Major Media Artifact – “Milk Run” (2024)

Final Reflection

Week 7, Blog Post 1

Week 8, Blog Post 2

Week 9, Blog Post 3

Week 10, Blog Post 4

Week 11, Blog Post 5

https://vimeo.com/952306816 Milk Run (2024)

When we first began our initial stages of production for what would become Milk Run, in retrospect, it was a murky period of the project. It seemed our group had a lot of differing ideas about what could, would, and should work, meaning there wasn’t all too much overlap when it came to hard decisions when nailing ideas down. I recall not being entirely certain on what genre or mode of comedy I wanted to focus on, more as a tactic to keep my options open and try new things, not be dead set on something I’m comfy and familiar with. I certainly liked satire, gravitating to Caterson’s (2005) ideas around a deep topic, getting borderline analytical, ‘the most effective satire is ridicule of the most knowledgeable and intimate kind”. I very much think I’d be willing to delve into a topic of our choosing and make some nuanced points or observations, but that was also largely group dependent. Our collected idea became about representing a synthesized version of young adult life in a fish out of water, subtle comedy. Where there is nuance to be found, much of the themes came from personal anecdotes, which shifts that idea into something else, instead of purely fictitious.

Had we continued production on Milk Run, I think we could lean further into absurdity, as much of the film’s best parts come from this surrealness about the world, namely Charlie and his unnerving experiments. Had we progressed and lengthened the run time, I would try to capitalize on this character, using some of Palmer’s (1988/2018) ideas around Peripeteia and Syllogisms, in regards to more visual gags with some of his experiments, utilizing the props we scrounged together, I feel could be a great use that would add some depth to the character and use this opportunity that we could have. I think aside from that, some more focus on sound could be useful as a practical aside, as I think sound is incredibly useful in delivering humour, especially with the amount of vocal humour in Milk Run. On top of this, in terms of joke execution, I think we could take a more traditional approach to joke structure, as turning to Cassar’s (2018, p. 106) fundamentality of typical jokes as they were, there could be fertility in the classical steps; context, resolution, steeped in liminality, an uncertainty of where the story of the joke is going. Many punchlines in Milk Run are set up as such, but to Cassar’s message is the punctuation of this mystery. The use of misdirection for surprising gain. I think this would accentuate the out-of-placeness of Max’s world, where nothing seems to be normal. It’s only in retrospect that a lot of these thoughts are coming to me, which might be my area of improvement to do, as a level of foresight is always important in scenarios like these, however this could be a range of factors that change how I feel in reflection, as is the point of reflection. Either way, I believe the emotions that we set out to communicate around social isolation, youth, and ideas of place where transferred, and even if I do have ideas on what I think we could’ve done differently, I think it’s still an achievement how much we were able to do even so.

I’m not sure if it’s a good or bad thing that my tastes in comedy haven’t changed over the semester, but I am certain of my acknowledgement of its processes now. I find that exceedingly valuable moving forward and look forward to exercising it in my future works. Similarly with the practical side, I found collaboration to be rewarding in this class, the heavy emphasis placed on co-ordination with pupils puts an exciting twist on how we approach our weekly artifacts, and more latterly, the major media product. I found this rich and invigorating, as it is crucial to me to find an understanding of what other practitioner think, act, and more importantly, what they find funny. I believe it takes a range of perspectives to have the best breadth of humour, and participating in group work gave me an elevated concept of what it took to distinctivize my own work, and understand other people’s approach to theirs to shape my own voice. In terms of the participation, I think it’s pretty unspoken in how group psychology can work, a lot of times there’s been louder voices than others, conflicting opinions, and different perspectives on jokes that don’t always see eye to eye. There’s been a few cases in this class where such things have happened, but for better or worse, compromises are made and the job is done in the end anyway. Ultimately, I think I really value the work we produced, especially Milk Run, and reminisce on it favourably!

