Codes & Conventions

In order to make a successful comedy short film we wanted to follow the codes and conventions of a comedy film, especially a British comedy as our actors are all British. Due to the size of influence that the American films have on British cinema there are some overlaps with the types of codes and conventions that are portrayed. For example if it is a teen comedy it is often set in a high school while British comedies use the equivalent a secondary school like the ‘Inbetweeners'. We aim to challenge the idea that teen comedies revolve around adolescent sexual adventure and conflicts with authority. Our film aims to challenge this by giving the audience a look into their social lives and the activities that they get up to giving them an insight into their lives making it relatable to young people of the same age.

Comedy films can be split into two categories a comedian-led film that is focused on gags and sketches. This would not be ideal for our film as it would be difficult to portray a storyline that would be easy to follow and short enough to fit into five minutes. The other kind of category would be situation comedy where the jokes are based on the situation and the narrative which how feel would be easier for us to adapt into our short film. For a situation comedy characters are often placed in a strange situation, in which they are uncomfortable because they don’t know how to act or react. We have developed this idea using the traits of our characters to allow them to represent the outgoing personalities of typical teenagers. In teen comedies it is typical for them to be set in high schools in our film we will follow this stereotype to a small extent because while one of the scenes is filmed in a school setting it is because our actors are young students so it is not unusual for them to be there at that time of the day. Sometimes the two categories of comedies can overlap but the ‘pure’ comedy aspect of a film is highly rare so most films become something called reality hybrids such as comedy-horror or comedy-thriller.

Another example of other typical comedic situations of a British sitcom include situations involving ‘social comedy’ a very strong British comedy genre where the humour come from the confusion caused by a clash in cultures found in different social classes.

Humour is created in several ways but the most common in film making is humour by exaggeration this can be easily created from the recognition of stereotypes and challenging them. When the storylines are realistic it is much easier to create humour because it abnormal things become noticeable. As domestic places are much more relatable character comedy can be easily portrayed so we adapted this concept into our film because character comedy is when the humour is in the interactions between one or two of the characters who have strong personalities, not the visual or verbal gags. Many successful television ‘situation comedies’ have a strong central character. In the UK it is often a man who is treated badly by the world, but then deludes himself into thinking that he is important, attractive or clever like ‘Del Boy’ from Only Fools and Horses.