1: In what ways do you hope your screenings/exhibited/screened work (whether individual or group produced) engaged its audience and communicated a key concern of the studio?  

Our project Milk Run was a little different to other films in our studio that we didn’t focus on making a comedy film directly. Instead we tried to apply something we learnt throughout the semester in genre-hybridisation. We want to demonstrate other genres could be funny, and that they can be purposeful in their humour without losing any credibility of their genres and stories. As a result, our intent for Milk Run is we hope people see it as a coming-of-age film meets a comedy, and are able to appreciate humour in non-comedy films, and that comedy doesn’t have to be overt, it can be understated and contextual, and doesn’t need a set-up and punchline to always be funny.

2: Imagine you are going to keep working on that media piece (e.g. to screen it somewhere else like a festival, or develop it into a different kind of work, and so on) – what would be the core things you would want to improve and extend and why? 

Our film probably needs a little more editing. It definitely could use another sound mix and adjustments to a colour grade, plus one or two other pieces we could add to it with some technical refinement (we had a few parts we just had to accept couldn’t be re-shot even if we wanted to). Outside of that, perhaps if I were to do it again, I’d make it longer with some more tribulations for the main character Max to go on, but that felt difficult with the time limits we had on the project and production. We probably had more difficulty with creating an impactful narrative in the time limit of a short film that combines comedy more than anything else.

Something I wouldn’t necessarily do differently but consider with the power of hindsight, is maybe in the context of a university class, make a more straight-up comedy film, as it is often being showcased among other comedy films and doesn’t necessarily demonstrate its strengths in the collection of other well-made comedy films it was played alongside. But then again, I liked that our piece had a relatable story, which comedy films usually struggle with a bit more, so perhaps balancing those factors in an extended project would be ideal.

3: From your studio, reflect on an aspect of two other students/group’s media work on the website in terms of specific insights they produced about a key idea addressed by the studio? 

I was really impressed with Trip-Up, by Giorgio, Angus, Ben, Saskia and K. Their film was probably the most pure comedy film (think of a Seth Rogen and James Franco type of film), and was super enjoyable. They made great use of the drug-afflicted characters to highlight absurdity and incongruity, and wrote some excellent characters. Equally so, performance was another massive aspect of their piece, and Giorgio and Ben in particular are so funny in their roles. They brought their piece together really well.

Rouge by Zoe, Oscar, Bobby, Chloe and Anna did another genre-hybridisation in the form of action film meeting comedy, and it was super fun. Their film uses the incongruity and benign violations of the time era differences to create several great gags, as well as an engaging premise for the character of Agent Whyte to interact with in their world. It’s a super ambitious task to do a genre-hybridisation in such a short window for production (as anyone from my group could tell you) and I was quite impressed with their work. Special shoutout to Zoe for absolutely crushing the performance of Agent Whyte, it cannot have been easy to do many of the shots they did in a public space without a load of awkwardness. She was absolutely awesome!

4: For the other studio website you engaged with,  describe a key idea that you think the finished media/studio work communicated with reference to a specific example (i.e. a particular individual/group work)

I was just utterly blown away by Picture The Moment by Kevin Sun in the Scene in Cinema studio. I loved doing Robin’s studio when I did one in Media 2, and have since been interested in what other people have done in his classes. The Scene in Cinema highlights the importance of cinematography to create a narrative, and I think Kevin’s work does that flawlessly. Inspired by works from Studio Ghibli, Kevin tried (and succeeded) to recreate the essence of those films in non-animated cinematography. As a result, he got an amazing and gorgeous film that beautifully showed a narrative of a photographer (and his friend), traversing through Melbourne. I think it’s probably the best film I’ve seen come out of the studio exhibits before, I was just so impressed and didn’t stop talking about it for days (Kevin if you are reading this, big fan!). He should be seriously proud of his film, and his ability to harness the concept of the studio to create something inspired.

Milk Run, by Harper Tabb, Amy Maher, Daniel Moore, Sam Rodgers, Matylda O’Sullivan, and Thuy Trang Nguyen.

There were definitely ups and downs when it comes to our production of Milk Run, but I enjoyed the process nonetheless.

Upon reflection, there are certainly changes I would have made that I’ll definitely get into, but first I want to highlight the positives.

