General Overview and Analysis of The Comedy Genre

Everyone has various expression forms in their hearts, but the maximum common form is laughter. It facilitates us to relieve pressure and make us feel better about ourselves. Comedy movies play a very important role in helping us laugh. Today's movies have numerous forms. Despite recent action tendencies and horror films, comedy films were always the first choice in the sense that it offers people the opportunity to see life's humor.

In the comedy genre, there is a lot of different techniques to make someone laugh. Some of them are slapstick comedy and dark comedy, both of which make the audience laugh. The slapstick comedy is mostly used in movies like Mr. Bean, Laurel, and Hardy or the 3 Stooges. Slapstick is mostly referred to as physical humor, on the other side dark comedy is also known as Black humor. Black humor is used when the comedians joke about serious matters like religion, death, and more serious things. This type of comedy is suitable for people who are over the ages of 18/20, even though some may not get the point of Dark Humour, that is the proper age for people to start listening or watching it.

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In the classical days, certain clothes in the genre Comedy became a big role. As it became the current dress of the past due seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, where every possible part of the frame was adorned. The voice changed to wonderful and brittle, witty in language, regularly prose changed into used, and rapid repartee changed into the norm. Actors imitated the Parisian aristocratic fashion of address with its wealthy background from Moliere. By this mean, that in the classical days' everything was new to the people at that age, something different from the comedy and change of clothes seen to make the audience laugh.

Ever since the first recorded short film, in the Comedy genre of the Lumiere brothers (Larroseur Arose) (1895), the movie portrays an easy realistic joke wherein a gardener is tormented by a boy who steps on the hose that the gardener is using to water his plants, slicing off the water flow. When the gardener tilts the nozzle up to see why no water is coming out, the boy jumps off of the hose, inflicting the water to spray him. The gardener is greatly surprised, and his hat falls off, but he soon catches on. A chase ensues, each on and off-screen (the camera in no way actions from its authentic position) until the gardener catches the boy and administers a spanking. The entire movie lasts best forty-five seconds, but this simple little bit of slapstick can be the forerunner of all subsequent movie comedy.

In the comedy genre, a lot of costumes and makeup is used to make the actor funnier, actors will be dressed in all sort of costumes. Such as being in long clothes that they don’t fit in and then topping it off with some clownish makeup. Also, lighting has a big factor in the comedy genre because to achieve the comedic look you need to brighten up the image, so you need to use a lot of lights and also you need to brighten up the subject/actor, otherwise if using low key lighting and high contrast you will end up with a more dramatic feel to the picture.

In comedy, a lot of editing is used to make the movie funnier and a lot of different shots are taken from different angles. A good example is when there is an actor in the middle of the frame and a piece of cake goes into the frame unexpectedly. Also, the editor tries to use a lot of different sound effects to give the movie a more comedic feel. Some examples from comedy films are if there will be a fight, they will use funny punching sounds or sometimes they use sounds like farting noises to make the viewer laugh more.

Barnes, R. (2007) States Music has a big role in these types of movies like when a piece of music is being played to show a character's status or to show the setting of the place.

The production crew of a comedy film usually consists of a boom mic operator camera person, director, producer and sound mixer and also the utility person. The boom mic operator is responsible to capture the sound from the actors and the sound mixer is responsible to mix and edit. The sounds to achieve the maximum best from the actors then the utility person helps around with running cables and making minor repairs to equipment if needed. The most important of them all is the director and the camera person because they work together to achieve the best possible picture for the movie, and the feel for the movie. The director and producer give the camera a person ways on how to compose the framing and also what they want in the frame.

According to (Gilles Deleuze, Dialogues II) (51-2)

''It is humor which makes language stammer, which imposes on it a minor usage on which constitutes a complete bilingual system within the same language’’.

References:

Journals:

1. Barnes, R. (2007). The sound of Coen comedy: music, dialogue and sound effects in Raising Arizona. The Soundtrack, Volume 1(Volume 1), p.15 P.
2. Sanders, T. (2006). The Comedy of Manners. [online] p.1. Available at: https://resource.acu.edu.au/trsanders/units/comedy/comedyofmanners.html [Accessed 15 Dec. 2019].

Books:

1. Bishop, R. (2013). Comedy and Cultural Critique in American Film. 1st ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, p.8.
2. Brown, B. (1992). Motion Picture and Video Lighting. 2nd ed. Oxfordshire: Taylor & Francis, p.36.
3. Holman, T. (1997). Sound For Film And Television. 3rd ed. Oxfordshire: Taylor & Francis, p.56.

Websites:

1. Cash, J. (2019). Types of Comedy for Drama Class | The Drama Teacher. [online] The Drama Teacher. Available at: https://thedramateacher.com/types-of-comedy-for-drama-class/ [Accessed 14 Dec. 2019].
2. McGrail, L. (n.d.). 5 Essential Elements of Successful Mise en Scène in Film | Lights Film School. [online] Lights Film School. Available at: https://www.lightsfilmschool.com/blog/mise-en-scene-in-film-afk [Accessed 15 Dec. 2019].
3. WARD, C. (2014). 8 Comedy Techniques Edgar Wright Does Right - The Beat: A Blog by PremiumBeat. [online] The Beat: A Blog by PremiumBeat. Available at: https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/8-comedy-techniques-edgar-wright-does-right/ [Accessed 15 Dec. 2019].