MDA2100 - Week 3

This week we looked at the Genre of 'Comedy'

I had never really studied or worked on comedy in depth, so I enjoyed the opportunity to see the theory behind a genre which you wouldn't usually think about in a 'scholarly' way
We looked at the 4 different types of comedy: (Superiority, Incongruity, Ambivalence and Release) and the way in which they are explored in films and even gained from everyday situations. The idea of a Payoff and Setup also was put across as being important within the genre.

One of the films we saw was 'Desserts' starring Ewan Mcgreggor, in which a man was hooked while on a beach and dragged into the sea. While the film had possibly deep themes of man's effects on the environment, I thought it was a funny, if morbid film (and morbid humour is always fun to be honest). The ideas of Superiority and Incongruity are where the humour was generated: Spectators felt superior to the character as he fell for the fish's trick, and the events were incongruous, as it is usually a fish getting hooked, not a man).

We then watched George Lucas in Love, which was a short, rom-com which generated comedy from using the traits of well-known Star Wars characters to generate humour, in showing a possible, unrealistic way in which George Lucas gained inspiration for the story. This was an example of 'exclusive' comedy, in which only people who understand certain aspects will get jokes. This could also in a way indicate superiority, as you get a joke other people may not.

In the afternoon workshop, we discussed turning our own experiences into stories, pitches, and how to write a pitch.

I found the own experiences aspect interesting, as it was useful to see how as you have been part of that experience, you may be almost biased in your thinking of an idea, and it was useful to see how other people responded to those ideas. We then had to make up a story idea based on one of the other people's experiences. This was interesting, as you really had to consider other people's views and how they may have been affected by an experience, and you had to get out of your own mindset and step into anothers shoes, which is a useful skill for when you write an idea based on an other person's life, for example.