Humor

Introduction

The goal of the Humor unit was to explore and practice doing comedy. I got to learn about the different comedic techniques that people use and it’s important to understand why we find certain things funny and other things not. The thing that I value about the project is that it’s laid back and people have the choice to do whatever kind of comedy they wish. It’s a good way to fun and also to practice speaking and performing in front of others.

Proposal

Humorist Study

Although neither of these two are professional comedians, both these people are good at drawing in their audience and keep them engaged in what they’re doing. These are people who run their own YouTube channels, TheOdd1sOut (or James) and Overly Sarcastic Productions (There are two people who run the channel, but I’m only focusing on one of them, Red). Both of these channels are widely popular on the platform for similar, yet also different reason. TheOdd1sOut focuses on recalling stories that happened in his past, while Overly Sarcastic Productions focuses on telling stories about ancient myths and legends known all across the world. Two things they share in common is that they are both animation YouTubers and both add comedy to their stories to make their videos more entertaining. Both of these channels first appealed to me because of their unique animation styles, but as I began to watch more and more of their videos, I also began to enjoy the way they used comedy in their animated videos and how their personalities contributed to their comedy. I learned that they actually share a lot of comedic techniques with one another, such as puns, anecdotes, caricatures (since they’re both animators), and defusing anxiety. Actually, a lot of popular animation story-time channels use these comedic techniques, not just these two. It’s not just their animation that helps them get noticed. There’s actually been situations where other animators would be accused of being “ripoffs” of other popular animators simply because they don’t have as many subscribers, whether that be because of their style of storytelling or animation, but the fact is that there are trends to explain why certain channels are as popular as they are. These other animators are simply using similar comedic techniques in their videos, but that doesn’t make them ripoffs of the first animation channels.

There are also things that are unique to both channels. For example, in one of her videos explaining the epic poem, Paradise Lost, Red makes an offhand comment in the video using shifting point of view. She made a comment on the main character of the story, Satan, and how he “dramatically begins to rally his fallen comrades (no pun intended) in a dramatic, heart-felt, and rousing speech that touched hearts around the world and should never be forgotten. And neither should the fact that it was being said by SATAN.” In the same video a little later, she also integrates some incongruity, first starting with, “Now this is where Satan abruptly lapses into brooding self-pity, pondering how the true hell is the misery he brings with him–” before promptly breaking from the story as the narrator to tell Satan, “Wow, you know, that sounds like a much easier problem to solve than actually being in Hell. Have you considered yoga?” Actually, Red often has a habit of breaking from the story to mention something related to the story or to converse with one of the characters in the story in a comedic manner. On the other hand, James uses a lot more situational humor. Red only occasionally uses this technique if the characters in the myths and legends she’s telling can be related to (which isn’t always the case), but since James’ story all come from actual experiences (or are jokes on actual experiences that other people had), they’re a lot more easier to relate to for his audience. An example of this would be in his Wrong Numbers video where he says, “Now, I’ve had friends tell me that they don’t answer the phone to any number they don’t recognize, but my anxiety won’t let me.” He goes off several possible reasons as to why, like if your bank calling to tell you your account got hacked or if it was your grandma, and then we adds at the end, “Or what if it’s your Nigerian uncle who wants to give you his collection of gold bars and needs your information for a wire transfer? You just never know, so I always pick up the phone.” Now, of course, something like that wouldn’t happen to someone in an ordinary situation, but it’s a joke on the well-known email scam that came from Nigerian sender who claimed he was an important figure. It’s not that the joke is relatable, but that everyone knows about it, and that’s what makes it funny.

In conclusion, I always knew that I liked these two channels for reasons other than just their animation (since that isn’t always enough for story-time channels). It’s the personality and comedy that both these people, James and Red, bring to their videos that truly make them very engaging to watch, and that makes me appreciate them even more.

In my project, I will most likely be using a lot of the same comedic techniques that I mentioned earlier, including puns, caricatures, and defusing anxiety. As stated above, many of those comedic techniques are used by story-time animators because they have been shown to be effective in helping them relate to and grow their audience, so it’s not surprising that I will be attempting to mimic that similar style to appeal to my audience. However, my style of comedy will be more like James’ rather than Red’s, since I will be narrating a story from my life rather than from a popular myth or legend.

