick people through an act of comedy and just troll people, a huge example of this although not mentioning him recently, Sacha Baron Cohen’s characters such as Borat and especially Ali G, plus his show ‘Who is America’, his acts are hilarious at showing how stupid people are and how funny and reckless he is towards submitting to this character and just making these people believe who he is in a serious manner. Learning through the readings this week, i learnt that Satire requires “targets to a peculiar given society at a particular moment in its history” (Caterson, 2005). This means that satire is the target, its something in the world, this could be mainly social, something in the everyday life, something in our world and broken down and dramatized comedically. In class this week i learnt a lot too. We found the difference between satire and parody where parody draws on and highlights aesthetic conventions and satire draws on social ones. In class we also watched three important videos of satirical comedy, i enjoyed the British show Brass Eye the most. In this episode we follow English Comedian Chris Morris who satirically hosts a news program and in this episode he exposes the issues and concerns with drugs. In this video he goes through hilarious efforts into making a new drug that stops drugs called cake and tricks many famous people into promoting it. In my media artefact this week, i had a lot of fun with satire. In my group we created an army recruitment satire advertisement where we used satire to the idea of ‘Naarm Core’. Our artefact responded with this through breaking the social life of young people and their cringe sort of lifestyle that is trending on social media. In this week i learnt that comedy’s relationship to other genres through this idea is very progressive, it has been going on all the time and can satire any particular event and societal moment, an example could be Dr Strangelove to Monty Python to even Jojo Rabbit.

References:

Caterson, S. (2005) A preposterous life, Griffith Review.

A Past Problem – Hybridisation Experiment #1: Parody

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In this week of the comedy studio, i was quite fond of what was going on and what we were experimenting with. This week our main focus was parodies. To me parodies are an imitation of a style with a complete exaggeration of a media form that is obviously on purpose. The significance of this parody is to use comedy as a mode instead of a genre. Using comedy as a mode means that it is basically seen by the audience that something is humorous even though it may not be a comedy but if it is a comedy we are known that we are supposed to be amused by what is happening, its more focused on providing a foreground for the audience to know that we are supposed to laugh, its like watching a comedic movie because we are expecting to laugh, its bound to us. Many famous parody films that are comedic involve Austin Powers, parodying James Bond, Hot Fuzz and the cornetto trilogy parodying action films and scary movie parodying classic horror films. The readings and lecture this week were very significant in my learning and my classmates learning, first of all in this weeks lecture, we got to hold of conference with a professional comedian (Hannah Camilleri) which not only showed us her work ‘Little Shits’ but she gave us a lot of feedback to make ideas which was one of my biggest issues and problems with comedy. Something that stuck with me was when playing an unserious player, you need to be sincere when playing it, you need to believe what your saying no matter how stupid it may be. In the lectures i learnt that the difference in parody and satire is that parody is internally focused and that satire looks outwards and is external to the genre. Following on with my personal media artefact, i think that these thoughts followed onto myself and my group. We learned that comedy’s relationship with this sketch is very important, we know were not supposed to laugh at this but we are, we know it’s a parody because we are aware that it significantly exaggerates the news industry. In our artefact we wanted to use this parody to parody programs like ‘A Current Affair’ ‘Married at First Sight’ and just news programs that think they know what is happening but are unaware and think too serious and not realise how stupidity and accidental comedy can take place which we took advantage of to promote this piece.

Canon Fodder Assignment #2

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s3944683@student.rmit.edu.au

 

Assignment #2 Canon Fodder-Manifesting Challenges to the Canon

 

Hysterical, disappointing and flat out unknowledgeable. The Canon of film can be summed up by myself in these words as just a complete mess, well that’s my opinion of course. If you didn’t know what the film canon is it basically means and explores the greatest films of all time, but who is to decide all of this? Critics, that makes a lot of sense doesn’t it.

As the semester break vastly approaches for myself and my classmates, i realised that this studio is a great working space with conversation, expertise, uniqueness and speciality amongst my classmates and myself approaches to the film canon.  With one of the biggest classes of this studio for a long time, i believe that with the mix of film taste we can all argue different ways to overflow, fix and elaborate the film canon.

 

 

This is just something i want to say about Film canon and just ranking this anyway, i believe that everyone has their own thoughts, favourites, passions, relaxations for films whether it’s for particular genres of romance, comedies, actions etc, and i think if you ask someone what their top five favourite films are each person will probably have a complete different list, whether its their own comfort films or their just acclaimed best films but how is it fair to just listen to a complete different category of critics worlds and make everyone follow their list, can you not like your own movies? Yes, you can and there should be a list where the best films ever should be, but why just involve critics, why not the ones who are making the films? This can be said in other canons other than film, who are the best artists, authors canon, even the greatest songs.