Caterson, S. (2005). A Preposterous Life. Griffith REVIEW, 8 186–192.
https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/ielapa.418026005601603

Palmer, J., Marx, N. & Sienkiewicz, M. (eds) (1988/2018), Logic of the Absurd, The Comedy Studies Reader. (1st ed.). University of Texas Press. https://doi.org/10.7560/315996

Cassar, M. A. & Sover, A. (Ed.). (2018). The languages of humor : verbal, visual and physical humor. Bloomsbury Academic. 105-140. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350062320

We’re well under way. Beginning much of our shooting on Wednesday, we’ve aimed to rid ourselves of the most difficult shots and scenes, namely the outside motion full shots, first while we still have our sanity. Even so, the days were long and the takes were many, questioning our ambitions as weather factored in significantly. I feel a large psychological factor of this project, is to not get bogged down by a perfectionist mindset, as the itch to do just one more take can be repeated over and over and over, blowing out schedules with ease. I’ve been pretty conscious of this, though I lost sight of this on Thursday, which was a massive 8 hour shoot. As much as we covered lots of ground, nearly half the film, I felt I could’ve done more to bear witness to a sense of reasonable pace. There’s a shoot coming up on Sunday that I will be sticking this line of thinking to action, trying to keep group motivation up, focus aligned, and productivity on course.

In terms of where we are, we only have a few shoots to really handle left, one of them may be clocked out on Monday, though group availability is starting to waver as the semester wraps up. I’m undoubtedly confident that we’ll have the production sorted in time for the 31st, though I’m really trying to keep that time consciousness in mind this week, as losing sight of that could get us too comfortable. Over all, I’d say things are going well and we’re sailing smoothly. The edit will be a whole other can of worms, because I know for a fact, being at these shoots, we haven’t been too editor conscious about which take is which, file transfers, not to mention mild lighting discrepancies or continuity errors we didn’t catch. Oh well.

Feedback received! After our presentation to our guests on Monday, we have had a lot to chew on. A lot! Some good, some bad, but all tangible to our the furthering of our artifact. In terms of script feedback, which as having a background in screenwriting, I took the most onboard, a number of things were pointed out. Pacing has been prioritized, tonal cohesion and narrative structure have been reworked for greater architecture, and we’ve refreshed dialogue to ground the script in normalcy. I feel the script has entered an adolescent stage, where everything is becoming much clearer and aligned, joke clarity is emphasized, and certain scenes and punchlines are edited for practicality’s sake, compared to where previously some whole scenes were murky and undercooked. The entire theme is pitching; less is it a dramady coming-of-age work of subtlety, but more an observationalist, quirked up comedy with a big slice of youthful heart, within our intentions at least.

As we scream closer to the final weeks, not so metaphorically, we aim to begin the production stage with haste. While our scope of works is fairly tight, intentionally so, we feel it’s much more liberating to all of us if we cracked on sooner rather than later, we do have other classes after all. As such, we’re arranging shoot dates as I type, with a keenness to commence as soon as possible.

I speak on my own behalf for this bit, but having a script read for a comedy and being able to hear a pin drop is a fate worse than chess. Agonizing! Though in a lot of ways this was intentional, the type of humour that gets under your skin and makes you uncomfortable similar to Office UK was part of our original idea, though when it comes to the table read, I just go beet red. I think that has affected our group psychology a bit, as there’s a larger stress on conventional jokes, but if any takeaway from this week is certain, it’s that the artifact is in a much better place.

This week, we’re down and dirty with it. We’ve gone away for a bit and had a solid crank at our respective creative intuitions, mine being screenwriting a few drafts, while others within the group have made an audio playlist of thematic songs, mood boards, storyboards, etc. This really has the vision of the production come together. While a little less understated comically, and more elastic and bouncy, the humanizing aspect of this kind of pessimistic lifestyle is still solid.