Humorist Reflection

In a way, my whole video will be an anecdote, since I will be telling a brief, amusing story from my past and the important takeaway I learned from that moment in my life. The story I will tell centers around a song, “Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed.” It is a common song that many children learn about when they’re young, although my video will be focusing more on how I learned this song the hard way.

Then there is the caricature part, which will be fairly easy to include, since I will be doing an animated video. There will be parts of the video where my character or objects will be exaggerated for comedic effect. For example, when I say, “[I made] stupid decisions that I remember to this day because your brain kinda does this thing where it remembers things that make you question how you made it through your life thus far without dying…” then a drawing of a brain appears besides my character and emphasizes my point by having a speech bubble that reads, “Remember that time in 7th grade?” The drawings may also become scaled or stretched in or out, which is also a joke on the techniques I’ve learned in animation (the animation principles), thus utilizing the medium in which I am making my comedic narrative.

I will also include a very brief use of black humor in my video, as well as defusing anxiety. For the first part, when talking about the history of the song, I state that, “I actually learned a lot about the history of the song, like how the monkeys might have originally been stand-ins for African-Americans, but that’s not important right now.” It’s a brief mention of the serious topic of racism in the past, but then the direction quickly returns back to the main purpose of my video, which is to tell a story from my childhood.

What My Project Is About

I decided to do an animated comedic narrative, similar to the animation story time videos that have become popular on YouTube. I will use Pro Tools to record myself, Paint Tool Sai for making the drawings, and After Effects to edit everything together.

Script

Hi there, welcome to my comedic narrative. On today’s one and only episode, I will be telling you guys a funny story from my childhood. Well, I think it’s funny, you might not… I’ve only got five minutes to get through this, guys, so let’s just start.

There was a story many of us heard when we were children. Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed. I promise this video will get more interesting soon, but we gotta get through some context first. For those of you who never learned this song in kindergarten, allow me to enlighten you. So there are five monkeys and they’re all jumping on the bed (wow, what a shock), and one by one, each one falls off and hurt themselves. The doctor tells them to stop but they don’t stop ‘cause… I don’t know, beats me. And the song repeats like that five times.

When making this video, I actually learned a lot about the history of the song, like how the monkeys might have originally been stand-ins for… *cough* But that’s not important right now. I’m just here to tell you why this song (and not whatever racist undertones it may have had) is relevant to a situation that I experienced.

Oh, and by the way, for the purposes of this video, all the characters will be represented as beach balls (*whispers* because they’re easy to draw). Let’s flashback to when I was about five years old. So I… was a stupid child, as many children are, making stupid decisions that I remember to this day because your brain kinda does this thing where it remembers things that make you question how you made it through your life thus far without dying instead of remembering that one math formula you need for your final (*whispers* you had one job).

So anyways, one day, my sister and I were goofing around, just having fun, and I had the brilliant idea to start jumping on my parents’ bed. What could possibly go wrong–Everything… The answer is everything.

So, we’re jumping on the bed, and everything is fun at first, but then, for whatever reason, I decide to jump off the bed, but being the uncoordinated beach ball that I am, I end up slamming my face into the corner of the desk, which cut my eyebrow open.

So my parents come rushing in because their parent senses were telling them that their child has just done something stupid–or it could have been me screaming at the top of my lungs, who knows? When they said we had to go to the hospital, I tried to play it off like that I wasn’t in agonizing pain. Like psshhh–What are you talking about? I’m just bleeding profusely from my eyebrow, I’m fineeeeeeeeee.

They take me to the hospital anyways, and I remember freaking out the doctor said that I would be getting stitches. I don’t really remember what happened next. Either I passed out from blood loss, or the doctors gave me anesthesia so they could start operating on me, and when I woke up again, I was completely fine. Like actually fine, not just… pretending. My eyebrow was all stitched up, and I’m not sure if my little child brain could fully process what happened to me, but the important thing was that I didn’t die and also learned an valuable lesson.

No more monkeys jumping on the bed.

Until a few months later when my sister and I were jumping on the couch, my sister fell off and broke her arm. We’re so great at learning from our mistakes.

Oh, and by the way, this is a video I’m making for my English project (don’t ask), so if any other random person on the interweb happens to stumble upon this video, this is probably the only video I will ever make. I mean, it’s not like I’m going to make a career out of this.

Performance

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