Textual Analysisby Mike

Purpose Comedy is normally designed to make the audience laugh and feel a certain kind of emotion that is link to the film. Comedy are mainly entertaining. Comedy is known to be the most hybrid genre that is mixed with other genres e.g. Action Comedy, Comedy horror, Fantasy comedy, Sci-fi comedy etc. A similar film that is similar to our short film idea is Big. And our short film is basically the film ‘Big’ meets ‘Mr Bean’ as our short film would hardly contain speech.

NarrativeThe common trend in comedy is that the main characters mainly are ignorant and don't know how things work.The lead character always has some sorts of events happening to show or emphasis his stupidity. The plot mostly always contains the main character breaking something that he /she tries to fix or doing something inappropriate to another person. Another common trend is most of time comedies would have a moral at the end of story

Characters The characters involved in slapstick comedy stories would mainly consist of the following:

Protagonist – the person that always does something wrong and has to correct it and is mostly over the age of 30.

Teenager – one teenaged kid that tries to help the protagonist with his problems.

Anti protagonist – the one who is always effect by the protagonists actions .

Themes

Comedy often play the idea of action and consequences. The character does something in particular that he shouldn’t have done and now he has to deal with the problems that follows because of that action. The plot is mainly like this so that it has a moral at the end of the story that the audience should follow.

Camera work and editing Long shots are often used to show what the character

is doing which would be followed by: POV to show the audience what the protagonist is

thinking of doing. Medium shots so we can mainly focus on the

protagonist facial expression and body movement Also when the protagonist is facing an opponent who

is always taller than the main character then high angle shots would be used to show that the main character is inferior towards the opponent.

Mise en scene/ props and iconography

A signature feature of comedy is the iconography that represents the themes of the movie and that is the protagonists characterisation e.g. physical movement, speech, action etc. Also the props that they have with them for example Mr. Bean has his teddy

Mise en scene settings

Mainly outdoor, house, events, festivals, school, gatherings, buildings, hospital.

Sound

Comedies always have music playing in the background that is non-diegetic. Comedy uses this aspect in particular to effect the audience and seizes this category to make the audience laugh. Non Diegetic music is normally played when the protagonist is doing something suspicious or intense, this helps make the scene more smooth and funny.