Humor

In our English class, we spent a month learning about different comedic techniques and studying different comedic works such as The Importance of Being Earnest, Rhinoceros, and Slaughterhouse-Five. Then, we got the opportunity to test our own comedic skills by creating a humor project of our own. I worked with my friend Elisa F.H. to make a video satirizing YouTube pranksters, whom we find very annoying.

Process

My Adobe Premiere Pro Interface

Script

Dugar_Akhand-Fong-Hirschfelder_Elisa-Humor-Script

Influences

One of the humorists who inspired us for this project is Cody Ko, a youtube filmmaker specializing in commentary and parodies. For this project, his video “Bad Tik Tok Pranksters” informed us of the obnoxious pranksters on social media and motivated us to make our own statement on their idiotic behavior. Ko opens up his commentary video by imitating the subjects of his critique, troublesome Tik Tok pranksters, demonstrating exaggerism. His energetic, loud and overblown imitation is used to poke fun at the pranksters’ unlikeable personalities, to which the audience may find comedic. Throughout the video, Ko continues to imitate specific ill-mannered Tik Tok stars in a satirical manner, assuming their personalities and scripting conversations in the way he imagines them to speak (this is an example of caricature). In addition, Ko analyzes the intent behind the farces as well as their long-lasting effects, pointing out their failed attempts at comedy. This meta-form of comedy (comedian critiquing another comedian in a witty manner) allows for his audience to form their own opinions both on the subject critiqued and the critiquer, allowing for maximum moments of humor. At the end of his video, Ko ventures out into the public in order to conduct practical jokes himself, though with a twist— he pranks strangers “respectfully”. He imitates (parody) the Tik Tok pranksters in character, film, and editing style, through harmless interactions with others, putting a positive spin on the negative topic of his commentary.

In his video, Cody Ko’s main goal as a humorist is to enlighten his audience on the rise of obnoxious Tik Tok pranksters, ridicule them for their behavior, and put a positive spin on the situation as a whole through parody. Though our intent as humorists may not be as elaborate, we plan on making a similar statement on the absurdity of these pranksters with our project. As Ko exhibited in his commentary video, we plan on using exaggerism, caricature, and practical jokes in order to depict the stupidity of the pranksters. Using exaggerism, our main character (prankster) will display over-the-top characteristics of young youtubers.