For this week, my group and I decided to parody the horror genre, specifically found footage films. Whilst this genre has been parodied prior, through movies such as ‘Scary Movie’ and “The Cabin in the Woods”, we felt as though we could achieve a different take by using a combination of tropes and our own humour. Additionally, we also thought it was such a fun concept to play out. Our sketch centres around a group of film students attempting to finish off their assignments when they are suddenly disrupted by an evil presence. I think that one of the most important aspects to think about when creating a spoof of some kind, is to figure out what kind of angle one would like to add to the subject matter . In a chapter written by Joe Toplyn, he states that by keeping the angle simple, one should be able to summarize your parody in a short sentence (Toplyn, 2014) . By approaching the parody in this way, it had made it somewhat easier to create a storyline and generate jokes. In our case, we were making a found footage film, except the ‘horror’ was being tormented by our own sketches and by kids toys that are seemingly harmless (Elmo, a stuffed dog and Eeyore). One specific technique that Toplyn had provided when it came to approaching angles that I found interesting was studying the stylistic elements of the topic that we were parodying. In this case, the horror genre tends to use music and sound effects to help emphasise a specific tone. By mimicking this stylistic choice to the best of our ability, it allowed for the punchlines in our video to stand out more (Toplyn, 2014). I will say, when I was editing, I believe I may have gone overboard with the addition of a sound effect every 5 seconds into the sketch. However, after rewatching the parody back with friends, I found that this approach was very fitting as horror movies tend to include an excessive amount of sound effects to make what ever is happening on screen appear to be scarier than it actually is. I think for next time I would focus on audio levels, as the music/effects tended to be overpowering with our dialogue.
Link to Sketch:
References:
Toplyn, J. (2014), “Parody Sketches” in Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV, New York: Twenty Lane Media, pp. 239–261.