The main goal of any comedy piece is simple: get laughs. When we finished our piece we were excited to have it shown in front of an audience and see if the jokes we had written would get positive reactions and laughs from a crowd. We had received positive feedback from individuals after putting it online, but it was not the same feeling. One of the main focuses of our studio was how comedy can be used as a mode, rather than just as a genre. Our piece wanted to appear as seriously as a crime documentary, with every character involved having total sincerity to the matters at hand, meaning that it is up to the audience to notice disparity or absurdity and find the humour in the ridiculousness we created. 

If we were to continue working on the piece, there is few things I would want to work on or change. First, is leaning even further into the crime documentary format that we built this parody on. If we had the time and resources, it would have been beneficial to the final piece to include more B-Roll, not just interviews. Whether that was more just day-to-day stuff to show a passage of time during the investigation, or even have ‘crime-scene recreations’ where we have actors play out the incident in an even MORE dramatic form to create humour. The other thing that we may have benefited from was doing more thorough location scouting. Our set that I built looked awesome, and we had some good spots to film, but if we had had a more realistic “tv studio” in terms of all the background areas, I think it would have been a more positive result, especially in terms of the world-building. 

Firstly, ‘Rogue’, made by Bobby Nguyen, Chloe Stelling, Zoe Anderton, Anna Duong, and Oscar Allen was absolutely hilarious. The spy-action parody was really well written and really well filmed. All the locations looked great and it was clearly properly organised. Whilst being a parody, I think they leaned heavily into good jokes that landed well, that were reliant on benign violation and absurdity. I think the way they set up the comic frame quite early worked very well; first with the table being too long and the folder getting stuck in the middle, then the clear ignorance of Zoe’s character, with the walking well past the time machine, and finally the upbeat quirky music as we see the protagonist walking through modern Melbourne, clearly disorientated. Also have to shout out the Club X joke at the screening got a loud laugh out of myself and all those sitting around me. 

Another great piece from our studio was ‘Trip Up’ by Angus Alexander, K, Giorgio Curcio, Saskia Christensen, and Ben Smith. Similar to ‘Rogue’, did a really fantastic job of setting up the comic frame with insufferable characters like Kevin. Unlike ‘Rogue’ I think for this piece, they were more focused on the comedy within the situation, rather than writing a bunch of individual jokes to just be said. A lot relied on the physical comedy of the characters, including one of my favourite moments, which was when Kevin walked into the ocean and just did not emerge. Playing with non-verbal comedy was a briefly touched-on topic in the semester, but I think was executed well by this crew. 

 The other studio I engaged with was Instinct and Intention, which focused on editing and the power of a good cut or creative editing. I think editing is often just viewed as “just put the clips together and add some sound stuff”, but this studio looked to other ways editing can be utilised creatively to really show what was happening, rather than just have exposition through the dialogue. There is significance in every cut from shot to shot, and that cut fills gaps in the audience’s mind as to what is occurring, and can carry significant meaning. This was played out in a lot of ways, but one example that really stands out to me was Adi K’s edit series, more particularly his narrative piece ‘Dames & Sea Smoke’, which did not have any dialogue beyond one character swearing on one occassion. Given the focus of this studio was how important editing is, I think this piece showcases it very well. In the build-up, the small cuts between characters and things happening, such as hands getting close or a hand maybe gripping the table more strongly, a lot is conveyed through the simplicity of these cuts. When the piece moves to the second aspect, the layering of different shots like the character’s eyes not only looks really cool but again, conveys the gaze that we see in the earlier stages as something significant.