Physical comedy gifs 5

This is the Avengers movie I’d really like to see.

CaptA

Want to be funny? Play it serious.

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I love it when clothing pops off.

hatFlies

The title of this is: “ow-my-roids”

ow-my-roids

This guy totally falls into the trap.

tray-wizard

Excerpts from Too Funny for Words, part 3

This is the final installment of excerpts from the book Too Funny for Words by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas.   The second half of the book is virtually all pictures.  These remaining quotes all stand on their own with no explanation needed.

Walt was always intrigued by a performance that had carefully displayed gestures and expressions or was enriched by the use of perfect timing that gave texture and excitement to the movements. He particularly appreciated actions that were comic in themselves and the extended routines based on a single idea.
Those elements were all evident in the vaudeville acts he had seen – acts like “Willie, West, and McGinty” where three serious carpenters work on a house, and saw hammer , paint, and move materials about in a beautifully choreographed routine of split-second timing and improbable events. The act was based on expectations and surprises, with disasters miraculously avoided time and again, then suddenly striking when least expected.
The audience gasped in disbelief, rose in their seats in anticipation, and were convulsed with uncontrollable laughter. The carpenters were neither dumb nor inept and seemed to be unaware of the potential calamities surrounding them. This of course, added to the humor. Anytime the audiences understand a situation better than the characters on the stage, they either become terribly bored, or terribly involved, developing in the latter case a concern that insures and emotional response as the story unfolds. Producing this involvement is the first and most important step the actor must master if he is to succeed. The second step probably should be the elimination of that possibility for boredom.
… If Walt had not had vaudeville as a model, had not seen these examples, had not been aware of the possibilities, he would have settled for less without ever knowing such a potential existed.

There is always a still-better way to show the situation and the characters, and the artist will keep searching for it.

If it is funny, stay with it. Add more gags, stretch out the humor, squeeze every last ounce of entertainment out of the predicament before leaving it.

There are several ways a gag can be inappropriate. It might be something a certain personality should never do, or it might slow the progress of the story by being too long or over developed. It could also be misleading or confusing, or even repulsive to certain segments of the audience. A pie thrown in the face was excellent for Donald Duck or for any other officious unfeeling character, but it would not have been right for Cinderella.

Once a storyman showed an ability to create his funniest gags for one of these stars, he was pegged the same way.  In time, each of our famous characters had his own gag writers,  just like the live comedians of the day, and a complete team from director to animator developed material to insure that the star would remain popular.

Dave Hand, our supervising director, warned us that an audience could be easiliy confused and that we should go to any length to prepare them for the gag we were going to use. This was called “anticipation.” Aways be sure that what you are doing is perfectly clear to everybody then prepare them for what is going to happen next. It is also called “Ssetting up a gag.” Young animators, often too eager, are apt to give away the gag before anyone is ready, thereby creating a bit of action that is neither funny nor clear.

Walt helped us to observe by demonstrating in his own acting the mannerisms that reveal personality, the little movements that show a person is feeling, the special reactions that make an individual sympathetic, belligerent or even humorous. He gave examples from famous comedians and pointed out what circus clowns do to hold the crowd’s interest and to make them laugh. An important part of the act is the performers slow, blank, helpless look at the audience, sharing his inner feelings with them.

Norm, “Fergy” Ferguson had grown up watching the best vaudeville in New York and knew how a look at the audience should be animated. When he drew the scenes of Pluto entangled in the flypaper (Playful Pluto, 1934) the hapless dog revealed his whole range of emotions through looks, simple expressions, and strong acting. The audience understood and responded with sustained laughs. The character did not have to make a funny face when his sincere reaction to a situation was so strongly communicated.

Walt enjoyed this spirit of rivalry and often cast story men of opposing viewpoints to work on the same assignment. He felt that they would each try harder to prove that their version of the material was the better.   As he often said, “If I have two men who agree all the time, I only need one of them.”

