Mobile is a great short film directed by Verena Fels.
It’s simple, short, and funny. The characters are super appealing. I am particularly fond of short stories that wrap up nicely. Of course, I am attracted by the non verbal nature of the comedy.
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How To Make Your Writing Funnier.
I stumbled across this nice animated Ted-Ed video about writing comedy by Cheri Steinkeller. She briefly mentions Commedia Dell’arte, and the archetypes of comedy. I have an entire chapter on comedic archetypes in my book, and they are all explained with live and animated examples. If you like this video, you’ll get a lot out of Comedy for Animators.
How to make a slapstick movie: From an Aardman animator
Bram Ttwheam is an animator and visual effects supervisor for Aardman Animation, and he produces idents for The Bristol Silents Slapstick Festival which is held annually in Bristol, England. It is a festival I would love to attend. The festival has a blog where I found this fun short film he created to show his process.
Here is last years ident:
Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius
Recently, it was announced that Cinesite would start making feature animated films based on Harold Lloyd’s silent film character. The whole purpose of this blog and my book is to teach animators about the art of physical comedy as practiced by the masters. Harold Lloyd was not as naturally talented as Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin, but he made up for that by hard work. He once said:
All the comedians of my day, had to be students of comedy. You studied comedy. It just didn’t happen, believe me.
To enlighten young animators about Harold Lloyd, here are YouTube videos for the entire PBS American Masters program about Harold.
Jerry Lewis as Ernie Kovacs
Here is a trailer for the Jerry Lewis film “The Bell Boy”. First I include the introduction by “Rolko52” the person who posted the clip. It’s a interesting view on what might have been going on behind the scenes.
[From “Kovacs Corner” on YouTube.com] – Consciously or not on Jerry Lewis’ part, I have an opinion that his 1960 film “The Bellboy” was shot at least in part as a response to Ernie’s award winning half hour television special “The Silent Show” which featured his character “Eugene”. If you analyze some the events surrounding Ernie and Jerry around that time, it bears some consideration. On January 19, 1957, the NBC Television Network offered Jerry ninety minutes for a one time special program. Lewis had just broken up his partnership with Dean Martin and the network thought that it would be a great opportunity to showcase his comedy as a solo act. Jerry agreed but he wanted only sixty of those minutes. That left a half hour AFTER the Lewis special that nobody wanted…except Ernie. It was reported that when Kovacs came back to NBC with an outline of the show, they were shocked beyond disbelief. During the show’s rehearsals, the network executives made such disparaging remarks to Ernie that at one point he threatened to walk off the show and force them to run the backup program – a filmed western episode. This event may have severed Ernie’s professional relationship with NBC Television, as he subsequently made a deal and brought his projects to ABC. His wife Edie Adams was reported to have said that this event prompted him to write his novel “Zoomar” which is a satire surrounding the television industry. If you analyze “The Bellboy” you will see many similarities with Eugene. First, the bellboy character is silent throughout the movie…an indirect nod to the Kovacs character. Secondly, the film essentially has no storyline. It is simply a sequence of comedy “bits”. Jerry’s professed homage to Laurel and Hardy with this film would belie that statement as L&H shorts and feature films did indeed possess a fleshed out story. Lastly, the bellboy character essentially possesses the same attributes as Eugene…breaking the “fourth wall”, bending time and space, the musical references, and using the medium’s technology to drive the comedy. After “The Silent Show” airing, Ernie received critical acclaim from the newspapers and won the Sylvania Award for 1957. Anyone who has watched Jerry on his telethons or in interviews could reasonably assume that this would not sit well with his ego. I am sure that he expected to make the big splash with the audience and critics but it tuned out that the “throwaway” half hour from Ernie Kovacs garnered the publicity and award. In fact, so much good ink was generated that Ernie was subsequently featured on the cover of Life Magazine and he was offered his first Hollywood movie role in “Operation Mad Ball” by Columbia Pictures.