With the presentation coming up this Monday, nerves are running high. We feel confident in our idea, though a presentation is always tricky, especially with a concept that is notable for its subtlety and nicheness. As such, we aim to truly thrust the relativity to other media, a grounding agent that will have the viewer establish their own bonds and understandings about what we’re aiming to achieve. Through this, we’re pivoting upon American Movie, The Inbetweeners, Spaced, The Cornetto Trilogy, and Portlandia. All of which, awkward, fairly grounded comedies that generally carry similar themes or plot threads or ideas of young adulthood and sharehousing. Alongside this, we have a range of extra-visual materials that portray our theme.

Outside all of this, we have a fair basis of materials for our solid themes, coming up in this presentation this Monday and coming weeks we have a centralized, combined view that will serve our foundation going forward, so frankly, I’m fairly comfortable right now. I have no doubts we will receive strong feedback, I feel some parts of our plot’s structure are a little unbalanced at the moment and there might be some concerns about the sharpness of the premise, as right now the conflict isn’t super refined, more a splay of different aspects of a student’s lifestyle. In all, I’m feeling good, despite the mounting pressures of this semester reaching its various crescendos.

We’ve coalesced our thoughts together into a singular stream. While there is still plenty to be done, our alignment in our theme, direction and style is now cemented; a reflective coming-of-age-esque young adult drama pilot. Roughly a 15-20 minute long piece covering and analyzing the pettier sides of share housing, growing up, fitting in, and adapting to new environments through a sardonic lens. Pulling from personal experiences is a large factor in the creation of this concept, which is a little tricky for me as my experience growing up doesn’t have a lot of overlap with the ideas we’re exploring. Because of this, I find taking to fiction and smaller anecdotes from being a young adult as the answer here, considering my mildly creatively prominent role in drafting a script.

From here, we’re going to draft a proper script all together, at which point we will decide on the greater miniature of certain details, a lot of which are influenced from our expectations around production goals. Is it to be easier without grand setpieces and parties, for example. I believe, at least in my adaptation of my script, there will be some hefty exterior scenes, but I too subscribe to this philosophy. Hell, as the scouting producer it’s largely in my interests.

To be perfectly honest, it feels like a few other groups around us seem to have a more rounded idea, or are really stepping into the later stages of the assessment task, but I guess it really isn’t a race, nor is it that much of a competition between groups; I just use this as a metric for the room’s progress. Admittedly, we may have some catching up to do in a few areas in regards to shaping the clay so to speak but it’s not really that big of an issue in the end. In all, not really too much to report outside of this, the drafts are still drafting along, the brains still churning. We’ll see what’s what in a week.

We’ve been sorted into our groups and are still finding our grounding on where we all sit. I feel some more settling is necessary at the moment, as our roles are still a bit liquid, and our actual idea is more a few strains of conceptual whiffs of ghosts of ideas. As such, there’s nothing too heavy to really unpack in this first week, outside our covered expectations, my preparedness, and my thematic beliefs.

In terms of the role I’ve picked up, I thought about a producer role in casting, sets, and the management around all that, which is quite broad, dependent on the scope of the project, and could certainly be more than I can chew. Personally I think I’m a little unfamiliar with doing things like this so I feel I’m throwing myself in the deep end here. However, that is something time will tell, I’m also probably gonna act and edit. Our group contract with each other expects an equal amount of effort from all participants, all of which aim to have this project as a prideful accomplishment for our showreels; demonstrating our full efforts at work. I certainly stand by this and hope that the group will keep this in mind going forward just as much as I would. Alongside this, letting everyone else know when they can’t make certain events, or need help, or however the case, communicating with the group and finding a work-around for this issue. Pretty common courtesy that wouldn’t screw us over anymore than it has to; Simple!

bit of a mood board here that highlights my personal comic theme, lots of absurdist, gross, weird sources that while certainly seem crude and brash, are ample examples of pacing, structure, payoff and timing. Easily dismissible but with actually a lot under the hood.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/117q_5IKPzLQQcCQzyYAXA8SvUFaqLUgv3XC4_Im0Pt4/edit?usp=sharing

We’ve drawn up the agreement at the link above, just covering all the odds and ends I didn’t outright mention here, but asides from all that, more is yet to be set in stone so I’m looking forward to what the future holds in store!