 

 

In Week three of the studio i myself was fascinated by the screening of the feature film Citizen Kane. Why is this? On the sight and sound poll which is completed every ten years to decide the greatest 100 films this film was number 2 (Vertigo #1) which made me interested on how a film that was made in 1941 still holds its place and ive got to say i thought i myself was watching The Simpsons as there was various parallels to the character Mr Burns, plus it really interested me as the director who also stared as Charles Kane (main character) created this film at a young age of only 25 which shows his creativity of making this universal film. Plus, after the film i discussed in another class where at the start the teacher asks us what we have watched i told everyone i watched it and they were all like wowed that i just watched it and all wanted to see it again for the first time, which i didn’t really come to terms in. My opinions of the film are as follows, yes, it’s a great film, i loved it the characters, the pacing was beautifully done but i think if i watched it a couple more times i would understand it more and enjoy it more but honestly i think it has aged not the best as its obviously a very old film.

 

 

Continuing, in week 3, by reading Paul Schrader’s piece ‘Canon Fodder’ early in the studio, it made me realise and understand the real meaning of the Canon. Schrader goes into analysis about how the film canon demises from the history of art before film was invented, from paintings to books to plays to then film. A thing that stays with me that he states is his repeated examples on how to understand where things come from and how you can learn from it, for example “to understand the canon is to understand its narrative…the universe is a narrative, to understand the universe is to understand its history. Each and every thing is part of a story-beginning, middle and end.” Also, my standpoint follows of what Schrader states later about the film canon which includes “there is no agreement about what a canon should include but there is no agreement if there should be canons at all” which comes to terms about what type of films should be included and why some should be ignored but my real question of consideration is, what makes them canonical?

 

 

Moving on, during this class, we have watched various short films recently and three of them that really surprised myself include Night on Bald Mountain (1933), Powers of Ten (1977) and Begone Dull Care (1949) respectively. Firstly, the 1933 hit Night on Bald Mountain flew into my attention firstly because of the time period, 1933 you wouldn’t expect a piece like this for the time period, it’s a very dark sort of thing to watch and looks like a sort of stop motion piece that could be made in modern times and defiantly ahead of its time. Secondly, my viewing of Powers of Ten was my favourite watch out of all the short films due to it raising my eyes into how big this world is and how small things like our body have different layers that can go on for a very long time and just made me realise that how small we are but how big we are as well which doesn’t really make sense. Lastly, my viewing of Begone Dull Care was chosen to represent the three as it did not make any sense to myself as i didn’t really know what was going on but i wanted to keep watching as the piano made me stay plus looking at when it was made it really intrigued me.

 

 

Now, the main event of the recent weeks which really struck a nerve for myself after the viewing and made me really question cinema. I think its directed by Julian Rosefeldt but 2015s film ‘Manifesto’ staring Kate Blanchett going bonkers for 90 minutes. This film obviously showcases Kate Blanchett as she changes from a homeless man to a news host, a mother praying at dinner, woman at a funeral speaking a ventriloquist of different historical figures, a teacher blasting her students about what should be in films and many more that if you think you’ll probably get right. With outstanding cinematography of high shots and wide, this film surprised me without its script. But with its script is where myself and my class lost control, as Kate speaks various historical manifestos about what ‘art’ should be if art is real and about authorism and various other issues with the world, we were stunned to even think what happened in the film. I was speechless and i think to understand it more and better watch it more times which i may need to do. This film led me to then be intrigued about the future of the studio in the study of manifestos.

 

 

When reading manifestos for class it made me very engaged into wanting to create my own for the future about how to overthrow the film canon which is an assignment in the future. Two manifestos that stuck with me in week 5 include the Dogme 95 which in 1995 various filmmakers founded a group in which they exclaim their ideas on how to make film and the films rules. Out of ten rules a couple of them include “shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in.”, “The camera must be hand-held.” “Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot.” And “the director must not be credited” which really caught my attention as every Dogme film made credited a director for the film, this manifesto at the time of film would have been very popular as in 1995, film has been around for around 100 years and maybe these filmmakers thought that the new generation needed something new. Moving on, the manifesto made my Jesse Wente named ‘Doing All Things Differently’ exposes the lack of sovereignty of land for indigenous people on the screen which i chose as it was made recently in 2019 and focuses to “normalise” and “humanise” the indigenous people as recent studies of films/different publicly seen media were “told by people outside our communities” the themes of change represent the authors point of view and what the author and their followers hopes to help modify the representation and viewing of indigenous qualities of North America especially Canada.

 

 

Finally, shortly, i just want to say that this studio has quickly become my favourite class to attend, each week i continue to learn and explore the film canon and what i can do in order to change and to adapt the canon to understand if it is even needed or should there be alternate alternatives to rank or rate films or any other type of media. I am looking forward to the future of the course and learn the ways to overthrow the canon.

 

 

Resource list:

 

Paul Schrader, “Canon Fodder (Links to an external site.)” in Film Comment, vol. 42, no. 5, September-October 2006, pp. 33-49

 

Dogme 95, “Manifesto”, 1995, hosted at http://www.dogme95.dk (Links to an external site.).  http://www.dogme95.dk/dogma-95/ (Links to an external site.) & http://www.dogme95.dk/the-vow-of-chastity/

 

Jesse Wente, “Doing All Things Differently (Links to an external site.)” in Film Quarterly vol. 72 no. 3, Spring 2019, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2019, pp. 42-43.