Sketch: Lunch Break

While I had an understanding of what satire was, I never fully understood it. I have consumed media like South Park and follow the Beetota Advocate on Instagram but, I wasn’t fully aware of how to create satire or what it really meant or achieved. After looking at examples in class of satire media I was able to see what satire looked like in different forms. From the mimicking mockery of Brass Eye to the sketch-based jokes and gags of Chappelle’s Show. I kept these two ideas as opposite sides of the same spectrum when it came to brainstorming ideas with my group.

Once the brainstorming had begun we mainly focused on why satire exists and its purpose in society. We knew that we had to pick something to make fun of and critique at the same time. After some thinking we settled on the new wave of Gen Z’s obsession with appearance through the form of absurd diet culture as well as other ‘do it quick’ methods that have no effect. Once we had this idea we decided that we would present it in an office lunch break scenario that we we would be able to exaggerate this diet culture in many different branches and have them get weirder and weirder rather than just be one exaggerated thing by itself. 

I think that my group and I did a good job at creating satire for our chosen topic. I think that we exaggerate what we are critiquing enough so that it can be funny to someone watching but not too much that it doesn’t make sense. I think that if we had more time to script and plan our sketch we would be able to have more variety in what we make fun of and the ways we do it rather than it just being exaggeration throughout, but more clever and well thought out jokes. 

This week really taught me that comedy can be used as a tool to help people, since even though we were technically making fun of certain ideologies, through satire we can twist it into a somewhat positive message.

Parody | MISSING THE MARK (Documentary)

Parody is one of my personal favourite modes of Comedy. I grew up with it as a kid watching parody music videos on YouTube and my favourite film is Surf’s Up (2007) which is a mockumentary (parody of the documentary style). So as soon as I saw that we were parodying a genre for our group exercises I knew exactly what genre I would pitch for.

When it came to planning our sketch as a group (with Jazz and Alex) it became hard for us to narrow down what exactly we wanted to do and how we could fit it into the short 3-minute time limit. Thankfully the first few sketch exercises taught me how to slowly chip away at parts and decide what was best to keep in the final cut. 

Working in a group setting was very refreshing from the first lonely 3 weeks of exercises for me as I like bouncing ideas off of other people and collaborating on a film set. I think that I also work better in a group setting with people I work well with because it is not just me relying on and working towards the final product. 

Filming the sketch went very smoothly, while we didn’t have a specific detailed shot list, we knew all of the shots that we would need for our sketch to work so we were only shooting for one and a half hours. After the shoot though I began to doubt whether our concepts were as funny so I was starting to feel worried about the edit. 

We did not go out with super-specific roles but due to everyone’s joint understanding of the final goal, we were able to naturally spread the workload out fairly evenly. Jazz is the one that did the edit and when I saw the edit all my doubts about whether the sketch was funny or not left. I think this was due to stepping away from the piece for a few days which was a benefit we had from filming early, as well as Jazz’s editing style.

What I learned from this exercise is how important the edit and what your shots look like is when it comes to parody, because there are specific conventions that you need to break and make fun of as a maker of comedy and if your work does not match that, then the jokes isn’t being told to it’s fullest.

WEEK 1 EXERCISE

WEEK 2 EXERCISE

WEEK 3 EXERCISE

Sitcom Sketch

The way I chose to explore the idea of “comic frame” is to explore a setting in which many people are familiar with and understand the basic rules of – Sitcom. I then tried to twist the rules of this particular frame and make the joke something that isn’t usually found in this specific comic frame. 

To show the specific frame that I am using I followed the traditional codes and conventions that are commonly found in sitcoms Butler, J.G. (2020). Since it is only a 1 minute long sketch all I did was try and colour grade the clips to match the warm colours that are associated with many traditional sitcoms. I also included familiar sounds such as crowd applauses and laugh tracks to further set the frame.

My sketch also uses the ‘comedy mechanics’ as explained by Toplyn, J. (2014). It contains two characters that ultimately rival each other and a comic character that is trying to achieve something (make the laugh track laugh). I believe that I could have done a better job at making the ways in which my comic character tries to achieve his goals but due to the time limit, I was forced to keep it simple. I found this idea/rulebook of comedy mechanics extremely useful when writing comedy as it helps you actually construct a joke, and gives you rules that you can choose to either follow or intentionally break for a different effect.

After receiving feedback last week, I tried to make my sketch include other bits of visual humour and although small I believe this made my sketch funnier as a whole. The main point of feedback I got was that a joke can be told in multiple ways it doesn’t just have to be the punchline, so with this in mind, I was able to use visual humour to leave little gags throughout. Even though it is little things like wiggling toes or scratching intensely I believe that it enhances my work. 

