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.