6/4/18- Daily Log Blog - The Difficulties of Comedy Writing

Today in class we continued working on our narrative project. At the beginning of class, Mr. Rivers officially introduced the press release, which is a 400-500 writing to the press to hype up your narrative. It is a mirror on the query letter at the beginning- you look back on what you did in your narrative and persuade a reader to watch it. It is also important that you specify an audience (not just "everyone") and that you include a link to your completed work.

I'm not at the press release stage of my process yet. For my narrative project I decided to write a 15 page minimum screenplay without any filming or editing. My story is a mockumentary-style comedy on a silly adventurer who sucks at survival, reading maps, and saving his damsel in distress. Through writing my story, I've realized how hard it is for me to write specifics. I'm really good and coming up with a funny story concept and general plot, but after I did my outline, I struggled to come-up with funny or witty dialogue. The situation was funny, from a theoretical standpoint at least, but the character does not have as much personality as I imagined, and was therefore not as funny in their delivery reading it out loud. Revisiting and editing make it better, but in the end its never quite as good as the image in my head.

I based the style of my narrative on mockumentary skits like Jimmy Kimmel's "The Baby Bachelorette," and on TV shows like "The Office." They, of course, have a lot more flexibility on the filming and editing levels, and more money/resources. Writers still have to come up with the funny situations and dialogue, but a lot of the humor comes from the personalities of the actors themselves. If an actor has a certain manner, or does/says something funny while filming, editors have some freedom to tweak the original script and include it.