As far as conceptualisation to getting to the end of the post-production is concerned, I am frankly amazed we got to this level within essentially two-and-a-half weeks. We probably didn’t have the benefit of other groups, who clearly had ideas going in and who they wanted to do their artefacts with. We were a group put together at whim, that had to find something to come up with as well as actually getting to know how each other worked. This wasn’t just us doing a generic skit either – we are talking a full production with weeks of planning.

Speaking of planning, I want to give a special shoutout to Daniel in particular. All my crew was fantastic in their own ways, but Daniel went above and beyond as a producer. He sourced all our props, location scouted several of our scenes, and did a large bulk of the edit in post-production. He and I both had massive days for our longer filming days and he just did an excellent job of getting the whole thing moving. I know I can be a pedantic person, so as a director I pay particular attention to the detail wherever I can, so to tolerate that and adjust based on my input was a godsend and I definitely owe him one.

As for filming itself, there are definitely things I’d like to do again or differently. Audio and cinematography both had different faults for different reasons. It was difficult to get clean audio in some of the locations we were in and that meant we had to make some changes to the film we didn’t want to. Visually was less of an issue in some senses, but there were shots that didn’t have the correct lighting or exposure, so we ended up having to think creatively to avoid obvious consistency issues, rather than creatively about how we wanted it to look.

Realistically, to further refine the film, we’ll probably do some edits after submission when we aren’t time-pressed, particularly with audio transitions and atmos, but it is a little disappointing in that it isn’t perfect for submission, because there are definitely parts that could do with touch-ups still (to no fault of our editors! Just a time and resources factor).

If I remove myself, however, from the logistics and practical parts I’d like to correct, I am suddenly a lot more pleased with the film.

Every media practitioner knows that feeling of using a clip, joke, song or whatever a hundred times over and it went from being great to unbearable (I still can’t listen often to Vampire Weekend’s This Life due to a mini-documentary I made in 2019 with it in it). So I was surprised with each new version of our film. I found different parts funny, I found new life in certain jokes and moments, and really enjoyed the overall arch of the film. It makes me glad I double-downed on our piece being a coming-of-age film first, and comedy second; I think it would have lost its identity otherwise. Maybe it is because it is anecdotal (…probably because it is anecdotal), but the film I have found after showing test edits to others, as being relatable, funny, and enjoyable. It is rough around the edges at points, but I’m very happy with how our ideas came to life. I hope others experience some of the weird quirks of Melbourne and moving through a different lens like I did, because it’s an experience I’d share with everyone if I could, and I hope this film plays some part in that.

Talking more broadly about the semester as a whole, I really enjoyed it. There was something incredibly cathartic about learning something new each week and immediately putting it into practice with a microscope on it. It made me appreciate the concepts of comedy so much more greatly and I feel a much greater confidence in my ability to be able to articulate why something is funny than I was before doing this course, and feel more comfortable in my ability to make something funny and engaging (and original). If you had told me when watching Happy Gilmore (1996) I’d be able to break down why it is – it’s primarily because of the “comic frame” (Voth, 2014) of the film and its protagonist, Happy’s, obscure journey to going pro and the “benign violations” (Warren & McGraw, 2015) of his consistent slapstick violence, if you were wondering – and also know how to recreate it.

I’ve talked a bit about collaboration for Milk Run already, so I’d like to address it for the previous 8 weeks of the semester. I think it can be difficult to get people out of their shells when it comes to group work, and I had my own tribulations with it this semester in various forms, but we made some really cool things! I have learnt I must have a fairly particular sense of humour though, because I don’t think anyone I worked with this semester truly found the things I found funny as funny as I did. Good to know!

I really enjoyed our weekly skits, and I think constant collaboration really allowed me to try new things, as in trying genuinely new things and push my boundaries, and for that I am really appreciative. Already between the gap of weeks one to week six, there is a lightyear of difference. I have a personal interest in poetry, and there is a great quote by Elisa Gabbert that talks about using poetry as training for writing surprises in narratives that sums up neatly my feelings of experimentations this semester, it goes: “There is a sense in which a writer must abandon their knowledge to get better. Sometimes I read my old writing and think it was better because it was worse—it had the innocent genius of stupidity. Leaps are how I try to reinhabit that feeling of not knowing what I was doing.” I think in terms of comedy and style, her quote is rather apt and a summary of my experiences this semester. Only difference is now, hopefully I am better at identifying what makes my humour click.

Thanks for the great semester!

References:

Dugan, D (director) (1996) Happy Gilmore [motion picture], Universal Pictures, United States.
Gabbert, E 2022, “The Leap,” Grand, viewed <https://grandjournal.net/the-leap/?ref=humorism.xyz>.
Tabb, H (director) (2024) Milk Run [motion picture], self-published, Australia.
Vampire Weekend (2019) ‘This Life’ [Song], Father of the Bride, Spring Snow.
Voth, Ben. “Comic Frame.” Encyclopedia of Humor Studies, vol. 1, 2014, pp. 148–50.
Warren, Caleb and McGraw, A. Peter. “Benign Violation Theory” Mays Business School Research Paper No. 2015-11, 2015. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2559414 

Big week for our film Milk Run (we changed titles to make it a bit more appropriate to the general arc of the film, also allowed us to do a joke in the piece that would have been a bit too on-the-nose beforehand).

We started with a small filming on Monday, but due to a variety of issues (namely super inconsistent weather and time restraints), ended up re-filming a lot of what we had on Wednesday morning. It was a little frustrating, but we got ourselves to a good point, now having filmed half the film already (with hopefully little need to go back and re-do anything)!

Wednesday was a long day, especially for myself and Daniel who had tasks the entire day. Busy from 9 AM to 8 PM was a long shoot, and hopefully we get the reward for it. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little concerned about the video and audio of the piece, but waiting for the edit before I begin to really worry.

Acting and directing is also quite difficult. I’ve done it before but it’s been a bit of a minute. I’m the main character in the film, Max, and I was often so focused on the logistics of the shoot and getting everyone into the right positions that I didn’t actually pay that much attention to how I was acting. I’m hoping it comes out okay. We shoot again on a different location on Sunday and I am hoping I get to focus on my performance more. I’m also just very anxious about the film being just good, and as a result am paying high attention to the production quality. However that has come at the sacrifice of time, so I am glad we discussed earlier about wanting it to be showreel worthy in our group contract, because I am trying to keep people motivated on the long days while being committed to that idea, because otherwise it’d be a hard ask, especially when we went over time in some places.

However, something that I am really happy with so far is I’ve actually realised the film is a lot funnier than I originally expected it to be. Something about seeing some of these things visually has definitely made them significantly funnier, and my co-star, Matt, has done an amazing job as Charlie in our film and I was really impressed with how we brought his scenes to life (just hoping we have maintained some consistencies visually and audio-wise!).

Also want to give a big shout-out to Daniel in particular, who put in an absolute mammoth day with a heap of tasks and was on top of everything. Really allowed me to put my attention to directing and hopefully can do that even more come Sunday.

This scene was surprisingly taxing, but pretty fun to act in.

This week we had our work in progress pitches.

I wasn’t surprised with a lot of the feedback we received, it was similar to how I felt for the majority of it (and we put more focus into our script than our presentation, so I can see why that may have been a bit more confusing than the script).

But it highlighted some interesting post-discussion within my group.

I think, reading around the room, some of my group members were a bit demotivated about some of the feedback. I wasn’t sure why until we came into class to discuss it all on the Wednesday.

I think people felt like it didn’t get enough laughs or had too many flaws, and every suggestion was thinking about being added without critical analysis of it. But I think we collectively lost vision a little bit of what our pitch actually was: a coming of age film first, comedy second. A lot of the feedback was, realistically, from the point of that we were making a comedy. It was still definitely helpful (and we implemented 90% of it), but there were a couple of things that probably didn’t fit with that theme. We were, also, the only ones as far as I know to read the whole script, so there was a lot more to get feedback on in that respect comparative to other groups.

