Forms and Conventions of the 'Dark Comedy' Genre

The main genre for my short film is Comedy, although it is not an obvious comedy and can be categorised as 'dark comedy'.

My film will revolve around one main character which is an inanimate object such as a skateboard, the abandonment of this object by it's human friends will lead to it's resort to a life of crime, drugs and alcohol abuse and eventual suicide.

The friendship between the human and skateboard will be represented similarly to in films such as 'I love you man' and 'stepbrothers' in a comedic way by making use of editing to synchronize shots with feel good music.

 Films I will analyse that are similar in genre are:

• get off my land
• rubber
• rushmore

I define my target genre as a dark comedy that will question and intimidate the audience, the film will include metaphorical situations where the audience will question whether they should laugh or not and the use of editing and mise en scene will be create humour but the metaphor itself is quite serious and dark.

Typical conventions used by films of this genre are breaking the 'rule of thirds' by placing characters in the centre of the screen to intimidate or make the audience feel uncomfortable. Awkward silences and long pauses also do this effectively and the actors being completely serious throughout the film does this as well, typical comedy dialogue such as sarcasm and jokes/punch lines are very rarely used in these films.

The hermeneutic and proairetic codes apply to most short films.

Hermeneutic Code - This refers to elements of the story not being explained, thus creating questions and mysteries to the audience. This could also work to make the audience uncomfortable and make the comedy less obvious to the audience.

Proairetic Code - The building of tension to keep the viewer guessing what will happen next

Barthes described them as:

"...dependent on ... two sequential codes: the revelation of truth and the coordination of the actions represented: there is the same constraint in the gradual order of melody and in the equally gradual order of the narrative sequence."

http://changingminds.org/disciplines/storytelling/articles/barthes_five_codes.htm

Historical influences such as Cinema Pur convey techniques to communicate with the viewer which could be used in my short film such as distorted images and tilted camera angles which make it harder for the viewer to watch and they will be less comfortable which is what I want for this film.

My short film will aim to use these conventions in order to make the viewer uncomfortable and distort the comedic factors of the film in order to make the viewer think more.