Beyond a Joke, Beyond a Genre – Week 10

Critical feedback…

During this week’s Monday class, we presented our artefact ideas and plans to comedian Hannah Camilleri and comedy writer Stacey. Rouge is the official title of our short film and we are hoping to capture a spy fiction with a sense of adventure and thrill, as well as having comedic moments weaved throughout. After we present our outline, it was great to get some verbal feedback from the comedy pros:

Feedback and my notes in reflection:

From Stacey

• Outline should have comedy “fish out of water”. Get that hook in there – These notes were in reflection of our presentation outline. We needed to add more detail to where the humour lays, for example, we should have describe Agent Whyte’s exaggerated facial expressions and unpredictable reactions.
• Could do direct to cam in the modern world? – this was an interesting idea! We may play with this when we shoot. Our worry is that we are doing al ot of filming in the city which can be difficult when capturing live audio.
• Set up the 60s more. Take inspiration from Austin Powers – As a group, we spoke about this extensively. The time we spend in the past is minimal and frankly we do not have time to ‘set up’ the past world like Stacey is describing. We have realised from her feedback that we do need to do what we can to communicate the setting to our audience. One change we will make is Agent Whyte’s dialogue. We will remove the modern curse words that we have chosen, and replace them with old fashioned phrases like ‘Bloody Nora’, ‘oh drat’ etc.
• Find the comedy in the situation, that is the best approach. – while we have written in humorous dialogue, we do intend to find comedic moments through actions and performance. We feel that it will be better executed if we improvise said actions and build upon them from there.
• Clumsy in 2024, not previous. Other film makers choose to do this, make the character clumsy for the whole film, what about this comes out in the modern world? – This was tough to hear. We want to be as original as possible, however we have all fallen inlove with the clumsiness of Agent Whyte. Again, we will see how this goes when we shoot our past scenes. Maybe we try make her as serious as possible when she is in the past world? No falling over!
• More heightened moments to lead to underwhelming moments – We love this and really want to manipulate this type of comedy throughout our film
• Go further with satire, make fun of the world, be ridiculous! – We love this as well! Now that we have our narrative structured, we want to go in with bigger and exaggerated ideas for when Whyte is in the modern world.
• “All your unique qualities *pause* and all my other agents are sick” – we will add the pause to this section of script

From Hannah

• There is a lot of describing in the script regarding actions and emotions. Let it come naturally, this is how to be the most authentic character possible – couldn’t agree more. I have experience with acting and couldn’t totally understand what she meant. At the end of the day, we had added a lot of description to may the mood clear in the script (it was so all group members could be on the same page)

• Maybe Agent Whyte is not out of touch? – maybe she is way too interested in her work? another way to approach the character – Something to consider. We do want Agent Whyte to have moments of reason, she won’t be totally unaware of what is going on.

 

It was so great to get this type of feedback, it almost felt like a collaboration. I think the hardest part is letting go of certain parts of the film that we once thought was great, but have now realised that there is better options.

 

NOW WE SHOOT!

Wow, we are ready to start shooting! For this week, our shooting days are Wednesday and Sunday. Wednesday’s shoot will be all of our scenes in the past world, and Sunday’s shoot will involve a full day of capturing our montage scenes. We will also film on Monday next week if required.

To expand on my reflection further, I will write about our shooting experience as a whole on my next blog post 🙂