In what ways do you hope your screenings/exhibited/screened work (whether individual or group produced) engaged its audience and communicated a key concern of the studio?
Throughout the semester, we have discussed comedy as a genre, comedy as a mode then putting this comedy, into practise. Our artefact, Trip-Up by Angus, K, Ben, Giorgio and I aims to explore the many methods of comedy. The key concerns of the studio is to learn the theories of comedy and how comedy operates – as its own genre but also as a hybridised genre. By creating and watching our own comedy sketches, we learnt how different comedy operates and the different effects each style has. I think our artefact, Trip-Up has engaged in the studio’s learnings by integrating many of the theories and modes learnt over the past semester. In week 3 we learnt about story sketches, “a Story Sketch is also performed by the host and others but the jokes aren’t interchangeable because they’re woven into a story line. So, a Story Sketch is more like what you probably think of when you hear the word “sketch” – a short, funny story performed by actors.” (Toplyn, 2014). I believe our artefact displays a story sketch, where the jokes are woven into the story – and work within the story to become comedy. As well as this, utilising obscurity and incongruity as “the detection of some disruption of our expectations.” (Audissino, E. & Wennekes, E. 2023). This works to be comedy in our artefact because the artefact is centred around a drug trip- we were able to make scenes and scenarios weird and strange, seeming almost out-of-place or impossible. For example, Josh and Adam looking for Millie Bobby in the microwaves, pirates, Teletubbies, Kevin killing the uber driver, to name a few. “Incongruity theory suggests that amusement is “an intellectual reaction to something that is unexpected, illogical or inappropriate in some other way”. (Clayton, 2020). These random moments of incongruity, surprise and obscurity help to make our film funny. As well as this, our artefact arguably is a bit of a genre hybridisation. “Rather than seeing genres as mechanistically rigid and static, critics in the 1980s argued for a more organic view, often seeing genres undergoing an almost evolutionarily trajectory from ‘primitive’ to ‘mature’ to ‘decadent’.” (Mundy & White, 2012). While Trip-Up is mostly comedy (and more likely a story sketch), the artefact has drama and action intertwined into it. Rather than the film being strictly a sketch, the film has elements of other genres in it. The very core of the film is structured around an adventure.
Imagine you are going to keep working on that media piece (e.g. to screen it somewhere else like a festival, or develop it into a different kind of work, and so on) – what would be the core things you would want to improve and extend and why?
If we were able to continue working on our media artefact, the elements I would like to further improve would be making our film longer (more shots). Because we were in a bit of a time crunch with borrowing the equipment as well as only have 2 days to film, it meant a few shots and scenes which we thought could have added to our project we were not able to execute. If we were to have an extra week of filming, it would help dramatically to get these extra shots and scenes to enhance our film even more. As well as this, having a bit more time to edit our film which would be less pressure on K (who edited), and would allow us all to input more into finalising the final cut. As well as this, I think if we were to improve our project, getting rid of using the lav mics could make our sound a little more clear. Because they are mostly placed on shirts and in-between scarves, you can hear a little bit of fumbling around. Unfortunately, because we didn’t have enough of a team working behind the camera in the scenes with the 4 of us, it made filming and using the boom too difficult. With a bigger team, it would have helped to eliminate the stress of the sound and camera work a little more as well as making the process a lot quicker for us all.
From your studio, reflect on an aspect of two other students/group’s media work on the website in terms of specific insights they produced about a key idea addressed by the studio?
“Situation Tragedy” by Zach Coyne, Yusuf Abas, Lewis Vincent, Nia Arora, Novo Shabab and Chloe Roussy was a comedy film from my studio. I personally loved this film, and thought it was really funny. A key idea addressed in the film that we discussed in the studio was parody. The film is a parody of a sitcom as well as a parody of a crime documentary. I thought it was very well executed, with the one-on-one interviews, as well as the hand-held footage. The film executed the studio’s goal of comedy as a genre.
The next film I watched from Beyond a Joke, Beyond a Genre was “Operation Super Star”. Unlike “Situation Tragedy”, this film explored comedy as a genre hybridisation. Rather than focuses strictly on comedy, this film integrated comedy into other genres – like action and drama. This was a focus on our studio, exploring comedy as more than a genre and the ways it is put into other genres as used as a sort of mode.
For the other studio website you engaged with, describe a key idea that you think the finished media/studio work communicated with reference to a specific example (i.e. a particular individual/group work)
‘Decance’ By Spring Li, Taylor Zenelovski, Andrew Tan, Nadia Harari and Josephine Gaal from the Visual Blueprint – the art of film symmetry focuses beyond the narrative. I noticed while watching their work, that cinematography for the studio seems to be a key idea that the studio focused in on. The film was amazingly shot and looked stunning.
REFERENCES:
Mundy, J. & White, G. (2012), “Comedy and Genre Boundaries Links to an external site.” in Laughing Matters: Understanding Film, Television and Radio Comedy, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 130–148.
Toplyn, J. (2014), “Story SketchesLinks to an external site.” in Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV, New York: Twenty Lane Media, pp. 221–238.
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.
Clayton, Alex. Funny How? : Sketch Comedy and the Art of Humor, State University of New York Press, 2020. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rmit/detail.action?docID=6308704.
First two questions from final reflection preparation: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/saskia-christensen/2024/05/30/documentation-post-6-final-reflective-essay/