Contextual Studies: Sit-Coms

Sit-Coms

(Thursday 10th November)

Today’s lecture focused on Sit-coms, or Situation Comedy, and looking at how they are structured, filmed and produced. Typically, the shows are formatted in two different ways:

• Traditional - Recorded in a studio setting with a live audience ("live" edit), using multiple cameras and high key, uniform lighting.
• Location - Usually recorded on one camera, so more of an emphasis on post-production. No laugh track / canned laughter.

For example:

Traditional:

Location:

The plot of a Sit-Com often follows a similar formula to its plot, moving in a circular motion as detailed by:

Basic Sit-Com model

1. A character is in a zone of comfort,

2. But they want something.
3. They enter an unfamiliar situation,
4. Adapt to it,
5. Get what they wanted,
6. Pay a heavy price for it,
7. Then return to their familiar situation,
8. Having changed

We also looked at characters of comedy, going through the ideas of Archetypes and Stereotypes:

• Rebel - aggressive humour, sarcasm
• Fool - one-liners, usually offering visual humour
• Authority Figure - attempts to restore control, often creating clashes between other characters and creating a catalyst for humour
• Libertine - playful, hypersexual

ID - Emotional / Instinctual

SUPER EGO - Rules / Social
Convention

EGO - Mediator / Balance

These character types quite often fall into Freudian personality types, perhaps making them more relateable to an audience - but more importantly allowing the different characters to clash and the story to progress.

However, comedy has branched off into different sub-genres, including:

• Mockumentary - a comedic television programme taking the form of a fictional documentary
• Parody - makes an original work through comedic imitation
• Satire - similar to parody, but more angry and often with political intent
• Spoof - poking fun at a genre / style
• Physical - reliant on slapstick and comic violence
• Farce - highly improbable narrative situations and coincidences exaggerated by physical behaviour
• Black Comedy - a twist on farce, black comedy uses taboo topics (such as death, sex and violence) to create its humour