I think that altogether I was able to create a comic character that is set in a comic frame that has a conflict, characteristics that differentiate them and most importantly a clear goal in mind. So overall I believe my sketch achieved what I wanted it to achieve but I also believe there is room for improvement if I had more time to work with.

The Board Meeting | Silent Comedy/Benign Violation Sketch

This week’s sketch and classes were focused on benign violation and silent comedy. At first, I really struggled to understand benign violation but as the week went on I would come across it in my day-to-day life and it would make me laugh and then I would just think about the theory of it and how I am no better than a theory written in 2010. My sketch this week was inspired by my own life events that happened as well as the works of other great silent comic makers. The Mr. Bean short  Mr. Bean Takes an Exam (1991) is one that I was especially inspired by. I found it funny the way that it uses benign violation and then adds a twist to it (creating a different violation), so I chose to incorporate this into my own work.

The idea of the sketch itself came from after I opened a similar packet of chips on the train and then exploded going all over me. I held this idea and then workshopped how I could create it into a sketch with benign violation. This was then executed by having a can of soft drink being shaken throughout the entire sketch just to be casually opened without any issues and followed by a bag of chips that suddenly explodes.

I found it hard to keep the audience engaged in something that is silent at first so I used some visual gags such as; a tight suit blazer, a misspelt can of soft drink as well as some obscene overdramatic acting to make the piece a little bit sillier. The way that the chip packet exploded made me laugh because I was not expecting it to go everywhere but I think that is what made it funny in the end right after the underwhelming fizz from the soft drink can.

Overall I am happy with the sketch I created and believe that it is somewhat funny and since it is hard to do comedy solo I got the opinions of some people who said they agreed with me. It taught me how important the practices in silent comedy are even when your work isn’t silent because visual comedy can be so creative and really amplifies a joke making it feel complete.

Very Funny Sketch

The goal of this exercise was to showcase incongruity, the way I chose to approach this was to take something that most people are familiar with (opening a bonbon with a joke during Christmas)and add a twist to it. 

From the examples that we watched in class you such as I Think You Should Leave season 3’s episode Zipline, I understood that you can only really twist something that people already know or otherwise they will not know that it is different and think nothing is meant to be funny. 

The twist in my sketch is that the joke is long and keeps on going on and on. I think that the joke works well in this situation because I am seen to be reading off of a piece of paper that is very small as well as Christmas bon bon jokes usually being one-liners. I think this visual element adds to the depth of the joke and makes it sillier even if the actual punchline of the joke is underwhelming. 

Because for some reason I like to come up with jokes in my free time the long joke I wrote is upwards of 3 minutes which for this exercise does not work. I was worried if the sketch would even still be funny then because I felt like a large part of its comedy came from the fact that I just kept talking non-stop for three minutes. Then when we were brainstorming our sketches on our tables Claudia and Luciana gave me the brilliant idea of showing time passing visually. This allowed me to be able to fit the punchline in under a minute but also by using this visual comedy I was able to over-exaggerate what was happening and make it silly and funny in that aspect. 

I think that this exercise in itself gave me ideas of how comedy can be presented and that it doesn’t have to be solely through audio or solely through visual elements but rather both can come together to deliver a punchline.

5.2 Studio Reflection 

I was so surprised and impressed with how cool and interesting everyone’s final films were. They were also so different with very little in common making the whole screening super exciting and feeling fresh after each film. There were two films that really stood out to me though, being The It Girl by Sarah Goh and Lucy by Elsa Walsh. I think they both went above and beyond to create two pieces of cinema that were both beautiful and uncomfortable at the same time. While saying this I do think that all of the films made for the Uncomfortable Filmmaking studio were phenomenal and all met the criteria of being an uncomfortable film in their own individual ways.

I love Sarah’s use of lighting in their film as this is something that I originally wanted to play with in my film Do Geese See God but did not end up doing to the extent I would have liked. It is still visible within my film in the form of spotlights and light only emitting from other rooms but I like this very animated and dramatised approach that Sarah had when it came to lighting certain shots. Having lighting mean different things, such as when the lighting completely shifts to green when one of the characters stabs the other main character with a knife. This brings me to the makeup in this film and how it was used symbolically as well as a practical effect was very interesting to see. From being used as goo seeping from a face to the blood that really sells the stabbing scene, it all really inspired me to have a makeup artist on set because it really sets the film apart from being a regular ‘student film’.