If the build-up to a gag or special scene goes on too long or is too heavy handed, the humor will lose it’s freshness and fail to deliver the expected laugh.   The intrusion of actions that do not really fit the situation will make the whole continuity lag and seem tedious. Too many gags in a row, no matter how funny, can spoil the pacing of a well planned sequence.

There is a strong humor in the laugh that comes as a release from tension, but the humor relies almost entirely on the build up of anxiety that precedes the sudden switch to unexpected gentleness. A gag can even come in the middle of a tense situation and seem funnier because of the overall excitement.

Too Funny for Words – excerpts, part 2

Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston break down Disney sight gags into 8 categories.   One good reason to buy the book is the large number of pictorial examples. Each type of gag gets it’s own chapter to further describe them.

DISNEY SIGHT GAG CATEGORIES

1.  THE SPOT GAG:  The spot gag is the simplest and easiest to write.  It is the isolated, single joke, the funny visual event that is complete in itself.  It needs no introduction and no climax for an ending.  It fills a spot in the continuity, or the character’s performance, without effecting the story.

The illustrated example: A dachsund forming it’s body into steps for Mickey Mouse to board an airplane.

2. THE RUNNING GAG:  A running gag is one that occurs several times throughout a picture, becoming funnier through repetition rather than through any development.  3. The gag that builds.

The illustrated example: In “The Band Concert”  Donald Duck repeatedly pulls a fife out of a pocket, despite the other band members trying to stop his playing.

3. THE GAG THAT BUILDS.  In contrast to the isolated spot gag or the repetition in the running gag, the gag-that-builds is made up of a series of gags that increase in intensitiy.  Starting with a comic situation, individual gags relating to the  same circumstance are carefully added, each becoming wilder and funnier until a climactic event crowns a complete routine.

The illustrated example:  The Big Bad Wolf gets run through a “wolf pacifier” machine that ends with him being shot out of a cannon.

4.  THE ACTION GAG.  Unlike the spot gag, which focuses on a single event, the action gag is based on timing and the unique way a character moves.  An action gag … is concerned less with what the gag is, then how it is performed.  It requires entertaining actions and comic movements.

The illustrated example: Goofy trying to be a hurdler, and tripping over the hurdles.  Tripping over hurdles is not funny in itself, but how Goofy does it makes it ridiculous.

5. THE TABLEAU GAG is a held picture at the end of an action, in which the character is left with a ridiculous appearance due to some foreign substance or object having been placed on, around, over, or in his face or figure.

The illustrated example:  Donald Duck gets beard and hat that makes him look like a Russian cossack.

6.  THE INANIMATE CHARACTER GAG comes from the humor in giving an object or machine a personality that cleverly fits both it’s appearance and it’s function.  Walt felt that everything in the world might have a personality if only it could be brought to life in human terms.

The illustrated example: A steamshovel head becomes a momentary character with eyes and mouth.

7.  THE FUNNTY DRAWING is special to animation.  Perhaps it could be compared to the clown makeup of a live performer, or a ridiculous costume, or anything that gives someone a laughable appearance.  In animated films it is the drawing itself that makes the gag funnier.

The illlustrated example: In the Jungle Book, an elephant is using his trunk like a trumpet, another elephant squeezes it, causing him to inflate a little before it goes limp.

8.  SPECIALIZED GAGS.  The color gag, which was based on the accepted role of various hues in creating emotional responses, and the effects gag, which made fantasy available through the careful and precise rendering of everything from fire and smoke to a swarm of disgruntled hornets.   Finally there is the surprise gag, which many consider to contain the most important element of any gag, since interest and expectation are added to even the most mundane situations.  Actually, a fresh new method of performing any action has to be a surprise to the audience by definition, ad the gag that is presented with this element startles them into an impulsive laugh by introducing the unexpected.  In fact, preparing the audience for a more traditional occurrence is the best way of surprising them with the unforeseen gag.  It is so consistently used with the rewarding results that it could be listed here as the eighth primary source of humor in our films.

The illustrated example:  Pinocchio with finger on fire.

 

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