Humor

Introduction

Students were challenged to create a humor project, alone or in a group, inspired by humorists of their choice. Students analyzed two comedians, and identified various comedic tools and strategies professionals used to appeal to their audiences. After the analysis, students were challenged to create their own project, which could range from a live stand-up comedy act, a video, or even a piece of artwork.

The two comedians I chose for my analysis were Ryan Higa and Danny Gonzalez. Both of comedians are Youtubers that I have been watching for years, and I figured I would have an easier time writing about them, as I don’t watch much comedy in general. For the second part, the creation of my own project, I felt quite overwhelmed with choosing a topic. As with many projects, the range of options a student could choose from was very large. Finally, I partnered with one of my friends, Alayna, and we decided to do a video about anime stereotypes and tropes, since both of us love watching anime.

Process

We wrote the script fairly quickly, since the hardest part was choosing a topic. We used our Freestyle DSLR camera to film, and uploaded all the videos to be edited in Premiere Pro.

After we filmed all of our scenes, we edited the final video in Adobe Premiere Pro and we created the title in After Effects.

Premiere Pro Interface

Reflection

The humor project for me was both fun and really stressful. After I had finished the humorist analysis, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do for my project, since it was so open-ended, with the criteria basically being “make it funny”. I feared that my project wouldn’t be funny, I wouldn’t finish, or I would make jokes that no one understood. In the end, however, I think the audience liked our project, and filming was really fun since I collaborated with one of my closest friends. After we had chosen a topic, writing the script didn’t take us very long, and we managed to film all the scenes we needed within 4 hours. Even then, we only barely managed to finish editing it by the deadline, but overall this was a really fun project. All my other classmates in PM 2 were amazing as well, and it was a really fun project to end off Freestyle English with.

Here’s the two eyecatchers or basically “commercial break art” we used in the video. If you get the reference, uh go outside and touch grass.