The other film that stood out to me as I previously mentioned was Elsa’s film Lucy. I think that the film was shot beautifully. Each shot was individually thought out and all flowed together so well. I think that it inspired me not necessarily in an uncomfortable sense but, when it comes to filmmaking in general, to be more dynamic with the shots I choose to shoot and include. However, I think the reason the film looks so well put together is not solely because of the camera work, rather, it is what is included within the frame of each shot. The set design is very ambitious, even constructing a mock garage sale to establish the plot of the film. No shot ever felt empty which is what made the film uncomfortable as it felt very real. The part that really impressed me is the ending which reveals a wall completely covered in different photos of the character Lucy. I think that moving forward with my filmmaking I really want to put more time and effort into set design or even have a production designer on set for the shoot. 

Another studio that I saw the exhibition of was Shock! A New Horror. I thought that this studio was done very well and is something that I would like to be a part of if it is ever offered in the future. I think it was really interesting how each group of students produced works a part of the horror genre but many with their own twist and individual gems which really established them in this category talked about by the professor of “post horror”. I think that it really made me think about how much can be done with the horror genre itself and it doesn’t just have to consist of slasher flicks or throw-in jumpscares (not that those are bad things) but it is interesting to see this new direction. 

The two films that really stood out to me from the studio were Shrine by Charlie and He Suck’s by Jazmine. I think that both of these films explore really interesting topics around being a woman and I think that it is something really interesting to see done in a horror setting. I thought that He Suck’s had a really interesting and necessary use of found footage of old horror movies. Sometimes I think that when used in student films found footage can look lazy or stick out but I think that He Suck’s incorporated it very well. As well as that, I loved the makeup and set design that Shrine had and I think that it really speaks for how low-budget horrors are still possible to be made, all it takes is some creativity. 

WEEK 13 – Conclusion

15-10-2023

While our film was uncomfortable to shoot and make, I do think that it also can make audiences uncomfortable. The whole film doesn’t have any dialogue, which means that the story and narrative of the film must be inferred through other audio cues as well as the imagery, visuals and use of colour in the film of the film. I think that forcing audiences to think more critically of how colour as well as its absence is used in the film, makes for an uncomfortable viewing experience in itself. I think that every moment and motion on screen is uncomfortable, from the walks of the actor Jamie to the clunkiness of the camera that comes with reversing the footage. I think by faking how the movement is performed in the film (performing it backwards) the film actually captures a certain grittiness and authenticity which comes hand in hand with the themes that the film explores. I would also like to explore the ideas we had colour more in the film. I think that if we shot scenes that are intentionally very colourful, in black and white and then had colour seep through it would look very cool.

https://vimeo.com/874463356 Shooting super vibrant scenes like in Elsa’s film with our colour idea is something that I would love to have explored.

If I were to continue making my film and continue to make it more uncomfortable I think that my main goal would be to shoot more things backwards. To show what things look like in reverse, such as; animals, smoke/other particles as well as more intricate sequences that are acted out backwards. We had the idea to have a whole cooking scene where the main character makes breakfast and a coffee, but it just proved to be too hard to shoot especially in the limited amount of time we had and in relation to its significance in the film.

I think it would be interesting though to make this film into a fully-fledged feature. We already had a bit of a physics bible/rule book on how things worked in this world, but I think that an ENTIRE feature film performed backwards would be really cool to see and something that I would love to be able to do in the future, because of how uncomfortable it would be to watch and make but also because sometimes things can look really cool reversed.

WEEK 12 – Collaboration

15-10-2023

I think that the collaboration for this film went really well. Originally Joey, Phoebe and I worked together on a few class exercises which was the first time that we all met each other. Originally it was a little hard to fully understand the concept of the film as a group but I think that that is mainly down to main communication skills not being the best when it comes to the group. However, I think that once we started working together things were going uphill and that everyone started being on the same page as one another. I’m really glad that I got to work on this film with people I didn’t already know because it meant that I was able to make not just two new friends but two new people who I trust to work with in the future. I know people always say “these are the people who you will work with”, and to be fair I had always known that but I thought that since the class is ‘uncomfortable filmmaking’ I should really step out of my comfort zone and put it into practice. However, I think that it is not just about working with as many different people as you can because I don’t think that will help in any way, rather I believe that – and read up – that it is better for me to actually make real and meaningful connections. I think that people work best with people that they like so having a real friendship or even mutual understanding is the only way to work together successfully. Which is why I think we worked well together. Even if there were rough patches or road bumps when making the film, we all had each other’s help and support which made it so much more manageable.

https://tophollywoodactingcoach.com/2015/12/how-to-network-in-the-film-industry/