Now it is the end of this Beyond the Joke, Beyond a Genre journey. Operation Super-Star has been screened and all is well. I think that our screening on the opening night (just like all of the films that have been produced in this studio) did a great job at showing people what this studio was about, how we can create comedy in ways that aren’t through sketches, or sitcoms that are set up to be filled with punchlines. I think that Operation Super-Star did this especially well because we put a lot of focus into the plot and narrative of the film. We wanted our characters to go through arcs and grow and change. I believe that we were able to achieve a storyline that evolves and completes itself within the short span of 22 minutes while still staying true to our comic mode of satire. After talking to many people that night, it told them that people found it funny but were also impressed by the story we told. Moments to laugh, cry, and feel angry is what I have taken away from this studio to expand comedy as more than just a genre but rather something that can be applied and added to different pieces of media.

When it comes to developing or further progressing my work in this studio I think it’s a hard question because of how happy I am with the final product. Of course, if there was more time there are some technical things I would redo sound-wise and some in-camera with grain. But I have grown to think that it encapsulates the essence of Melbourne after dark that we were trying to capture, through the literal grit and grime. As for festivals my group and I already have talks of sending it off to other festivals as we believe that it is something that should be seen by more people and tells an important yet funny story of some of the most important lessons someone can learn while living in Melbourne.

I think that the two works in our studio that stood out to me with their relationship to the studio prompt are Rogue and Trip Up. Rogue, an action comedy, creates a compelling action story that is then made funny. After doing various exercises throughout this course I discovered the difficulty that comes with applying comedy to another genre. Accidentally fall into the hole of parodying the genre you are trying to hybridise. I think that this comes mainly from a lack of access to the traditional equipment that is required to make a film of a genre like action, but Rogue does not have that issue. Even while being a student film with only 3-4 weeks of production, the jokes are well thought out and the piece has been filmed cleverly – so that the punchlines lie within the plot rather than on the surface of the genre. Trip Up to me shows the different ways in which comedic writing can be applied to different genres. The film itself is a comedy with various elements that have been picked from different genres. This amalgamation combined with writing that stays solid throughout allows for a piece that is dynamic yet not disorientating.

Another studio I saw was Instinct and Intention. I think this studio stood out to me since I have an interest in editing and the effect it has on video as a whole. The piece that caught my eye in that studio was by Adi K called Dames & Sea Smoke. The film didn’t have any dialogue or explicit narrative or storyline that was being outwardly TOLD. However, the way that the piece was edited together and overlay effects were used to show feeling and interaction between the two actors was enough to make what was happening clear. Being mixed with an ominous soundtrack as well the piece makes you feel uneasy even when nothing necessarily bad has happened. I think that overall what this studio wants to communicate is that, editing can have just as much power over a film as what is being shot. It’s a process that has to be done carefully and with intention and can change completely the meaning of what has originally been filmed.

Major Media Blog Post Week #7

Major Media Blog Post Week #8

Major Media Blog Post Week #9

Major Media Blog Post Week #10

Major Media Blog Post Week #11

Reflective Essay

Now that my final work has been completed and I have had time to look back over at everything throughout the semester, I can see how my idea of comedy has greatly shifted. In the beginning, I struggled to even imagine how I would be able to produce something funny that isn’t solely comedic. During the first weeks of the semester when working on short sketches, I thought that is all I would be able to achieve throughout the process of writing, filming and editing Operation Super-Star. I now understand how I am able to apply the comic frame to any genre or narrative situation.

I believe that this is why Operation Super-Star does so well as a film for this media studio (Beyond a Joke, Beyond the Genre). While our film is comedic in nature it still goes through character/narrative arcs and a thematic, mood-shifting storyline. The humour in this film is not just found in jokes that are told verbally through dialogue or done visually through the actor’s performance of their characters. While that still stands true it works similarly to how comedy works in a sitcom, being that the humour is found in the narrative situations, (Butler, J.G. 2020). These situations occur through moments of absurdity: such as a giant rat talking to the two boys and incongruity: like a rat-tail hairstyle being an actual rat’s tail, within the film. However, this absurdity works primarily for the audience, as even though the boys are first shocked by the Ratman the scene continues as if he was a normal person to them, while the audience sees a freakishly large rodent, (Palmer J. 1987).

The question of what I would do if I were to keep working on it is a hard question for this film. I’m used to the past list of details of the film that I think need improvement but I cannot for Operation Super-Star. To me it is the best thing I have had the opportunity of working on and it to me is perfect. It might be because of how dedicated we all were to it, adding a lot of our own time, money and resources to make it work, but I believe that other people will see the same magic in the film that we do. Time was not a constraint for us, but rather a challenge. This is because we started from the very beginning giving this film a lot of time to do achieve the goals that we wanted to achieve (still within the reason of 3 weeks). However, I do think that the ideas of the film are funny enough to be turned into a series, which was also an idea given by a panellist at our film’s pitch. I think that it would work as a sitcom because the two main characters already have a constant “narrative problematic” which is them wanting to be DJs (Butler, J.G. 2020).