Week 4 Blog Post – Parody

Week 5 Blog Post – Satire

Week 6 Blog Post – Hybrid

This Week’s Sketch ^^

This week’s focus was that of a hybridization sketch, a look at how to indirectly portray reality comedy through modulating the content instead of outright making it funny. I can admit, it took a bit of time to wrap my head around the subtleness of this idea. Much of this comes from layers; a base foundation of a fairly normal piece of content, be it a documentary or whatever, where the funny comes from it being added onto in some way, via juxtaposition or a range of applications.

When it came to producing this sketch, taking feedback from last weeks, we kept it simple. A grounded, doco-style day in the life of an RMIT student with slight delusions of grandeur. On a technical level this was a fairly simple production as we kept our cards tight and close, to smash it out as our group had some exterior time constraints. Adhering to a realistic documentary theme, the sketch was meant to be far more minimalistic and reserved than our previous experiences with these sketches, so that certainly kept us on our toes. Much of the humour came in the editing room, as visual juxtapositions and a few funny lines meant we might have pushed the comedy angle a bit too far into parody. Even still, as Middleton (2002) would label the format, the ‘offbeat character study’ perspective of the sketch is still very much present.

‘Cutting on the absurd’, as the Middleton reading put it was an engaging part of this task, as we shot more footage than we needed, so in the editing booth, there was a lot of potential jokes or cute gags to pull. We were heavily influenced by American Movie (1999) which we tried to simulate as a prime example of outlandish characters unaware of how they sound. In all, the delicateness of reality comedy is such a fine art, using editing especially, that it almost beckons for a harder-hitting joke. The editing process was wrought with times were we had to wind it back because we were going too far. Still good though!

Citations:
Middleton J (2002) Documentary Comedy, Media International Australia, Accessed 17 April 2024. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/ielapa.418026005601603
Chris Smith (1999) American Movie, Sony Pictures Classics, USA.

Video ^^

When approaching this task, after a lot of the feedback taken on by last week’s Parody sketch, the course of our direction became fairly clear. We aimed to utilize higher standards of production, renting cameras and mics, though more so focusing on the subtleties of the genre; expected for satire, the same way it differs from parody. Our sketch ‘GoonCoin’ highlights the instability of the cryptocurrency world through a grounded lens of a financier’s news segment. In which, the chaos of the titular GoonCoins’ price wreaks havoc on the presenter’s calm demeanor expected of the role. As Caterson (2005) puts, ‘The most effective satire is ridicule of the most knowledgeable and intimate kind”. It was with this mindset, that I had pitched the idea, that a subject of such volatility would be opened to a critical lens when put in a (albeit extrapolated), formal, business review context. By exaggerating a detracting feature of the concept, its volatility, this would prove ripe terrain for humorous exchanges between our two hosts and a moral as of our beliefs on it.

Due to edits and slimming for time-saving reasons, some of our ulterior perspectives for its upsides had to be cut, which would’ve shown a less biased approach to the task, however given technical restraints we were forced to remove this concept. Caterson raised good points about how Australian satire has an air of acerbity, and cruelty about it. When reading this, I felt this actually applies to a lot of how I view my own methods of producing comedy, as I am always one for finding a barb and critical stance on a subject through a lens of humour. I feel this sketch is really no different.

I feel for next time, based on our technical dramas, I will shape the conceptual idea I bring to the table to be more simple, straightforward, and direct. Guaranteeing that production woes in regards to length are minimized, but also that the core joke is highlighted without too much filler. This is my new goal.

Citations;

Caterson S (2005) A Preposterous Life, Griffith REVIEW, Accessed 13 April 2024. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/ielapa.418026005601603