7Teen Comedy - Genre

By Danielle Rippengill

The history of comedyComedy genre has been one of the longest lasting genres in film, most of the early silent films were comical and most had a happy ending to them. The main four famous people who did comical silent films are....

Charlie ChaplinLaurel and Hardy Buster Kean

Here is a film that I found which has all four of these actors in,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWRuSYPXLE0&feature=related

Silent films didn't have any dialog they mainly used sound effects to emphasise the funny action and an orchestra to fit with the mood, if they needed any words to represent dialog they would insert black frames with white printing on them between shots or scenes.

COMICAL SILENT FILMS HAVE..

Music to fit the emotion

No DialogueSound effects to fit the movement

Slides with words on

Stock charactersOver exaggerated

movements and facial

expressions

…Will be using many of these ideas

The history of Teen comedyThe teen movie came of age in 50s America, not long after the concept of the teenager was born. The idea of an intermediate stage between childhood and adulthood, with its own peculiar characteristics.

Some of the first films aimed at teens are Rock Around The Clock, The wild One and Beach Party.

Now a days the films aimed at teenagers cross over genres to maintain the audiences but also attract a wider range of the audience here are some examples;

Teen Comedies usually have the stereo typical characters, theirs always a good looking one, geeky one, popular one and they always stereo

people in social groups e.g. Goth/Chav

TEEN FILMS HAVE..

The popular kid who everyone likes

The really geeky characterPotential love story

Usually a high school setting

A really stupid character

Similar narratives

…We include many of these

Monday morning MadnessOur short film is going to be aimed at teens and from my research we will be including the usual conventions which are:

Opposite characters• Charlotte, the young girl will be a geek who revises all the time.

• Joe, the young boy will be the stupid, ditsy one who doesn't care about school.

Our setting will be at a high school, in an exam hall…

As some points of our short film will not have much dialogue we have music in the background to fill in for this which will reflect the characters for example; Joe will have more of a rock music background and Charlottes will be much more peaceful.

As this will be where most of our actions takes once they have got to school…

Monday Morning Madness Two show the difference between the two characters we will have there bedrooms completely different t show the opposites between them

Messy roomTidy room

From using the ideas of silent comical films which Laurel and Hardy starred in along with Charlie Chaplin and Buster Kean we will use little dialogue and more music and sound effects to emphasise the action that is taking place.

From using these ideas we will be able to hit our target audience which are the teenagers and hit the genre which is comical.

The ideas from the slapstick videos we are going to use, when the characters are trying to get to school we will put in place things that go wrong for example… they will tread in dog poo, have a flat tire, tread in a puddle etc.

Bibliography

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbYupwm831k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LepPGcEnDw

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/mar/22/teen-movies-history-superbad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNpoTxeydiY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd-s5wBIUdw&feature=related