Milk Run 

Interstate student Max moves to Melbourne to study, where he lives with zany Melburnian Charlie who asks him to go get more milk. Max’s trip isn’t straightforward, and goes on a journey where he discovers what it’s like living in Melbourne, and all the unique quirks it has.

Credits

Director Harper Tabb

Head Writers Harper Tabb, Amy Maher (in consultation with Samuel Rodgers, Daniel Moore, Matylda O’Sullivan, Thuy Trang Nguyen)

Executive Producer Daniel Moore

Producer Matylda O’Sullivan

Cinematography Samuel Rodgers

Camera Operator Samuel Rodgers

Lighting Daniel Moore

Sound Amy Maher

Assistant Sound Matylda O’Sullivan

Production Design Daniel Moore

Prop Runner Daniel Moore, Thuy Trang Nguyen

Continuity Advisor Thuy Trang Nguyen (in consultation with crew)

Editor Daniel Moore

Sound Mixer Amy Maher, Daniel Moore

Colour Grade Harper Tabb, Daniel Moore

Cast

Max: Harper Tabb

Charlie: Matthew Robertson

Car Driver: Kevin Zhu

Cashier: Daniel Moore

Convenience Store Extra: Georgia Blythe

Barista: Samuel Rodgers

Café Extra 1: Jackson Ramage

Café Extra 2: Joshua Burt

Passerby: Amy Maher

Flutist: Juan Karlos (@juank503latino)

Friend 1: Matylda O’Sullivan

Friend 2: Thuy Trang Nguyen

Petitioner: Amy Maher

Gallery 

Reflective essay

Upon taking this studio, my ideas about comedy as a mode and genre have shifted dramatically. In the beginning, I viewed comedy as something quite one-dimensional; I believed comedy as a genre was lesser than others, and innately difficult to create ‘art’ with (Warren, C. & McGraw, A.P [2015]). However, I now feel differently. I feel comedy is an immensely multifaceted and extremely underrated genre, and that art can easily arise from its usage. The following quote by Michael Arell (2012) very much connected with my prior ideas of comedy; “In Cicero’s De Oratore, one of the interlocutors in the discussion of the comic notes that everyone “who tried to teach anything like a theory or art of this matter proved themselves so conspicuously silly that their very silliness is the only laughable thing about them” (Leggatt 3).”

I noticed that as soon as I began to learn the inner workings of comedy, theories of comedy, hypotheticals and steps laid out, it all fascinated me and made me really appreciate this genre and mode of media for what it is; art.

Through research of comedy and its conventions, my group and I decided to shift our focus away from straight comedy in our final product. We wanted to include elements of comedy, however our goal was not to create a comedy that “may evoke…explosive laughter” (Sabato G. 2019), but rather, a more subtle and reflective use of comedy. As I explored in my reflective blog posts, my group wanted to accentuate our thematic reasoning, rather than an innate emphasis on laugh out loud comedic elements and scenes just because it was required by the assessment. Our group wanted to communicate a genre of ‘coming of age’ and thematic consequence of personality, connection, and community. We wanted to represent aspects of each of our unique “student life” experiences, and as our research supports, “participatory modes of community filmmaking make an important contribution to cultural diversity.” our collaboration hence enhanced these aspects.(Malik, S., Chapain, C., & Comunian, R. [2017]).

Though our film’s themes were heavily considered and researched, in real life production, at times collaboration proved challenging. For example, after our initial read out, there was debate about if the comedy should be more overt, and cause more vivacious obvious reactions like some other groups had, however, ultimately, we decided to stick to our subliminal comedy, and accept and embrace that our film was not the type for raucous laughter, but rather internal amusement, and that this was still a valid form of comedy and entertainment.

Though I acknowledge this facet as a unique component of our filmmaking and final product, if I were to personally continue production on the film, I would refine the elements of dialogue, and mis-en-scene. I personally feel the film is lacking a little in creative liberty and uniquity. I’d prefer a more striking visual aesthetic and artistic use of prop, costuming and set design. For example, in this book I read ‘Cinema and the Visual Arts’ (Sprengler C. 2019), I really empathised and connected with the quote “ (The relationship between cinema and the visual arts) involves the creative efforts of practitioners from both domains and experimental gestures that pitted one against the other, thought one through the other, and often blurred the distinctions between them.” (Sprengler C. 2019) . I believe that the traditional visual arts and film are one in the same and as mentioned above, are stronger when used in tandem. I feel that if we more consistently incorporated art and artistic movements/ history within our film, we could both cement a more iconographic image or brand as media makers, but also connect our story’s thematic exploration of community, and connection through historical and parallel events in modern history. For example, the image of rebellion against standard depictions of American student life and community I feel is encapsulated with the Dadaism movement (Benjamin E. 2016). The Dada movement is associated with “…not only…philosophical content, but…also…constructively as both a commentary on, and a positive, productive analysis of, the human condition.” philosophically, and I personally feel the bright colours, surrealist and personal avant-garde use of subject matter could push our films visuals, as well as thematic meaning and symbolism to the next level.

