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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>.
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 🙂
Beyond a Joke, Beyond a Genre – Week 9
Things are coming together…
A lot of progress has been made this week and we have pieced together our script. On Monday, Chloe and Oscar committed to finalising the first two scenes, and the rest of us committed to writing a few scenes each which will play in the middle of the film.
When coming back together on Wednesday, Bradley asked the question, ‘what would you say your mode or style of comedy is?’, and I must admit, our answers were scattered. We have moments of parody but we do feel like our overall production is a genre hybridisation, Adventure/Action Comedy.. In Glyn White and John Mundy’s text, Laughing Matters: Understanding Film, Television, and Radio Comedy (2012, CH.6), they recognise that Genre Hybridisation is a complex term that is limited. The correct word to use should be UNlimited. The boundaries of what Genre Hybridisation is, is ever so changing, it depends on the genre, the narrative ect. Something that Bradley told us during class, which helped better my understanding, was to imagine a film like Scary Movie (2000) not having any comedic moments within the film, it would pretty much not exist or make sense. Now imagine a film like An American Werewolf in London (1981), if you were to remove the comedic moments, the film would still make sense and have its horror genre. Our film is similar. If we were to eliminate any comedic moments, we would still have an action spy film. I feel like I am really starting to understand more of what the term ‘Genre Hybridisation’ means and how to identify it.
Back to the group work, another thing that we wanted to do before the end of the week was share our schedules and availability for the weeks ahead. We want to get most of our filming done next week (week 10) which will allow us a lot of time for editing. It seems that we will be able to do most of our filming on Wednesday 15/05 and Sunday 19/05, and then we have extra availability on Monday 20/05 if we need to film more.
Here are all of the documents created this week:
OFFICIAL SCRIPT – room for edits
Reference:
- Mundy, J. & White, G. (2012), “Comedy and Genre Boundaries.” in Laughing Matters: Understanding Film, Television and Radio Comedy, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 130–148.
Beyond a Joke, Beyond a Genre – Week 8
Brainstorm, brainstorm, and more brainstorm…
‘This is a chaotic way to write, but I find that chaos to be helpful.’ (M Trapp, 2022) – Mike Trapp’s interpretation of brainstorming, and I could not agree more! We have been brainstorming for two week’s and it has finally paid off. I appreciate that brainstorming can be a great writing tool in a group setting as well as individually.
Wow, this week has consisted of a lot of brainstorming and fleshing out ideas. I was away the previous week, so I have come back to lots of open ideas from the group. We know we want to create a fictional story that follows a fictional character, and use genre hybridisation as our dominant mode of comedy.
With that in mind, the genre had not been decided for our piece, so that is what we worked on in our Monday class. After a bit of back and forth, and looking at our mood boards; Mood Boards ,we decided to think more of WHY our character is going to the future. From that discussion, I thought that our character could be on a mission and needs something from the future, like a spy/agent. As a group, we fleshed out this idea and decided it would be best to make our project a short film, rather than a series. Our film will be a journey, with a beginning, middle and end. Our spy gets given a mission, they travel to the future, do the mission whilst also being interrupted by modern day complications, then they solve the mission and come back to HQ.
Through the week, our mood boards have now changed from The Wizard of Oz (1939) and 17 Again (2009), to Men In Black (1997-2019) and Johnny English (2003). The genre that we will be hybridising is Action/Adventure, and we hope to capture a lot of our comedic moments through the character of Agent Whyte.
On Wednesday, we had a break through! You see, we knew we were sending Agent Whyte on a mission, however it was tough to create this mission. With limited resources and cast, we struggled to think of clues. We then came up with the idea that another agent, Agent Wolley, has travelled to the future to steal a list that the Boss of the agency wants. It is Agent Whyte’s mission to capture Agent Wolley and the list. We discussed this at length and all felt like this will be an achievable outcome.
Our goal is to have our 1st and 2nd draft written up by the end of next week. Here is our 1st vomit draft;
Reference:
- Trapp, M. (2022), “So You’ve Got A Good Idea… Now What?: Brainstorms & Outlines”, Chuffah, <https://chuffah.substack.com/p/brainstorms-and-outlinesLinks to an external site.>.