So that led to a discussion about what we wanted to achieve with what we currently had, and when we double-downed on the coming-of-age film (or perhaps more appropriately, a story first and comedy around it) as the priority, things got a lot smoother. I reiterated that we were intending to go for something more understated, and we knew going in it wasn’t as traditionally funny as other groups were likely to be. I used Hannah Camilleri’s Little Shits as an example (and one of our core inspirations for the piece itself). No-one in our group thinks it isn’t funny, but there wasn’t a lot of overt laughter in the original screening of it (more the loud exhale through your nose type of laugh and smile). I think that gave a lot more reassurance we were a lot closer to the mark than we realised.

The feedback we have implemented though I think benefits the script well. Some of the jokes definitely did work better when rejigged with the suggestions (I can’t believe I didn’t think to add the milk quip prior to the scene rather than after, it is incredibly obvious!), and we were all totally in agreeance with Hannah when it came to the ending, which realistically we expected to change elements of anyway. We also got really important feedback about how to heighten the important feelings we are trying to convey, which I think is the most important feedback we got from it all. I’m now just musing over how to end the whole thing…

Filming starts on Monday and Daniel has done a fantastic job of pre-production planning and organising everything that needs to happen, and look ready to do 50% of our film then!

Some of my mad scribblings of the feedback. People liked the Perth accent joke, for some reason.

Week 9 was about ironing out our script and idea, and in the case of me, was kind of a personal experience I don’t imagine many other people dealt with this week, at least in the way I did.

Our script’s main concept is pretty anecdotal to my student life and last five or so years; so it has been odd having other people write and edit something that is formulated on my experiences. This week I had to navigate that a fair bit and try and find a line between what was important to me, versus what was important to the film. I think I mostly found a good balance, but several drafts were necessary to iron that out. It’s something I have to get used to, but there is something deeply personal about revealing yourself in a way to others, then letting them edit and manipulate it to a wider-ranging audience. In my head, those experiences are mine, and if someone doesn’t understand exactly what or how I felt in those situations, that can be something that feels… wrong.

I highlight all of that for a variety of reasons. First being that it’s just a part of the creative experience I’m grappling with, but also because of what we’ve come out with: I am actually pretty happy with it.

I think branching a bit into comedy has enabled us to have enough content to engage in the piece irrelevant of my own experiences. What I mean by that, is the piece – if you removed all the jokes – would just be in some way my experiences done fictionally. But through comedy and those jokes, not only does it add enough that it feels like it is its own thing, but it also means no one has to make an evaluation of sorts on my experiences (are they boring, uninteresting, fun, not fun, etc.) to decide whether the piece is going to be engaging. It can just be funny or nice to watch. When relinquishing control of those experiences, there is something relieving in that assurance.

We probably ended up going deeper into comedy than expected, after originally planning for it to be a genre-hybridisation of coming of age films and comedy, but I don’t think it was necessarily a bad decision. I’d still argue it’s both, but it does lean a little into comedy still. I see what we’ve got as something somewhere between Me Earl and the Dying Girl (2015), Lost in Translation (2003) and Bojack Horseman (2014-2020). Probably a collection of media that has never been compared before, but they all share the experiences of feeling like a fish out of water, with things that go on around them that feel other-worldly at times (where the comedy is often sourced), but their experiences are intrinsic to their main character’s world view and emotions. They are also pieces of media I really relate to, but we did get inspiration from other films/artefacts we have looked at throughout the semester as common inspirations.

I am glad we collated everyone else’s splurge of ideas in their vomit drafts into one, I think everyone brought some fantastic bits that really bring the feelings we are trying to achieve (fish out of water, lack of a place to call home, feeling unfamiliar with the world around you, the student experience, etc.) I hope I wasn’t too protective of my ideas/concepts, and definitely made an effort to remain open to feedback on our drafts while also trying to really highlight the strengths of the piece and when we deviated from it. I am super eager for the feedback we get on it on Monday!

Other than that, Matylda did some fantastic storyboards of the opening scene, Amy and I have been slaving over the script edit, and Sam, Daniel and Trang are working on the presentation, as well as Daniel doing a lot of the producer logistics with locations, casting and cameras. It’s been pretty good so far, a bit slow to start but now we are running along well with a really clear idea of what we want, with Bradley now possessing our script, storyboard and soundtrack ideas, and if all goes to plan highly likely to be filming end of next week!