Another thing I’d personally choose to continue developing would be the story. I appreciate the thematic and narrative touch points our film was addressing, however, I personally feel the film doesn’t emotionally emancipate the audience as much as it could. I feel the coming of age genre and comedy are very interconnected (Shobini Iyer 2021), however our film struggles at times to connect properly to either; I think that our film struggles to communicate our central genres, essentially. I appreciated the uniquity of our comedy usage in terms of focusing on subliminal comedy more than overtness, but I feel our film isn’t emotionally engaging, and as (Justus T. 2022) contends “…emotions…are thought to be understood universally as one aspect of film language.”, hence can the audience be expected to connect with and enjoy our film if this pivotal aspect is missing. To fix these issues I personally perceive, I would add more screen time, and more dramatic events in the narrative. I feel that there’s not really a climax or singular struggle for the protagonist, so I’d like to set up his internal struggles more clearly at the start, and have a more obvious pivotal event from which the story reaches its peak in vulnerability and audiences can empathise with more strongly.

Though due to personal artistic differences I would change and develop the film a little more visually and extend its runtime, ultimately, my experiences of collaboration this semester were invaluable. Previously on projects I’ve worked on, I’ve struggled to gather a team together due to conflicting schedules, a lack of communication as well as a variety of other issues, so, for every other film I’ve made, I’ve done it alone. While I appreciate this means I have more control over my vision, I’ve found through collaborating this semester with many different people, that I prefer this essence of community and teamwork in art. Unlike in my previous work, I found that delegating tasks to individuals proved invaluable in both the quality, and time efficiency of production. In the past I’d be scrambling to write scripts, do storyboards, film, record audio, edit, colour grade etc. all within a minimal time frame, however, the freedom of being given over a month and five fantastic teammates made the process exponentially less stressful, and allowed us all to hone in and perfect our individual tasks, improving the quality of the film overall in my opinion.

Ultimately, I thoroughly enjoyed my time in this course this semester, and I learned quite a lot. From my initial understanding of comedy as an inherently non-artistic or emotionally riveting and thought-provoking genre, I’m happy to say has shifted dramatically. I now view comedy as the complex and intriguing genre and mode it is, and I’m grateful for this class, all the collaboration, and most importantly, opportunities for creation, that were offered as proof of this.

References

1. Warren, C. & McGraw, A.P. (2015), “Benign Violation Theory” in Attardo, S. (ed), Encyclopedia of Humor Studies, Los Angeles: SAGE Reference.
2. Arell M. (2012)Why are Comedy Films so Critically Underrated? [Honors thesis], University of Maine, accessed 23/05/2024. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1092&context=honors
3. Sabato G. (26 June 2019) ‘What’s So Funny? The Science of Why We Laugh’, Scientific American, accessed 26/05/2024. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/whats-so-funny-the-science-of-why-we-laugh/
4. Malik, S., Chapain, C., & Comunian, R. (2017) ‘Rethinking cultural diversity in the UK film sector: Practices in community filmmaking.’, Organization, 24(3):308-329, https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508416689094.
5. Sprengler C. (30 October 2019) ‘Cinema and the Visual Arts’, Oxford Bibliographies, accessed 22/05/2024. https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199791286/obo-9780199791286-0122.xml
6. Benjamin E. (2016) Dada and Existentialism, Springer Nature, 10.1057/978-1-137-56368-2.
7. Shobini Iyer (20 September 2021) ‘The evolution of the coming-of-age genre in film’, The Spartan Shield, accessed 28/05/2024. https://spartanshield.org/29522/arts-entertainment/the-evolution-of-the-coming-of-age-genre-in-film/
8. Justus T. (2022) ‘Constructing Film Emotions: The Theory of Constructed Emotion as a Biocultural Framework for Cognitive Film Theory’, Projections, 16(2):74-101, 10.3167/proj.2022.160204.

Blog Posts

Reflective Blog Post #1

Reflective Blog Post #2

Reflective Blog Post #3

Reflective Blog Post #4

Reflective Blog Post #5

Throughout this week, my group cemented our script and ideas and officially began production. On Monday’s class we began to film. We started by filming the most complicated scene; the scene where Max is almost hit by a car (this took many takes), the filming location of which is shown below.

we followed general conventions for filmmaking, as well as Gillian McIver’s (who attributed research to Angela Dalle Vacche) (2021) concept of mis-en-scene within filmmaking as a medium. In accordance with McIver’s quote;

“In addressing the relationship between visual art and cinema I am following Angela Dalle Vacches method in Cinema and Painting (1996) which she describes as an ‘intertextual’ approach, ‘a broad category of analysis with overtones that range from narrative to stylistic detail’ enabling ‘thematic contrasts iconographic similarities and historiographic commentaries’ (Dalle Vacche 1996: 3).”

We paid particular attention towards artistic and meaningful framing and continuity in reference to this research, even so far as memorising what hand Harper was holding his phone in throughout different shots. We wanted to accentuate our narrative and thematic meaning via careful consideration of framing, camera field of depth and as mentioned, mis-en-scene. On Wednesday’s filming session I worked on audio; I learnt a lot about the value of a boom mic in comparison to a regular smaller microphone, and had both a lot of fun and difficulty trying to record the sounds of a car hitting Harper without getting my footsteps in or the levels being too loud. In accordance with research by Hilary Wyatt and Tim Amyes (2024), I considered the importance of timing when partaking in audio production. As Amyes quotes “…few audio workstations cannot currently import video – here a separate video machine has to be synchronized to the system. The format is not too significant: all that is important is that it can support timecode and be successfully interfaced”.

Through Amyes’ note of the importance of synchronising both visual and audio due to current technical limitations, I found that timing my recording with the immediate acknowledgment of “Action!” helped editors to synchronise sound and video footage recorded separately. I believe sound is a very underrated component within film(2021), and hence it was important to me to do as many takes as necessary in order to gain consistent audio levels for everything recorded (as a fun behind the scenes tidbit, this entailed even hiding behind Harper’s fence in the wet grass at one point).

I ultimately found it a very valuable experience and look forward to showcasing our finished product in the coming weeks.

References

– McIver G. (2021) Scenography and Art History : Performance Design and Visual Culture, Bloomsbury Publishing, USA

– Wyatt H., Amyes T. (2024) Audio Post Production for Television and Film : An Introduction to Technology and Techniques, edition number 3, Taylor & Francis Group, UK.

– Hadida, A. L., Lampel J. D., Walls W. J. A. (2021) ‘Hollywood studio filmmaking in the age of Netflix: a tale of two institutional logics’, Journal Of Cultural Economics, 45(2):213-238,DOI:10.1007/s10824-020-09379-z.

This week a large component of our mediamaking and production entailed presenting our WIP presentation (attached below) to our studio guests Hannah Camilleri and Stayci Taylor. We received a lot of valuable feedback, primarily related to centering our story and updating our dialogue.

Some feedback mentioned by Camilleri suggested that our ending lacked a clear message, and that it should come ‘full circle’. We took on this feedback and discussed our themes and messages in detail so we were all on the same page. Now, we are working towards changing the ending to emphasise Max and Charlie’s comfort and support in each other, which wasn’t as clearly presented before, through a shared activity like looking for the missing cadaver, Charlie buying groceries for Max etc. as Inger-Lise Kalviknes Bore (2011) states, “Instead, what we see, and no doubt what the audiences of the time expected and demanded, is variation within a set of conventions that embraced not only the story lines developed but also the characters involved and the technical aspects of production” characters are also of note especially when they relate to story; it’s of my opinion that a ‘good’ comedy is made through ‘good’ characters.

We also found that our script read didn’t illicit as many laughs as some other groups, and our group had a contended discussion about whether this was a desired effect or a facet of not enough comedic elements. We argued about our core genre being a ‘coming-of-age’ first, and a comedy second or vice versa, and if we needed more obviously comedic elements. Upon some further research, I found the quote “… the sitcom, it “invites the viewer to feel at one with the few dozen people s/he can hear laughing, and by extension with millions of others across the country”(45).” (Inger-Lise Kalviknes Bore 2011) encapsulates the sense of relatability and community our group is trying to portray; while the original quote refers to the sit-com genre, of which ours is coming of age, the notion of inviting the viewer to “feel at one” with the audience and content is reminiscent of a key message of community and empathy in our film.

