Codes & Conventions: Comedy

These are the conventions that I will be taking into consideration when making my short film. Firstly, to take into consideration is that their are two main forms of comedic films, there are those that take place mainly through gags and sketches, usually more surreal humour where entire scenes can be centred around a single joke (E.g. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World). And then there are those that have a more coherent storyline, and the jokes come from the characters and events that happen along the journey (E.g. Paul). There are other sub-genres of comedy, such as romantic comedy, teen comedy, gross-out comedy just to name a few; the sub-genre that my film is, are a mix between Surreal Humour and Satire. The surreal humour comes from the fact that my main character is interacting with a fictional being, and the satire comes from the end when the two are constantly parodying famous series finales of popular TV Shows.

Cinematography
In a lot of comedy films, a lot of the humour can come from the visuals, this is the most common way of getting jokes across during gross-out or slapstick films, where if you took out the visuals then there would be no comedy.

(21 Jump Street, 2012, Dir. Phil Lord & Chris Miller)

However in other comedies, this doesn't apply and the humour comes from what they say, rather than what is seen. In this case, cinematography is still important, but in the same way how it is important for any film to have good cinematography. Although in most comedies there will be at least one joke that is told through visual humour, if not multiple jokes. It's hard to think of a comedy that was ruined through bad cinematography, as normally they would be bad because the jokes were bad, not because they were poorly framed, or at least that wouldn't be the main reason.

Mise-En-Scene
Again, similar to cinematography, Mise-En-Scene is important, especially when it comes to visual humour, as humour can come from props, costumes and provide a large amount of the comedy within the film. A famous example is the coconuts from Monty Python's Holy Grail, the use of coconuts instead of horses gets a big laugh from audiences everytime.

(Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 1975, Terry Gilligan & Terry Jones)

Although sometimes the mise-en-scene of a comedy can ruin the film, for example” Cat in the Hat”, where the sets and costumes are made bright and colourful to look similar to the original book, although it ends up looking distracting and ugly. While not every comedy uses mise-en-scene as an important way of getting jokes across, it is still an important feature, the same as any film, again, using another Dr Seuss film as an example, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”, even though it is supposed to be a kids Christmas film that uses the spirit of Christmas as a moral, it horrible represents it due to the sets all looking bleak and foggy, it doesn’t look nice or welcoming like most kids Christmas films.

Editing
An important part of comedy, is correct pacing, letting a shot/scene linger for too long, or cutting it short can ruin an entire joke. Timing and pacing is a very important part of comedy, and this is controlled through editing. Depending on the genre will depend on the pacing, so for my film, the pacing will be rather slow, similar to Doug Walker (Who I am using as my inspiration). However, in the majority of comedies, they are normally fast paced in order to keep the jokes coming and to keep the audience engaged. One of the best comedic directors Edgar Wright tends to used fast paced humour in his films, and they normally always work.

(Shaun of the Dead, 2004, Dir. Edgar Wright)

Like I said, editing is pacing, and that can change how well a joke works, however I can’t really think of any cases where the editing of a comedy ends up ruining the jokes, again, usually if a comedy film is bad, then the editing is not normally the major problem with the film, and even if the editing in a film is good, doesn’t mean that the rest of the film is good. An example is the parody film “Epic Movie” which is a horrible film and a horrible comedy, but on a production perspective, the film is well made.

Sound
Sound creates the majority of the comedy within a film, the most obvious of this way is through speaking and people telling jokes, but there are other ways how humour gets across, like music and sound effects. For music, the way how this can be used to tell jokes for example is contropuntal music can lead to a scene that would otherwise be dramatic or dark, and having a light-hearted tone; an example of this is the fight scenes of Hit-Girl in the film "Kick Ass", usually playing upbeat pop songs as she's murdering drug dealers, making the scene both an action scene and a comedic scene. As for sound effects, these also create comedy, this is most commonly found in slapstick, particularly cartoons such as Tom & Jerry, by putting silly sound effects over violence, makes it more silly and more conventional of the slapstick genre. Although these conventions usually work in smaller sketches rather than full length film, again, Tom & Jerry make a good example; while they were funny in 5-10 minute sketches, making a full length featured film with this type of humour (The Tom & Jerry movie), will get annoying rather quickly.