Month: June 2024
Beyond a Joke, Beyond a Genre – A5.2 Studio Reflection
ROGUE is a spy-comedy in which the narrative is guided by the centric character, Agent Whyte. A spy-comedy is different to a spy parody. A parody of a spy film will create comedic moments by ‘making fun’ of spy tropes. For example, in the spy parody, Austin Powers (1997-2002), the villain of the franchise is called Dr Evil. This is making fun of the stereotypical characters that are in spy films, there is the spy, say James Bond, and there is a villain…who is most certainly not called Dr Evil. We hoped that by creating a genuine and not too exaggerated spy mission, we could explore genre hybridisation and create more comedic moments through Agent Whyte. We hope that through her character development, spectators can build a lovable connection and be intrigued on where she will go next. As well, we hoped that our variety of location scenes and moments of surprise invite audiences to have an enjoyable and entertaining viewing experience.
If I were to continue working on ROGUE, I would love to develop it into a television series, like Mr Bean. I can envision 15–25-minute episodes where Agent Whyte is sent on a mission and some mishap occurs. In the film, I enjoyed taking simple situations and exaggerating them for comedic purposes. I liked how creative I could be with these situations, for example, just having someone vaping on the street, and then turning that into a ‘robbery’ scene. It is exaggerated and ridiculous, as well as humorous and creative. I feel as though I am my most creative when I can think ridiculously, it allows my brainstorming to flow nicer and leaves such an open door for great ideas. While I am very satisfied with our choice of making ROGUE a film, I do think if there were to be any further developments, it would be to push Agent Whyte into more of these unpredictable situations.
Other members of my studio have adopted the many more modes and techniques of comedy. In Trip Up, there are three deaths that occur however they are all humorous moments because of incongruity and benign violation. A rock is thrown at an uber driver which causes his death. This moment is so exaggerated and far from reality which allows viewers to feel amused rather than concerned. Another film within the studio that has implemented a similar type of absurdity is Situation Tragedy. The plot is centred around a caterer spiking a set sandwich with a raspberry flavoured condom. The reaction of this incident turns into an investigation, after all, the sandwich nearly killed her! It is morally wrong to laugh at someone who has just faced death, however if it’s by a flavoured condom and a screeching, over the top scream, rolls of laughter will more likely be the result from viewers.
AND SCENE – Instagram page
Another studio that I have engaged with and found very interesting is And Scene. This studio hosted the end of semester screening festival for all the other studios. It has been fascinating to learn about all the behind the scenes work that went into the planning and preparing of the festival. Something that I engaged with a lot was the And Scene Instagram account, so I decided to look at @shangwenchen media factory post. Shangwen was a member of the Instagram team and has communicated that whilst they aimed to make engaging and entertaining content, they ultimately wanted to communicate information about the festival. From my experience with the account, the content was engaging, they made use of trends, they used cool graphics, and they also included a giveaway as a reward to their followers. To give some critical feedback, it would have been nice to see some other members of the class on the page, this would have added another layer and larger variety of content. As well, I found that more information could have been communicated in some posts. Instagram and TikTok are the new search engines for finding information at a convenient and simple capacity. It would have been beneficial to go onto the Instagram page and have all the information about the festival posted at once. Even if they were unable to provide information like screening times, a post to indicate when the times would be released would have been a better way to communicate to their followers.
From reading other posts on the And Scene Media Factory, it sounds like budgeting and funding was a tricky component. The class were able to host a number of fundraisers, however another few would have supported their costly festival. Overall, many of the students have said that this was a great learning experience and know that they have more knowledge on how to create a film festival, they are confident that they could do it again and stay within budget.
Beyond a Joke, Beyond a Genre – Week 11
Lights, camera, action!…
I write this with a grin on my face, we have officially shot all of the scenes for Rouge!! It took three shooting days, two of which went into the evening. What an experience! A lot of fun, and a lot of stress. The stress came from making sure we got it all done in time. We all had to trust each other and communicate the best we could in regard to shot types, actions, confirming lines etc.
Wednesday:
What went well:
- Bobby was super organised and booked a lot of equipment for our shoots. He spent time watching tutorials on the best ways to use the cameras, lights and mics.
- When it was time to shoot we all supported each other and made it a comfortable environment.
- We improvised two comedic moments that should work well in the film.
Some challenges/learning experiences:
- It took us quite a while to get set up and we needed to replace our microphones right before we started shooting. It was annoying but it also just proved how realistically, these types of projects can take so much longer than expected due to unplanned inconveniences.
- We had a few planned spaces for filming, but when we arrived they just didn’t seem right for the scene, too much light, too noisey, unexpected people in the background ect. We were fortunate to meet someone who could give us access to a room in Building 100. Without his help, we could have been stranded, but as well, if we did not initiate a conversation with him, he wouldn’t have helped.
Sunday:
What went well:
- We had so much fun filming one of our sense which involves Agent Whyte stumbling upon a TikTok dancer. Whyte thinks this dancer is an agent from the future so she approaches him to learn his “fighting” moves. The angles and camera movement that we captured were great and will be so fun to edit.
- Our roles were evenly distributed and communication was clear, not one person was left to do all the work and we made sure to give ourselves a break to regroup our next steps forward.
- We all kept a positive attitude and left the shoot feeling a sense of success.
Some challenges/learning experiences:
- Unfortunately we had a member down this day. We feel like the shooting process could have gone a bit quicker with an extra hand but we defiantly managed and gave it our best. We were still able to capture a lot of footage on this day however it was not as much as we originally planned.
- A large protest took place in the city on this day which we did not consider. While this did not effect us to a large degree, it did delay our filming progress.
- Our final scene of the day needed to be cut short due to loosing the sunlight. We were prepared and did have lights with us, however it was not what we were hoping to capture
Monday:
What went well:
- Woowhoooooo we have completed the shoot!
- We progressed a lot faster on our final shoot day. We had all hands on deck for most of the day and it really helped move things along.
- We were so glad to use our back up location for our “fight scene”…it turned out better than our original location! The scene took place next to RMIT Building 100, in the open outdoor space. We can pat ourselves on the back for having a few locations in mind, especially since we were going to be working in areas that are open to the public. Our final destination was perfect for our scene, it allowed us to generate more ideas of shots and angles, as well as not have interruptions from the public (other than a few loud trucks). We were also able to manipulate the space and make it look like we were in multiple different areas. This was because there were many corners, stairs, statues, walls and poles to use as different backdrops.
Some challenges/learning experiences
- Again, we weren’t able to have all team members present for the whole day which resulted in a slower progress at the end of the day.
- Some lighting was difficult to manipulate
- This was discovered later, our lapel mics had not picked up the audio very well in some of our scenes. We will have to fix this is post production which is annoying. We have learnt from this and will use headphones next time when using external mics.
Beyond a Joke, Beyond a Genre – Final Reflective Essay
ROGUE from Media Factory on Vimeo.
My final artefact for Beyond a Joke, Beyond a Genre, is titled ROGUE, which was created and worked on by myself, Chloe, Bobby, Anna and Oscar. ROGUE is a 15 minute spy-comedy short film that follows the whacky Agent Whyte on her mission to the future. For context, I have provided the synopsis below;
Melbourne, 1964. Agent Whyte, a determined but often bumbling spy, is on a mission to capture the rogue Agent Wolley through the city of Melbourne… and through time. Suddenly dropped in the chaos of 2024, Whyte must stay on task amongst the bewildering, unpredictable and bustling new world of Melbourne. Once she finally catches up to Agent Wolley, Whyte discovers a new truth and the mission goes full ROGUE.
We hope that ROGUE can engage with most audiences, especially Melbourne gen zeeiers. The film targets some of the absurd norms of 2024, for example the craze and crave of vaping, obscure new “social issues”, the obsession of TikTok and whacky coffee orders. At the start of semester, it was made known that comedy is mostly subjective and, as Seth Simons highlights, ’Why People Laugh…Because they hear something surprising. Because they hear something familiar’(2023). We hoped to target a few aspects of the modern world that people could relate to or be familiar with, and further, be surprised by how we chose to approach the situation. To be able to relate to a film allows that extra sense of connection, which is something I hope happens when people view our film.
