Introduction

In this unit we studied humor techniques and works, including Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. We then moved on to study humorists of our choosing, and finally developed projects of our own.

Process

When this project was first introduced to me with limitless options, I was unsure of what to make. I considered stand up or maybe even a short skit. I did, in fact, take acting in my first two years of high school, and once you’ve entered theater it can be nearly impossible to drag yourself out.

But then I found a short parody informational video called “What is the Meaning of Teeth.” It seems an overstatement to say this video changed my life. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say it encapsulated it. This video is two minutes and forty seconds of fast paced, surreal, and wildly incorrect facts about teeth. Seriously, I cannot recommend this video enough.

It was after I found that video that I knew I had to made something like it. I wanted the same elements of parody and surrealism. I wanted a narrator that was interesting in how they narrated. So I came up with what would be my end project: a tutorial video on making tutorial videos, with a narrator that is mostly incompetent and spirals to madness as they continue messing up.

As a filmmaker myself, I am very familiar in all the ways someone can mess up a video, so writing the script came quite easily. I just had to channel the past two years of frustration and failure. They were more than happy to make themselves present in my mind.

Final Product

Reflection

I’m incredibly proud of this project. I’ve showed it to all my friends and family and bugged them for their replies. I am of course incapable of sitting through it to watch it myself and I will surely cringe at the mere thought of it several years later, but for now I’m proud of it. I think it’s an original idea with good humor that lands well. I am in fact far too proud of my facial expressions. And the nice thing about purposely making a bad video is that anything I did not do on purpose can be passed off as part of the joke. No, I did not make the camera out of focus on purpose.