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