Genre Conventions-Content: The comedic movie genre is a very simple and right-to-the-point movie genre. It conveys happiness and attempts to be relatable to its audience. For example, if the audience see something they can relate with and fully understand, it will have a more positive impact. These films usually last between 90 and 100 minutes. The directors focus on being relatable with their scenes and hope to get their viewers involved with the scenes.
Genre Conventions-Production Techniques: A very common form of displaying comedy in production is with the use of different camera shots and angles. For example, when a camera is moving closer to the center product of the scene, it's almost always a comedy film. Another example is when cameras are staying still during a scene. The main actor or character of the scene may get off the camera angle, but the camera will stay in place, this allows viewers to understand the comedic sense to things.
Institutional Conventions-Marketing: For marketing purposes, being relatable is once again brought back. As comedy films advertise, they seek to show scenes that their audience can relate to and easily understand. This brings much more success to the films. People watch the films because they saw one short scene and immediately found it funny.
Sample #1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zO5sIm3I9c#action=share
This scene involves the production technique previously talked about. The main actor is showed peeking up out of sight. This and his response gave the film a comedic connotation. When the camera was left still, it gave the film a sort of pause, this pause allowed the audience to comprehend what was going on and this helps make the movie even more comedic.
Sample #2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTmXHvGZiSY&feature=youtu.be
These scene uses a zoom to show comedy. Even though action films may use this shot differently, this film used it in a joking way. They used the zoom to show that the film is just that, a comedy film.
Comedy films that engage with their audience:
- Hot Fuzz
- Airplane
- Superbad
- Dumb and Dumber
- 21 Jump Street