Throughout the production, we came through various challenges but we all as a group knew what we wanted to achieve. I think a big part of this was establishing a contract with each other before we began any work. This meant that everyone was able to say what they wanted out of this and that we were all on the same page and understood the type of commitment we would have to it.

My group all collaborated very well together I believe. While I think that part of this is due to our pre-established connection with each other, a lot of it is still thanks to the certain measures we took as a group. We also at an early stage established that everyone in the group no matter the role has creative input into the film. I think that whenever someone is directing something it is very easy to get into a mindset of “my way or the highway”, and not only does this miss out on many potentially great ideas, but it also demoralises the crew. It makes people feel like they are only there to help someone else’s vision come true – this then takes away their investment from the film and doesn’t give them a reason to work to the best of their abilities, (Hodge C. 1984). Together we all knew that the film was going to take a lot of effort to make and that our jobs will have to be divided as fairly as we can. Finding the right balance between doing your own job successfully and stepping out of your role to help others is a hard balance to find but I believe that when it is done group work becomes a lot less stressful and a lot more can be achieved together. 

Overall I am very happy with how Operation Super-Star came out and I feel like I have learned a lot from this studio. Going from struggling to come up with one funny joke for a minute-long sketch in the early weeks to now having produced a 22-minute-long short film that I believe is funny, really makes me feel like I have come a long way and achieved a lot in this studio.

Now that it is week 11 and we have finished filming. Alex has been editing rough-cuts together and showing us and it is a very special feelin, especially with comedy to see a script come to life. I think the reason that it is more rewarding with comedy is because there are so many jokes explained in words. While the dialogue ones are clear whether they will work or not, the visual ones are a bit of a risk and you only see the outcome of how funny it is once it has been filmed and looked back at. 

I believe that while it is good to have everything planned and scripted ahead of time, a lot of humour can be found and created within the edit itself. This doesn’t necessarily mean funny sound effects but rather the timing in which you cut between two clips can create a punchline better than the scripted punchline itself. 

Now that we are at the final stretch of this film I am very proud of everything that everyone has achieved while working on it. We overcame many hardships throughout this process, our latest one being working with footage that has no sound. While we still have audio from the boom mic editing has definitely become harder now that we have to sync our clips up. 

After the filming struggles we went through last week this week’s shoots were relatively smooth. I think a lot of that is due to me being able to learn from what worked and what didn’t work on our first shoot. I think that if some how it was possible a rehearsal shoot or a test of some sort would have helped all of us but obviously it’s not logistically possible. I am glad though that the shoot with all of our extras was later on so I was able to get settled and comfortable with things.

This week OPERATION SUPERSTAR (2024) began production. After two weeks of preparation, we had a lot of goals that we wanted to hit on day one of shooting. Our shot list was long but we made room for things to go wrong and to be flexible with other people that we were working with. 

On the day of the shoot, we spent class sorting out any final details and having one last debrief. Alex and I also set out to create a diffuser lens that we had planned to do since the beginning. We settled on the picture shown, which is some frosted wrapped with tape that after some experimentation we found clouds the image in an almost vignette and ‘astigmatises’ light adding the dream-like look we wanted certain parts of the film to have. 

When shooting a lot of things went well. We had most of the shots we wanted and had another night to get the ones that we didn’t since we started early. Our actors worked very well together and got more and more comfortable as the night went on. Even though everyone did their jobs perfectly the amount of stress that a shoot like that causes, always makes you feel like everything went wrong even though it didn’t. Towards the end of the night, the people of the public began to turn on us and we were quickly chased out of Fitzroy as we wrapped up our final shot. 

Alex and I reviewed some of the footage in an edit suite as we transferred across the footage and all the doubts of the previous night fleeted and we were reminded that it did in fact look good and we had a lot that we were able to work with. 

Moving forward to the next shoot on Sunday, we all know exactly what we want to do and every step we take closer to our final product feels more and more fulfilling. 

This week my group and I finalised *most* of our actors and discussed all of the props, locations, etc that we will need for different scenes. I am glad that our group has a joint focus on what we want to achieve and Alex as the director has done a great job at going the extra mile to make sure that scripts, storyboards and other physical resources, were already produced so that the time we spend as a group wasn’t wasted.

I think this early start will also help us later down the line when we get to the production and post-production stages of our film. This is not solely due to us now having more time but we’ve had more time to really sit on ideas and work them out in our head. This is something that I wrote about last week as well because I believe that you can’t make decisions in a day, and our minds have changed about so many big and small details over the week, which has been good to get out of the way before we shoot.

Since we have such a limited time to write, film and produce our work, we have a very detailed planner of when and where everything will be. I think this is important especially since we are working with other people who will be acting and we need to cater to their needs as well as what we want to shoot. We have also prepared a good amount of backup plans in case an actor or something does fall through and we have in our minds that even though we have a way we want to do/achieve things we need to be flexible.

I hope that from the pitch/WIP we can get tips on filming in public locations like this, as well as ideas on how we may be able to achieve the technically challenging ideas we have. Since we are pitching to people who specialise in comedy and our film isn’t as loyal to a comedy, I think it would also be helpful if we could see where they think punchlines and jokes should lie within it and whether or not the jokes we have in it are actually funny and noticeable or too subtle and my group and I are the only ones who understand it.

This week was a very productive and busy week for the production of our short film but since we got a lot of pre-production work done we will soon be able to start shooting. I have never done a ‘vomit draft’ with a group of people before but I found that it was a great way for everyone in the group to get down their own personal ideas. I especially thought that the ‘vomit draft’ was useful because we didn’t have to only give ideas that completely aligned with the plot. This meant that we were able to not limit our thinking and creativity as well as use some of our thoughts to shape how the plot and overall narrative of our film would look. 

We decided that we should all join a video call online so that we would not be restricted to class time and instead use our dedicated time in class to finish parts of our work that benefited from all of us being there together. It was also helpful because it meant that we came to a class full of ideas that also had time to marinate. Letting ideas simmer for a few days or at least overnight is something that I found very important once the initial ‘vomit draft’ is complete. That in itself filters out some ideas and leaves the good ones remaining. 

After talking with Bradley about locations we have now started location scouting with two locations already being approved and are beginning the process of finding actors. After hearing other groups’ ideas in class I also began thinking of different ways that some of their strategies could be applied to their work, so it was helpful and made it interesting that everyone in class had very different ideas from each other.

Overall this week was a great start in pre-production and it feels like everyone in my group is all on the same page and everyone is excited to gradually move into the production stage and make our very ambitious goals come true.

Our group is aiming for a short film that is technically ambitious, professional looking, visually beautiful and poetic. We all want a HD mark for our work and would love for it to be a standout and be an improvement on our previous work. We envision our artefact’s ultimate destination to be on YouTube, our portfolios and submitted and hopefully screened at festivals and film competitions; something we’re really proud to show to the world! The level of commitment we want to achieve this will be high; divvying out roles according to our outside commitments and taking time out of uni/off work to shoot, scout locations and write the script. 

We will use Slack as the main form of communication in the group, using it to organise in-person meetings, shoot-days, ask questions and spitball ideas. We all expect each other to check messages and respond within a day. If commitments or issues arise, we will try our best to update each other and be as understanding as possible, things happen! If there’s sickness or people are overwhelmingly busy we will try our best to show up for each other and help out where needed. 

The assigning of roles are still a work in progress but based on our personal interest/strengths and general availability we’ve so far agreed on:

Pre-Production Roles

Writers: Everyone 

Producers: Individual tasks to be divvied up amongst everyone 

Production Roles 

Director: Alex

Directors Assistant: Claudia

Cinematographer: Jaden

Lighting: Jazz

Sound: Luci

Post Production 

Editing: Luci and Alex

Inspiration:

I think that Dog’s in Space (1986) is a big inspiration for me with this work. While not entirely a comedy it definitely has its funny moments and while also the approach to narrative we will have, it does a great job of portraying the setting of Melbourne. Since we want our work to look very stylistic with elements of surrealism I think Edgar Wright’s films especially Zombieland (2009) are a big inspiration, both how it looks visually as well as the structure of how the narrative is driven (through the rules).

Sketch & Reflection #1

Sketch & Reflection #2

Sketch & Reflection #3

https://youtu.be/Hg47ld_WdWw

This week I learnt that there is a difference between having comedy in a specific genre rather than the genre being comedic itself. At first, I had no idea what this meant and I was completely lost but once we started looking at various examples it became clearer. Starting by looking at the difference between “mockumentary” and “comedy documentary”. While at face value the two sounded the same to me until I read this week’s reading by Middleton, J. (2002). While I was so used to seeing comedy in other genres in film and TV I had no idea how I could make it. It felt difficult due to the piece relying heavily on the jokes you construct rather than slightly pulling on the conventions of other genres. 

This was something that was going to be a step outside of my comfort zone since all my previous work for this course has had something to do with parody or satire. My main personal goal for this sketch was to make jokes without solely relying on the genre itself. 

This week I was in a completely new group with people that I have never worked with before (Angus and Harper). I wasn’t nervous or worried going into this but I was still pleasantly surprised with how smoothly everything went. From brainstorming ideas together to filming our sketch there were no roadblocks and everyone knew what had to be done with the same goal in mind. 

Ultimately this sketch is the one I am most proud of due to mainly how we were able to create humour in ways that I am not used to and have not done before. I believe that now that I have done this I have opened new pathways for me to intertwine comedy within my work visually and through dialogue.