Comedy – Make me laugh

 “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” - Mel Brooks

 “Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious. “ -Peter Ustinov

“Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little twist at the end.” - Sid Caesar

• Most film comedies need to be: Visual, Situational, Played straight, Paced quickly
• All comedy is built around Conflict.  The relationship is paramount to a comedic scene.
• The situations should be Life and Death for the characters. 
• The Stakes should always be raised, as the scene/story progresses.  
• Start at a relatively normal level and then build from there.
• Much comedy conflict involves Competition. 
• Most competition involves frequent Shifts in Power within the scene.
• Often the conflict is built around a character’s Sense of Superiority over another.

2.  Much of comedy is built around Surprise.

• Punchlines are usually logical surprises to seemingly impossible situations. They usually take advantage of our expectations and give us the opposite.  
• Extreme switches in emotion (switching emotions on a dime) are also unexpected because they are not telegraphed and almost always produce a laugh.
• Surprising moments are set up by Repetition (which is followed by a break in the pattern).

3.  Things that happen in threes are funny. We call this the Magic 3. This can be dialogue or action.

4. Specificity is at the heart of comedic dialogue.  This involves decisions and precision in language.

5.  Banter (often described as Ping Pong) describes a back and forth exchange of witticisms delivered rapidly.  It is the ideal approach to comedy dialogue.  That’s not to say that appropriately used that silence can’t be golden.

 Some Typical Comedic Situations:

1.  Mistaken Identity/ Misunderstanding - someone is mistaken for someone else or someone misunderstands a situation

2.  Fish out of Water - a person is thrust into a situation that is beyond their typical experience

3.  Innocence vs. Experience - someone with knowledge attempts to train someone else

4.  The use of a Straight Man to set-up punch lines.  Typically, the set-ups are clean and economical.

5.  The Breaking of the 4th wall - the battle of the Diegetic vs. Non-Diegetic

6.  Comedy is often about Exaggeration.  This can apply to dialogue, characters, situations, concepts or moods (for example, Awkwardness).

As we watch our comedy clips, use the following elements of genre to break down; what makes a comedy AND what makes things funny (the 9th note)

Conventions & Iconography

Setting & Themes/Stories

Actors/Character Types

Visual/Editing Language

Examples/Sub Genres/Cross Genres

Things that I thought were funny: