How, was that believable??

There is an unwritten rule in screenwriting that I have come to learn recently called two pieces of magic (Save the Cat by Blake Snyder). The rule states you can only have one piece of magic per script. One piece of magic being for instance ‘aliens are attacking planet earth’, or perhaps, ‘vampires live among us’. Either of these on their own are stretching reality, but you can get on board with them right?, it’s the cinema after all. Two pieces of magic however, mostly stinks.. For instance, aliens are attacking planet earth and vampires who live amongst us need to save us… wft? Overkill! Sounds like a primary school essay! 

Here are some other bad movie ideas:

Man wins lottery, but has to spend it in one day and also turns into shark

Woman can read minds but can’t speak and also wins the lottery

Man discovers fastest horse in history and also discovers teleportation

Evan Almighty

Mulling over this recently, (sidenote, if you are drinking mulled wine while mulling something over, is that over mulling something?) I noticed that the principle of this still applied. One of the rules of a traditional comedy sketch is that the audience needs to believe the situation portrayed. If you don’t believe it, then you won’t buy into the jokes, and won’t laugh. Now, I don’t mean to say you need to believe that a farcical situation like in Irish Intervention, or Engagement nightmare actually could happen, but that you ‘buy’ into it - you accept it within the boundaries of entertaining scripted content. Now, buying into it is different for everyone obviously, but the rules are roughly the same. If the writing is very farcical, it will help to have the acting authentic, having both farcical is likely to have people think ‘this would never happen’. Similarly this applies to other factors such as set/location, costume etc. Too many ‘unbelievable’ things happening at the same time, can render the comedy null. (A notable exception to this rule is ‘the young ones’, but I can’t really think of another). 

Last year, we tried to make the camera work add a layer of authenticity to the script. We used three cameras to facilitate lots of talking over each other, something like a curb your enthusiasm filming style. If you’re not familiar with that excellent show, Larry David, the creator and star, films it in a very loose fashion. He gives the actors a rough guide to the script, and gives them goals in the conversation, then they roll with three or so cameras and capture the madness. The benefit of this style is it more accurately mimics real life conversations and so gives the ridiculous content or context more authenticity. I have to say, I think it was ahead of its time. 

In a world where real life is now filmed so readily, that funny things that ‘actually happened’ are now there for everyone to see, scripted comedy can seem very stale in comparison. That said, scripting done well has a consistency to it that those once-in-a-while clips of real life funny don’t. Is it any wonder that the same news clips gone wrong videos do the rounds for years and years? I digress… This year, we have tried to keep the added authenticity developed from last year, but use another camera angle to capture single reaction shots. They are shot on an 85mm lense, and give a real personal feel to the scene. We used this in the latest granny sketch where we get those close ups of dennis, stephen, kevin, whatever his name is. We can hear the madness going on around him, and we get his view on screen. It’s helpful, in these farcical scenes, to have an everyman, someone who represents the audience on screen. It’s even more helpful, to be able to focus in on them, it helps punch the comedy - by making the scene more authentic.

 Another thing you may have noticed is our use of hand held camera work. Now… you may not be aware at this point, but there are only three of us, so having a camera person filming all of us, has never been anything but a very rare occurrence. So, we cheated. We used an effect, that basically mimics that. Why? WHY? Well, again, it gives the air of authenticity.. It LOOKS like it’s being filmed almost mockumentary style, and so makes it feel less ‘produced’ and more ‘look what we happened to catch on camera!’. Authenticity lends to realism, realism to belief, belief being that ever slight step towards those real life funny videos and hopefully, some magic. 

Arms