References:

Bob-Waksberg R (creator) (2014) Bojack Horseman [television program], Netflix, United States.
Coppola S (director) (2003) Lost in Translation [motion picture], Focus Features, United States.
Gomez-Rejon A (director) (2015) Me Earl and the Dying Girl [motion picture], Fox Searchlight Pictures, United States.

So this week, we pitched our idea to the class.

Our idea is fairly straightforward. Our piece (currently) tells the story of an arts/media student who has just moved to Melbourne, who lives with a slightly unhinged/odd med student in a sharehouse. We want our piece to address feelings of belonging, home, the fish-out-of-water sensation and some of the experiences of student life. We want our piece to be quite understated in its comedy, almost acting as a sort of drama/coming-of-age film first, comedy second.

We have the skeleton for our story (which Amy kindly wrote some notes in class for as I don’t have a laptop, those notes can be seen here that details some of it). Some details are missing that we’ve talked about and agreed to that will see if they make the vomit draft.

Generally speaking, our three act structure consists of the student getting fed up with his roommate/not feeling comfortable etcetera, who then tries to go out and find somewhere quiet and comfortable in Melbourne before realising that his room is probably the place he is most comfortable, and comes home to a supportive roommate who despite his unhinged qualities, is also able to look out for him a bit.

We have ideas for how we want that to look which we will continue to refine for this week, but we have a structure with intended feelings, gags and moments that we are all working towards. Hopefully our script will achieve this (a vomit draft is the weekend job after work for me!)

The main protagonist is inspired a bit from my likeness, as anecdotally I share a lot of the experiences with the protagonist student. This will probably end up being a big part of the character’s development, leaning into my experiences and likeness to some extent, which will be… unique, I’m sure. Some of the roommate is inspired by a relative, who works as a doctor and very innocently says some pretty unhinged and emotionally-detached things due to the nature of her work.

But we have a lot of small bits we can run with or glue in to round out the story and situations. Particularly prevalent Melburnisms (and some that most Melburnians don’t really question), the emotions and feelings of moving far away from home, and just general being broke early-twenties life, give us plenty to draw from.

Skeleton is set, time to give it some muscles!

Link to sketch 6

Now I was absent for the concoction of the idea for this sketch, and Jaden graciously volunteered to do the edit, so I put my focus somewhere else for this skit: the camera work.

My main issue with my some of my previous skits had been the camera work and quality. As I have mentioned previously, it wasn’t particularly my focus in this class and I wanted to try and nail the concepts before sacrificing them at the mercy of technical proficiency. This however provided me an opportunity to be a bit more strict with it.

I think I did a decent job. It was my second time ever using this camera (the first being only 2 weeks prior), so there was some finagling involved. Some shots are now actually under-exposed on reflection, but overall the quality was much better. I actually thought I did a pretty good job of camera-tracking and providing the aesthetics of an action film. As the task was genre-hybridisation, I was eager to make it look as close to an action film as possible. Lots of stylised shots that put pieces of the action together (though we probably didn’t have enough action to do a lot of jump-cutting), lots of handheld shots, and small bits of camera movement (while staying centred on the character).

I think it was difficult to not blur the lines of hybridisation and parody with the task (especially for a few minutes sketch), but that seemed to come with the nature of the task. Examples such as American Movie (1999), which gain a lot of its humour through character and personification, have a lot more time to flesh out something to subvert and make funny. Gag/more traditional comedy-style humour relies on concepts such as Benign Violation (Warren & McGraw), that don’t need as much set-up because they revolve around several fundamentals of our previous worldly understanding. American Movie is funny because we feel for the characters presented, and their unorthodox ways of filmmaking and expressing their passion come off as humourous. This isn’t to say it’s impossible or a necessity to have, the idea is that the humour co-exists with its original genre, but like in the case of our skit, I think we hybridised and parodied to some extent, and I think that’s provided me with a new insight: to hybridise comedy into your pieces, you probably need to be able to establish some level of foundation with the genre, story and characters to then also be able to set up lines or insights to make the humourous moments stand out.

References:

Smith, C (director) (1999) American Movie [motion picture], Sony Pictures Classics, United States.
Warren, C. & McGraw, A.P. (2015), “Benign Violation.” in Attardo, S. (ed), Encyclopedia of Humor Studies, Los Angeles: SAGE Reference.