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>.