Comedy genre research

Comedy films are produced to make the audience laugh that is what I want to try do by producing my film "Fix up look hard”.

The comedy genre humorously exaggerates the situation, the language, action, and characters.

Comedy genre films gives the escape for the audience from day-to-day life.

They usually have happy endings, although the humor may have a serious or pessimistic side.

There are different types of comedies:

Comedies usually come in two general formats comedian-led with jokes or sketches and situation-comedies that are told within a narrative.

Comedy hybrids commonly exist with other genres, such as musical-comedy, horror-comedy, and comedy-thriller.

Comedies have also been classified in various sub genres, such as romantic comedy, crime/caper comedy, sports comedy, teen or coming-of-age comedy.

Slapstick comedy

Slapstick was predominant in the earliest silent films, since they didn't need sound to be effective.

Here are some films I looked at.

This is research is really helpful because the comedy film I will create I am not allowed to use any dialogue which follows codes and conventions of a slapstick comedy.

I looked at Charlie Chaplin because he known as a actor, film director of the silent film era and his silent films are really effective even though it don't have dialogue.

What I learn was that in silent films that actions of the characters, facial expressions , body language need to be really clear for the audience to understand the narrative and the comedy element. Therefore I need to really think about my characters actions and to make sure the mise en scene works well together for the audience to obtain the meaning I want them to get out of the film and not to be confused.

I also looked at more modern comedies the big mainstream films specially ''Home Alone'' as me and my group decided we want to have the prank element which ''Home Alone'' has.

This film follows a comedian-led type due to the pranks. What I learnt about researching the film is that sound has a lot to do with telling the narrative as before Charlie Chaplin films relied on the acting. I looked at this film because it had similar theme of what I want to make.

The other films that is similar to ''Home Alone'' is ''Dennis The Menace'' as it had the prank element in it.

The other theme in my film what I will have and it will focus on is revenge and bullying the best example of this would be ''Mean girls'' as the character have a conflict and do things to get back at each other.

As we wanted our film to also have the bullying theme to learn more about it I looked at the film ''Elephant'' which really had a strong meaning and a shocking ending a shooting due to bullying.

The other film I looked at was "Eden Lake" which is a British film which had a really strong themes of bullying throughout the whole of the film.

What have I learnt?

By researching these and looking at the comedy genre I learnt that more about the characters in the comedy film and I also learned about themes I want in my film and the way the directors of each film show that, however I needed to have in mind that am not allowed to use dialogue in my film.

