You have a script that's funny on the page. You have a good cast. Now all you need is to get through that pesky formality of actually getting it all into the camera. You might think this is the fun part. Well it is. It's the part with the most collaboration, improvisation, and general energy. It's when you're most likely to laugh a lot and end a day with a smile on your face.
Still, there's work to be done. The first thing will be your sets and locations. Obviously the primary consideration is that it serves the purpose of the scene. A jail looks like a jail, a bar is a bar, and so forth. Then it needs to fit the characters and mood you're conveying. The normal design stuff. The big difference with comedy is that it needs to be fairly uninteresting.
One of the reasons I think big budget comedies like LAND OF THE LOST tend to be underwhelming, while lower budget ones like THE HANGOVER succeed, is because on the bigger budget film the jokes get lost, pardon the pun. If you need to hit a dozen marks to match animations and environments and composites, you don't have the same freedom to play around with the wording or delivery of a line. You don't get to interact with a fellow actor and just see where the dialogue takes you. The best you can hope for is some sort of exclamation that can be inserted as a cutaway, so you can throw anything you want at the wall. The process of the effects completely constrains any ability to find something new and outside of the script.
Besides that, big budget movies need to justify their cost. There needs to be production value evident on the screen. Large sets, elaborate effects, and huge action set-pieces help get the concept that this movie is an Event across in the advertising. If somebody saw fit to drop $100 million on an idea, it must be worth it, right? While we know it's not true, it's true enough to get an opening weekend that recoups a good chunk of the budget. If an opening is big enough, even if the movie is terrible, the DVD and BluRay sales will be strong as well. How many times have you heard someone say, after hearing a bad review, "Oh, I guess I'll wait until video."
Anyway, there are two main problems with these big budget elements. One is that they aren't inherently funny. They might be elaborate, and contain the source for some jokes, but it's a lot of money that in general is used to show there was a lot of money. Think back. When is the last time you remember thinking "That set is hilarious"? Effects and action sequences are gags, so they get a pass with a caveat that they can be over planned until they lose all humor. But seriously, when have you seen a comedy and thought the location really cracked you up? The interactions within the location, or the reactions to it, maybe, but not the location itself.
That leads to the second problem: Too nice a set, location, costume, or stunt can overshadow the comedy. The scene is about the joke. How it's timed, delivered, and what the reaction is. If you are looking at space ships zipping through the sky or a rhinoceros running through a living room, are you going to be looking at the faces of any of the actors? No, you're looking at the rhino. You might be building to a great payoff, which is fine, but be aware of when the dazzle has to stop so the audience actually pays attention to the joke.
To really illustrate this, consider the original PINK PANTHER films to the recent ones. Actually, consider one specific gag: The globe. In the original series there was a running joke about Clouseau and globes. If you saw one, you expected a gag. Maybe he leaned on it, it rolled in its case, and he fell. Maybe he spun it, then got his fingers caught. They were small moments of quick effective slapstick that reminded you the character, always projecting confidence, was inherently a buffoon.
In the first Steve Martin film, they do a globe gag. He knocks the globe out, it rolls down a hall, out the building, interrupts a bike race, and in general causes all sorts of panic and mayhem. It was a huge set-piece. Was it funny? Not at all. It was a long string of special effects that immediately pull us away from our main characters. People, as expected, dive out of the way. We get a sense that this is a grand calamity he has caused, but by spending two minutes on it, then ending with an impossible "oops" reaction shot, implying he saw the whole multi-block ordeal, we lose all surprise, character development, or anything that would in any way justify the sequence. Stuff happening is not comedy.
Another problem with such a long sequence is that it's so polished and edited, it loses any sort of organic charm. If you shot a Three Stooges short like a Robert Rodriguez action scene you could get a lot more hits in, sure, but the whole interaction and choreographed chaos would be lost. You aren't trying to get the audience's adrenaline up. You want them to appreciate what seems to be an impossibly staged sequence. Watch some old Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd, but imagine shot for shot how Michael Bay would shoot it. Don't just think "It wouldn't be funny." Actually do this, then think about what specifically is lost in each change, shot, or cut as you go. Make notes.
Your best option is to have simple sets that don't distract from the foreground action. Choreograph any major chaos, and when possible try and get good master shots. Don't ever distract from the joke unless the joke is the distraction. Also remember that while it's good to be detailed, don't lose yourself in the details.
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| Patrick Storck |
Patrick hails from Baltimore, MD, where playing by the rules is frowned upon. Only average things come from playing it safe.
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