After our discussion, we decided to update the script and focus on our traditionally non-comedic coming-of-age genre, and becoming more comfortable not implementing overtly ‘laugh out loud’ comedic elements as some other groups have. Though we believe excessive comedy is not necessary in our project, I remain conscious of the following quote by Shobini Iyer(2021); “Using comedy as a crutch, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” ultimately left audiences hard-pressed to extract a deeper meaning (in the film’s coming of age genre).” My group will need to be careful in ensuring the comedy does not outweigh the primary genre, or lessens the realism of which our film is based on.

John Morreall (1989) defines comedy as “a genre of repetition“. This, along with my knowledge of the incongruity theory, inspired our group to repeat our arguably most “successful” joke in our script read. The Perth accent joke is an example of incongruity, as realistically the average person can’t tell you’re from Perth by how you speak, so the juxtaposition of this dramatised fictitious element in combination with a realistic scenario of buying groceries, creates incongruous humour. Likeuse, if we repeat the notion of Charlie having a Perth accent throughout the film, the repetition becomes a staple in the comedy, and can enhance the joke’s effect.

WIP Presentation: Tiny Chairs

References

-Ireland S. (2010) ‘Brill’s Companion to the Study of Greek Comedy’, Brill, https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004188846_010

– Inger-Lise Kalviknes B. (2011) ‘Laughing Together? TV Comedy Audiences and the Laugh Track’, The Velvet Light Trap, 68(1): 24-34

– Shobini I. (20 September 2021) ‘The evolution of the coming-of-age genre in film’, The Spartan Shield, accessed 10/05/2024.  https://spartanshield.org/29522/arts-entertainment/the-evolution-of-the-coming-of-age-genre-in-film/

-Moder, G. (2019) ‘Comedy as Performance’, Palgrave Macmillan, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27742-0_13

-Morreall J. (1989) ‘Enjoying incongruity’, Walter de Gruyter, 2(1):1-18

Post 1:

“Keeping Up With The Assessment” — Hybridisation Experiment #1: Parody

Post 2:

Crazy Questions w/ Camila – Hybridisation Experiment #2: Satire

Post 3:

A Secret about the Old Melbourne Gail – Hybridisation Experiment #3

Through this week’s reading I found the technique “cutting of the absurd” Jason Middleton (2002) discusses both interesting and highly relevant to my group’s (as well as my own previous) work.

“From  the assessment of these various critics,  the increasing use of humour in documentary film-making  in  the 1980s and 1990s raises significant  questions about  the ethics of how  the  objects of this humour are represented.”

This quote in particular similarly interests me as previously within the course, the ethics of comedy have not been extensively discussed. It was touched upon through the benign violation theory origins (Warren C. & McGraw A. P., 2015), and briefly in readings such as “The Logic of the Absurd” (Palmer J. 1988).

However, I feel this exploration of more modern comedy morality is relevant in the academic study and production of comedic media.

“Rhetorical continuity implies that a cut between two different scenes will create a juxtaposition that contributes to the film’s  overall argume”.

The concept of Rhetorical continuity I feel is especially prevalent in my group’s work. For example, in the scene where the producer is ranting and not writing anything on the whiteboard, in tandem with the dramatic backing track, evokes humour through rhetorical continuity when it suddenly cuts out to the “normal” groundskeeper doing an interview.

Over the past few weeks I’ve found that I enjoy making dialogue centered humour, and emphasising character reactions to enhance comedic effect. For example, in my week 1 video, I really enjoyed zooming in on the absurd facial expressions of the characters reacting to the strangeness of my character, I personally found their reactions more funny than the original written jokes. Likewise, I also found that when given the chance, I like to work with deadbeat and dark humour. For example, I enjoyed working on week 2’s video due to darker dialogue lines such as “we all know you CEO’s have tiny brains and little empathy”; I found the comedic satirisation of real issues entertaining and more fulfilling in my work.

References

•  Middleton, J. (2002), “Documentary Comedy“, Media International Australia, 104(1), pp. 55–66.
• Warren, C. & McGraw, A.P. (2015), “Benign Violation Theory” in Attardo, S. (ed), Encyclopedia of Humor Studies, Los Angeles: SAGE Reference.
• Palmer, J. (1988/2018), “The Logic of the Absurd” in Marx, N. & Sienkiewicz, M. (eds), The Comedy Studies Reader. Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 51–54.