Poster 2

Poster 1

Audience feedback

Throughout Production I have received lots of feedback from people on making my film which had helped me and my group to improve our work and the ideas. People commented of what was good and what things needed improvement. Firstly at the beginning of the A2 course we got homework to think of three film ideas which later on I shared with my classmates. Some ideas that I had people commented were to difficult and they don't see it working. One of my ideas received positive feedback such as ''Good idea I can see it working'', however it also had the negative ''I think it's too simplistic it needs some changes but overall I think it's good'' the idea needed to be good an A2 short film therefore to make the best idea we combined each others.
Our first film idea was a thriller called 'Locked in my Mind' but was changed after receiving feedback from my teacher who said that it would have been too difficult to film.The other film idea me and my group had was a film idea with a title ''Adventures of Babashola'' however it was even more difficult to film then the first one, therefore we had to wipe that idea.After receiving the feedback we did we kept putting ideas together but this time we tried of having a more simplistic idea. We came up with the idea of a film and decided to stay with it called 'Fix Up, Look Hard' because of the feedback we got from our teacher and classmates who told us that they think it will work. After our final film was chosen we had to put it together so it could work. As well as disagreements our narrative for the film changed slightly because of feedback from literally everyone. This was mainly on ending of the film and the way the prank idea came to plan. We were told that it sounded dull and the prank idea would be difficult so the ending was changed to become more funny and the prank idea part was changed to connect the audience more. When it came to Production we couldn't get feedback from our target audience so got it from our teacher, actor, and random people. While shooting the film our teacher was marking us so would regularly give small tips and our actor who played our main character Harry gave us advice on how it was best to shoot him. These pieces of advice went a long way because we could of shot the film differently and our film would have been different. Also because our actor is also a A2 Media Studies student it helped a lot. Post Production is where we had the most feedback. Putting the film together required knowledge from me and the group because we know the film and how to make it look better. But we also needed feedback from other media groups to get their thoughts across. The feedback varied from sound to effects. After the film was put together we showed it to Year 9 students who are our potential target audience. We were pleased to here things like "The film was really funny" and "The story was interesting" but we also had some critical ones like "Too quick" and "The actor was bad". By receiving the feedback was vital, however the film was already produced and there wasn't anything we could of done. For my ancillary task feedback it helped me to make my poster more marketable. This was important because it needed to look like a real comedy film poster. From the feedback I got I believe I used it well as I took what people were saying into consideration especially my target audience. The majority of what people were saying was making my poster look more interesting and real. I did this with the use of colour, size, theme, font. I feel that without the feedback, I may not have seen things I should have and improved to an extent. Also it got me thinking on ways to appeal to my target audience rather than satisfying me and the group. Also when you are producing work you may not realise what you doing wrong because its your own work and you wont be able to spot mistakes like others can therefore feedback is crucial.

Problems while filming

There were a number of problems me and my group went through while filming. The biggest problem was as we had shots in the morning with students it was hard to film it due to students walking into the camera and shouting etc therefore we had to take the same shot a number of times to get the perfect one which wasted time which lead to make quick decisions as we didn't have time to do all the shots so our story came out different the way we planned, however not all the time everything goes to plan.
The other big issue we had while filming on the second day was the weather due to rain we had to wait till it stops which again made us waste time because if we were to film in the rain the equipment would of got damaged.
As we had shots in the school corridors there was people all the time walking past, therefore we had to let them pass which wasted time if not then we had someone in the shot as they didn't stop while we was filming.
The other thing we done wrong we didn't check if the room was free to use which resulted to move location which wasted time.
Overall all the problems we faced while filming lead to wasting time therefore we had to make quick changes and be creative as we didn't have enough time to finish every shot we had on our storyboard and to take the safety shots which we did for the majority of our shots.

Casting issues

Main Characters

HARRY: Protagonist - This is the character who gets bullied by Jack and gets revenge on Jack due to he has had enough of it and wants to show Jack that he is not a wimp.

JACK: Antagonist - This is the bully in the film who picks on Harry all the time but soon gets pay back and because the victim instead.

Harry - Played by Edward Obeng.
Jack - Played by me due to we can't get any students of schedule and everyone outside school is to busy.
Teacher - Played by Joshua Freeland

Extras: played by school kids walking past.

Casting Issues
For the film I was told that the people we could use are students who do A2 Media Studies in Barking Abbey or people from outside of the school, but we can't use people in school as they will be in lessons.

This was an issue for my group because we had planned to use our friends in school who don't do Media which was because they fit in our characters and we could see some of them acting very well in their role. All of the people we knew from outside of school were busy in their schools or working so we couldn't use anyone from outside.

The other problem was that the other A2 Media class has only one boy while in our film the two characters are boys. What made things even worse was that Edward (the boy in the other class) is quiet and he has told me already that he hates acting.

At the end of the day there isn't anything we can do so he accepted to be in our film and we asked our teacher if I could be in the film and she accepted it as long as I am the bully because I can't be the main character which is Harry.

Hopefully things will go according to plan after this and our film will go well.

Filming

While filming our film, I had to work closely with the director to make sure shes happy with the angle and the shot. The other thing we always had to refer to our storyboard to make sure we didn't miss the shot. The other thing we had to work together to tell the cast the way we wanted them to act.