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.