Beyond a Joke, Beyond a Genre – Week 7
The beginning of something great…
This is the first week of creating and making our final project. In my group is Anna, Chloe, Bobby and Oscar. We all have a flexible attitude and seem to already be accepting of particular roles for the project. I think we will all contribute to the overall narrative because we are loaded with ideas.
I was absent for most of this week but here is some of the work that was documented:
- We immediately created a google drive folder so that our work can easily be shared and collaborated.
- A group contract was put together, outlining our commitment and communication to the project.
- Separate mood boards were made. These mood boards included mostly images and screenshot of shows and characters that we can get inspiration from. Some examples are Mr Bean, Hairspray, 17 Again, The Wizard of Oz, The Good Place, Napoleon Dynamite ect -> I will explain in the next dot point.
- We want to create a short form series which follows a particular character who transports to a different timeline and experiences the future and all its propaganda. The idea is that we will satirise a lot of real-life-modern tropes through our character. we feel as though there are so many things in the modern world that are quite ridiculous and frankly, extra, so we want to “make fun” of that. For example, the obsession with our phones.
Here are the links to our documents so far:
Beyond a Joke, Beyond a Genre – Week 6
Trenches – Week 6 Sketch
- What is your understanding of the comic form and concepts explored this week, with reference to the reading(s), in-class discussion, and/or your own research?
Wow. This week has been interesting and proven that comedy is a complex genre… if you can even call it that. While we used documentaries as a case study, the broader topic this week was Genre Hybridisation. From my understanding, Genre Hybridisation is when a particular genre is portrayed with elements of comedy. These elements are what we learnt about at the start of semester; benign violation, silent comedy, comic frame, situation, and story ect. Using these elements should help to build a comedic foundation in a non-comedic genre.
Lesley Speed wrote about ‘docucomedies’ and how they ‘use performance reflexively to highlight spectacle and explore the humour of awkward situations and contemporary and changing cultural values.’ (2020, p.690). Speed is highlighting that the humour in these ‘docucomedies’ are not simply created through parodying documentary components, but through moments found in real life footage.
- How does your media artefact respond to these constraints and concepts?
Our media artefact has attempted to hybridise action with comedy. After brainstorming with Bradley, we decided the best way to approach our sketch was to imagine we were directors of a Marvel film. Marvel films are filled with action and typically fight scenes. They also include many comedic moments. From my general knowledge and experience, these moments are created through character performance. In our work, we focused on a very dramatic and exaggerated performance. Even though it may seem like we are being comedic in our fighting/action scenes… we are not…we just have limited skills in this area. I am hopeful that our dramatic acting and cheesy one liners can generate some amusement.
- What have you learned about comedy’s relationship to other forms/genres by making this sketch?
Genre hybridisation is difficult to manipulate in short form. The two sketches prior to this one was much easier to generate. To accomplish genre hybridisation well, I believe more research would have to be done on the chosen genre, and the actual narrative of the piece needs more craftsmanship. This is not to say parody and satire works don’t require effort, they defiantly do. I guess from my experiences so far, genre hybridisation is a different kind of effort.
- (In week 6:) What have you learned about your own comedic sensibility over the past three weeks of collaborative making? What kind of work are you interested in producing for the major project? (This will help you figure out who you might like to work with.)
By creating weekly sketches, I have been able to discover a lot about the depths of comedy. There are so many ways to create and generate comedy, however it can be easy to overcomplicate, or as Seth Meyers says, ‘hat on a hat’. For the major project, I would love to challenge myself and create a work that does not entirely use parody and satire. I found that these elements of comedy are easy to manipulate, which is not an issue, I just want to challenge my creativity. It would be great to create a film or series that follows a comic character, like Mr Bean or Neapolitan Dynamite. I feel that these ‘odd’ characters are not made anymore. I want to create an iconic-like comic character.
Reference:
- Speed, L. (2020). “Comic Investigation and Genre-Mixing: The Television Docu-Comedies of Lawrence Leung, Judith Lucy and Luke McGregor.“, Continuum, 34(5), pp. 690–702.
- Late Night with Seth Meyers. (2014, September 16). Bill Hader reveals all the things seth taught him at SNL – late night with Seth Meyers. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEBAcPWpJog