comedy in loss fest

J

JCVR

Well-known member
hey guys,

just noticing as with my short there were several other comedies. I'd love for anyone who made a comedy in loss fest or anyone in general to chime in.

Mainly, i'm curious as to whether there was more comedy this time around because laughter is an easy coping device and with the theme being loss, more people gravitated towards humor.

For those of you who've either made a short this time around or just watched them, do you feel like the comedies were more engaging/interesting/effective and affective? or was it the other way around.

Additionally, I think that it's usually much harder to be uplifting without being cheesy. Now, i'm not exactly advocating joining Oprah's book club or anything - but generally it's easy to capture loss, angst, hate, sadness etc through drama and darkness, yet tackling the same things in a light hearted way can be sort of tough. I'm sort of typing out loud but i'm just interested in the approach people took to get their story across and when humor was involved.

thoughts?

also... uh... shameless plug... but watch my short!
 
I don't think capturing any emotion on camera is easy.

But the comedies in loss fest did not bother me. If a film didn't fit the theme we wouldn't be watching it.

Personally I think a comedy will win it this time around. There a few really great ones.

But there were some excellent drama pieces as well.
 
the comedies i've seen so far, for the most part, haven't really resonated with me to the degree that the more compelling moments from TINY DANCER, EVIE, et cetera did. but i've seen less than half the films so far. I think the more downtempo films, the dramas, ran equally as much risk of being overly sentimental as the comedies did of avoiding the cheese. cant say one genre is more enlightened than the other in dealing with this theme. 2¢.

shameless plug: watch JCVR's short!
 
My comedy is in no way enlightened, uplifting, moving (unless you count bowel) nor did I tackle some tough subject matter in a light-hearted way. I just had fun with a silly "I wonder if they'd let me get away with this" concept.
 
As a lover of comedy, and one whose past work is usually comedic, I've been very pleased to see as many comedies as I have so far. Though I've only watched about 1/3 of the films as of now.
 
I only did a comedy because I thought everybody else was doing drama...well, part of a comedy...some comedy? Ah, forget it.
 
I'm way too much of a chicken sh#t to try to do a comedy. It's the hardest I think.
 
Thanks Michael Anthony Horrigan!
We definitely take pride in the comedy.

Please give our short a watch -- just as I'll watch yours.

Word.
Glad to be back in the fests!!!

(what happened to the Mr. T Smiley?!)
 
Okay, so, I was declaring this the unofficial ComedyFest, but I think it's a toss up now, either ComedyFest or OverlySedatedSoundingVoiceOverFest. One of the two.
 
I decided from the get go due to the theme that I definitely wanted to do a comedy. Besides, all of my stuff recently had been getting darker and darker, and I wasn't pushing myself as a filmmaker to explore different methods of story-telling. So I decided that I was going to do a comedy. The title came from a comic that I read a long time ago. This artist from the 70's with a great original style, and the word "Falling Up" had stuck with me all through my teenage years, my twenties, and are still with me today.

Through my rewrites it almost descended into abject drama, just trying to find the right starting point, but once I found it, it started clicking and I started to believe that I could actually make it work.

All that was left was to remind myself that I wasn't shooting a horror movie (constantly I had to reming myself when doing a lighting setup).

I was actually surprised to see so many comedic entries this time around, and it was refreshing. I was just glad of being able to write an engaging script that while didn;t leave anyone guffawing with laughter, at least tickled their imaginations for a while.
 
puckthemad said:
I was actually surprised to see so many comedic entries this time around, and it was refreshing.
Click to expand...

Definitely, I agree completely. I keep thinking any minute now I'm gonna be upset by it, thinking that due to the number of comedies "STUPENDOUS" won't stand out as much as it would've being surrounded by tearjerkers, but truth be told I am so happy. I've had a good number of laughs throughout this fest, and it's a nice experience.
 
I wasn't particularly surprised that there was as many comedies - but was pleasantly surprised with the quality of a few of them.

I entirely agree that to watch an entire festival comprised of say depressing drama's would be quite morbid and a little tough on the old brain cells. However a good drama - is in itself entertaining, and there is room enough for even a large of such films not to crush a man's will to live - if they were all good (which they can never be.)

In that case are the comedies there to balance off against a surge of dramatic genius or are they the stop gap for dramatic mediocrity - hence providing some light relief for that purpose hehe.

The point is less that anyway but the motive for the director/principle artist who would want to use a festival with 'loss' as its theme to present a comedy. I think its fine obviously and they were great fun. However, I think the festival also provided a huge learning experience - especially with resulting feedback to those who took the bold risk to produce stories of genuine 'affecting' human experience.

For those who are quite experienced (or exhausted) from producing such works then I can see why 'they' might produce a comedy. But if comedy is your 'thang' and 'again' one produced a comedy for even this theme of festival, then i believe really that to produce a comedy was a lost opportunity.

So its all relative to the artist isn't it.
 
Comedy is truly difficult, and i think i learned more from attempting comedy than shooting my usual dramatic supernatural stuff.
 
Comedy really is difficult to master. One must consider what is funny simply because of inside jokes amongst friends and what is funny because of the bending of social norms and values in an attempt to portray situations in a manner that appeal to the majority of an audience.

In Tiny Dancer, I wanted to express the austerity of isolation/isolationism on college campuses today visually in an almost hyperrealistic way (perhaps even surrealistic to some) while maintaining a playful edge with Caroline's performance and her interaction with Nate, the other lead. She's just naturally very humorous and charismatic, so she left behind a lot of great moments that some might get a little giggle at.

I've written many comedy, or "dramedy," scripts, and one that has had particularly good feedback. It was difficult at first, but once I was able to get myself into the tone of the piece each time I wrote for it, the jokes, quips, and situations just kept rolling out.

You've just got to find your stride.
 
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