It would have been great to do further research on spy films and apply more of that genre to our film. The reason I say this is because some may argue that our film was a spy parody, not a spy-comedy. There were many moments where Agent Whyte would do an act that would make fun of a spy trope, for example, when she finds Agent Wolley and they go on a chase, Whyte runs straight in front of Wolley but still cannot see her. This moment is comedic because it is ridiculous, in a generic spy film, the spy would easily find their target, they are highly trained agents after all! So, while I wouldn’t necessarily remove those scenes from the film, slight moments of spy skill/intelligence would have amplified the spy genre.
Kaplan (2013, CH6) writes about “winning” in reference to comedic characters winning and being successful in creating humour. It is an interesting idea that has led me to reflect on my own performance of Agent Whyte within ROGUE. Kaplan (2013, CH6) outlines that “many times actors and comics will try to do the ‘funny’ thing that they think they ‘should’ do in that situation”, which in fact is not the way to ‘win’ a comedic moment. I found that there were some moments where I forced an action to cause amusement, however the general laughter came from the response of the other character. It is good to remember to always be as authentic and natural as possible. I congratulate myself and the other actors for our efforts at improvisation. These moments are notably the most humorous.
What I have realised about comedy this semester, is that Genre Hybridisation is a complex theory, and it can be difficult to identify. Parody and Satire on the other hand can be easier to identify, Stated in the Popular Film and Television Comedy text, “Where parody, as we have seen, draws on – and highlights – aesthetic conventions, satire draws on – and highlights – social ones.” (F, Krutnik, and N, Steve, 1990, p19). In the same text, they note that parody should not be partnered with genre hybridisation unless it is momentarily (1990, p18). This is where it can be difficult to distinguish what is classified as genre hybridisation and what is parody/satire. Overall, I can recognise that we adopted some tropes of parody and satire in ROGUE, however we believe it should still classify as a genre hybridisation. At the end of the day, Whyte is going on a high task mission and a lot is at stake, without elements of comedy, this could be the next James Bond! …maybe…not.
To reflect, I have a love-hate relationship with collaboration and group work. Over the semester I had the opportunity to work with a variety of classmates before the final artefact. I thought this process was beneficially and allowed me to meet people and further discover what my own strengths and weaknesses are within the subject and group dynamic. I found that it was easier to rely on people when a discussion had been made early about commitment and ideas. Being super honest in group discussions opened the door for other team mates to do the same. In my opinion, honesty is key and allows strong communication to be built (which is important!). I love that when you work in a group, you can feel supported and guided when feeling doubtful. The best example for this was when editing ROGUE, myself, Chloe and Bobby made sure to either be present in the editing suite or on the group chat. It was so helpful to have two extra pairs of eyes watching the edit to look for further improvements and suggest other ideas. For a lot of our sessions, either Bobby or I were editing, and Chloe was the eyes and ears (and sourcing all the music, building the opening and end credits, and keeping us on track). I could not have done the work that I did on this project without Chloe and Bobby’s help. It truely showed me the importance of team work.
In saying that, I will continue to have a resentful relationship with university group work after experiencing an issue in every collaboration this semester (and other semesters). Someone always chooses to not contribute or communicate, resulting in conflict and disappointment. I have learnt to deal with this conflict in a calm manner, however it would be nice not to have the conflict to start with, it takes precious time away from what matters, the project. I believe our final artefact could have been better presented if we had more team mates to help with components of the final edit, like the audio, colour grading, file organisation, sound track etc. Overall, collaboration can be very beneficially, it is just that people need to ‘collaborate’ for this to work!
REFERENCE:
- Kaplan, S. (2013). The hidden tools of comedy : the serious business of being funny. Michael Wiese Productions.
- Neale, S., & Krutnik, F. (1990). “Popular film and television comedy ” (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203131978
- Simons, S. (2023), “Six Small Essays About Comedy”, Humorism, <https://www.humorism.xyz/six-small-essays-about-comedy>.