This is our studios first OGR for the collaboration project.
Credit to Ren and Kate for helping put this together.
Credit to Ren and Kate for helping put this together.
Collab OGR 1 by Victor Njue on Scribd
OGR
Collaboration OGR: "The wrong response to: Life"
1 Comments
Overall, I like this idea. It’s fun a good topic to base a series of comedy around. However, I’m a little confused by your skits. Occasionally, by what’s happening in them (the comedy) but mainly by how the skits don’t evenly progress across the characters lifespan. Currently, you have…
ReplyDeleteSkit 1 – Womb
Skit 2 – Father at birth
Skit 3 – Vaccination
Skit 4 – Young adult
Skit 5 – Death
Skit 6 – Heaven
Skit’s 1 and 2 are part of the same skit. Skit 3 is very close to 1 and 2 in terms of age (or at least it reads that way). Skit 4 seems like you’ve gone off on a ‘tangent’. Skit 5 is a big jump in time and skit 6 seems like and addendum to 5. You should start with an even ‘time’ structure and built skits around it. Simply put, use evenly spaced ‘stereotypical life events’ so that an audience will immediately understand the jumps in time. Then you can play (wrong response/comedy) with each event by subverting the audience’s expectations. If you ‘unevenly jump’ in time or go ‘off topic’ it will confuse the audience and your skits will needs to work twice as hard to make sense as a full short. A more recognisable structure could be…
Skit 1 – Birth
Skit 2 – Young child
Skit 3 – Teen
Skit 4 – Getting Married
Skit 5 – Having a child / Parenthood
Skit 6 – Retirement / Old Age
Skit 7 – Death
Next look at the events in relation to your character (internal qualities at that age) and again, play with the stereotypes.
Skit 1 – Birth (wait, what, who am I?)
Skit 2 – Young child (naughty and curious)
Skit 3 – Teen (awkward and geeky)
Skit 4 – Getting Married (happy, hopeful, and confident)
Skit 5 – Having a child/children (extremely nervous and stressed)
Skit 6 – Retirement / Old Age (exhausted and over it)
Skit 7 – Death (peace at last)
You may also want to consider a partner for Kyle that is with him throughout, or at least from teem onwards. His girlfriend that becomes his wife, the mother of his children, etc. That way he becomes more endearing. Even though he has given the wrong response to everything, he managed to ‘have a life’ regardless.
In terms of the character designs, this changes things a little so you will need to rethink/reject a few of your designs (the lovers etc). You can always base your characters around celebrities, film characters, or friends to help you understand the qualities you need and what it means in terms of comedy performance.
With that in mind, I’d recommend thinking about the logic of your world in relation to character design. For example, seeing inside a womb, death as a character, being in Heaven, needles stuck into a child, are all ‘tonal logic’ choices. I am not saying you have done anything wrong by choosing them, but it is importing to understand your world rules and be consistent when using them. Particularly, making sure that you are not relying on ‘visual tricks/settings’ for comedy over character performance.
Anyway, give this some thought and upload new/adapted ideas for your skits. For example, skit 2 (Kyle’s father) could become Kyle during parenthood. For example, may be he is so happy about becoming a father he has been celebrating…now drunk (cigar in mouth) he offers his wife flowers in her hospital bed…’huc, hum – a cough’…’the person in the bed is not his wife, she is on the other side of the room’…’Kyle stumbles across the room’….just as the audience thinks he’s going to give the flowers to his wife, he offers the flowers to the nurse, puts the cigar in the babies mouth, and falls asleep on his wife’s lap. You could do a similar skit around fainting/light-headedness instead of drunkenness.
Hope this makes sense.