YouTube link: Beyond a Joke, Beyond a Genre | Sketch #3

Week three’s focus was on the comic frame, comedy mechanics, and situation and story. More specifically, we focused on writing a ‘story sketch’. According to Joe Toplyn – a TV writer, having worked on Late Show with David Letterman among others – in his book, ‘Comedy writing for late-night tv: how to write monologue jokes, desk pieces, [etc.]’, “In a Story Sketch, the jokes are woven into a story which is performed by the host and other performers. Usually the story has the host playing straight man in a scene where a comic character disrupts the show for some reason” (2014:237). Furthermore, he lays out the “nine steps to creating a story sketch” (2014:229). These steps produce a formulaic approach to writing a story sketch for TV. Those steps are: “1. Think of a comic character with two or three exaggerated traits. […] 2. Make your comic character want something. […] 3. Have someone, probably the host, oppose your comic character. […] 4. Have your comic character take several different steps to get what he wants, each step more radical than the last. […] 5. Raise the stakes. […] 6. Have your comic character do something really extreme. […] 7. Have your comic character not get (or get) what he wants. […] 8. Throw in a final twist. […] 9. Add the dialogue.” (2014:229-236).

This formula is what I utilised within my story sketch. Essentially one character needs attention and will lie to outrageous lengths to get it, while constantly being opposed by the other character who simply doesn’t care about their escapades. Ultimately the comic character doesn’t get what he wants as their opposing character simply doesn’t care, and himself wants to get from point A to point B. I did however neglect the 8^th step. I also don’t think this is the best piece of media in terms of technicality either. My original idea, as I thought about editing would’ve taken far too much time, so I opted to take a hit to the formality of the video to get it out on time.

Toplyn, J. (2014), “Story Sketches” in Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV, New York: Twenty Lane Media, pp. 221–238.

YouTube link: Beyond a Joke, Beyond a Genre | Sketch #2

This week’s focus was relief and benign violation. Benign violation, as described by Caleb Warren and A. Peter McGraw in their paper, ‘Benign Violation Theory’, suggests that this humour-inducing phenomenon occurs when: “(1) a circumstance is appraised as a violation, (2) the circumstance is appraised as benign, and (3) both appraisals occur simultaneously” (2015:1). While I had a horror-comedy sketch in mind following this idea, I simply ran out of time and couldn’t find the punchline. Instead, I focused on relief. According to the book, ‘No Laughing Matter: The Traditional Rejection of Humour and Traditional Theories of Humour’, author John Morreal outlines the ‘Relief Theory’. The relief theory, as per Morreal’s outline, ‘arose alongside the Incongruity Theory [and] its focus was on the physical phenomenon of laughter, especially its relation to the nervous system’ (2011:15). Essentially, to me, the relief theory refers to the idea that laughter is triggered (much like last week’s theory) by the quashing of expectations. Except, unlike the incongruity theory, comedy that utilises suspense to create nervousness as opposed to an expectation (right?).

Regardless, my goal was to apply the relief theory to this week’s sketch. As part of our classes this week, we watched a few silent-comedy films/clips, namely those of Buster Keaton. There was one scene in which Keaton steps just over a banana peel. I, wrongly, thought he would slip on the banana peel, because funny. He did not. In my sketch, I attempted to recreate this nervousness and sense of relief. And, while I don’t think my execution was particularly expert (it wasn’t funny), I do think the idea is there. Especially as a more modern interpretation of an old gag. I ultimately think I could’ve done better this week, had I found the funny in my first idea, or simply executed my video better.

Warren, C. & McGraw, A.P. (2015), “Benign Violation Theory” in Attardo, S. (ed), Encyclopedia of Humor Studies, Los Angeles: SAGE Reference.

Morreall, J. (2009), “No Laughing Matter: The Traditional Rejection of Humor and Traditional Theories of Humor” in Comic Relief: A Comprehensive Philosophy of Humor, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 1–26.

Assignment 1: (links are to reflective blogposts which have each sketch linked)

Sketch #1

Sketch #2

Sketch #3

YouTube link: Beyond a Joke, Beyond a Genre | Sketch #1

This week, our focus in class was surprise and incongruity. The goal was to generate a comic event within a sketch through these elements. Audissino (2023:6) states that, in incongruous comedy, “Humour emerges from the introduction in some situation of elements that create a deviation from norms, conventions, anticipations, predictions, common logic; the clash between such odd elements and normality triggers an impression of incongruity”. By which, they suggest that the humour founded in incongruent comedy is created through the element of surprise, and divergence of expectations. Fabricating this divergence was my goal for the first sketch.

My sketch essentially relied on the surprise being comedic. My initial thoughts were to create something in the format of a TikTok, namely utilising the built-in green screen effect. This would involve going back and forth between two or three or more characters. I went through a few ideas, and tried imagining them in terms of camera angles, shots, and performance, but all lacked the element of surprise, relying instead on characterisation. Another problem was figuring out the length as some ideas would’ve turned out to be 90 seconds, the others, 10. I then came to an idea similar to that in Tim Burton’s 1988 film, Beetlejuice, wherein Barbara and Adam are at one point enter a waiting room in hell. I liked this idea and focused on creating the element of surprise. That surprise would be encountering Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs in this ‘waiting room’ of sorts. Much like the “Car Robbery” sketch we saw in class this week from ABC, the scene would build up to the surprise, suspense and incongruity working hand in hand to enhance the comedy. While not fully thought-out, choppily edited (due to unforeseen time issues), and with a quite frankly bad production value, I think all of these things actually aided in creating surprise and incongruity: “the clash between such odd elements and normality triggers an impression of incongruity” (Audissino 2023:6).

Ultimately, I thought, considering some minor setbacks due to real life time schedules, this first sketch came out pretty good. It’s build up and suspense followed by the actual surprise feels funny (subjectively).

Audissino, E. (2023), “From Dionysia to Hollywood: An Introduction to Comedy’s Long (and Bumpy) Road” in Audissino, E. & Wennekes, E. (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Music in Comedy Cinema, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 3–23.