A JOKE WALKS INTO A FIST… WAIT, THAT’S THE PUNCHLINE
Written by Mark Brennan
Short comedy is one of the toughest nuts to crack in the short film world. Unlike any other genre, you get immediate feedback from the audience in the form of laughter - or lack of! Plus, not everyone can tell a joke the same way not everyone can take one.
In shorts there tends to be two types of comedy that do well on the festival circuit; comedy films and comedy sketches. They may sound similar but are far from it. What’s the difference and why do they work?
If there’s one thing festival programmers love, it’s finding a fun, punchy, gag-laden short film in their submission pile. There will always be a stream of gritty, worthy dramas dealing with a host of hard-hitting topics in new and unflinching ways, but while they are in never-ending supply, well-executed, short comedies are far harder to come by.
One reason for that might simply be that in order to be taken seriously as a filmmaker, new filmmakers feel they need to be making serious films. There are just more people making drama, which makes sense as everyone can relate to dark and emotional times but not everyone can land a punchline with the power of Muhammad Ali in his prime.
That said, even in the world of comedy shorts there can be competing ideas at work. What makes a comedy a short film or a sketch? What’s the difference between the two? Why will one tickle a programmer’s fancy but perhaps not the other? Which one will get you festival selections and which one will go viral on social media? Well, let’s start with the basics thanks to comedy writer-director Natalie Malla; sketch versus short.
Natalie Malla directing The Girl In The Dress (Photo by Manuel Guerra)
“The difference between a short comedy film and a comedy sketch is story. A comedy short still needs to adhere to an expected storytelling structure, meaning it needs a beginning, middle and end and ideally your protagonist should go on a journey and be somehow changed by the end of the film. Sketches are generally one scene, set in one place and there is no emotional journey or growth required for your characters as you are essentially exploring one heightened hilarious situation, or setting up a joke that builds to an hilarious punchline or twist.”
So when it comes to creating her own short films, which have included Killing Thyme starring Charlotte Riley and Succession’s iconic Brian Cox, how does Natalie approach both writing and directing?
Brian Cox in Killing Thyme
“When writing short comedy films, I usually start with something personal, something that’s happened, something I’m feeling, something I’ve been hearing a lot about recently that intrigues me, then I start to craft a fiction and push it to its extremes for comedy, while at the same time thinking about what I really want to say as I do prefer to write a comedy that has a message hidden deep within the laughter.”
“Killing Thyme is about two lonely people finding friendship in an unlikely place, The Girl In The Dress is about a woman so scared of being alone that she makes a desperate attempt to get her ex back and Crush Hour is about two people so afraid of putting themselves out there, that they miss a real opportunity for love and connection. Turns out I have a natural preoccupation with loneliness, which you might think wouldn’t work that well for comedy, but apparently, there’s a fine line between tragedy and comedy so I’m making it work…”
Crush Hour
“One consideration I learnt early on (when I was sitting in a screening of my first short comedy and there was deafening silence for the first five minutes) would be to put a big joke right up top so people immediately know it's a comedy and it's not just ok to laugh, but encouraged.
“When directing short comedy films, I know it sounds obvious, but I always try to cast comedy actors - because it can make a real difference. Comedy actors are naturally hilarious, they can immediately see where the joke is and can heighten the writing with their interpretation even before you’ve given them any direction. They are also usually open to improvising and coming up with ideas for alternative jokes - so I would always try to get in at least one rehearsal a week before the shoot to chat through the script, play around, brainstorm and improvise a little bit if needed. Obviously more can happen in the moment on set, but I do prefer to have the script locked in place first - with joke alternates on hand if required. “
(Poster by Capture)
“Another thing I also consider when gathering my heads of departments is to make sure if I am shooting comedy, that I am hiring a DOP with comedy instincts. I worked with Vanessa Whyte on my short film The Girl In The Dress and she had a fantastic eye for identifying the funny framing or specific camera movements needed to enhance the visual comedy and I didn’t realize quite how important that was until I met her.”
“I think in general you want to surround yourself with heads of department that have comedic instincts and also have the same sense of humour as you. It is also essential that you work with an editor who, again, has the same sense of humour as you and also knows how to cut comedy specifically, because timing is everything and a joke can be made or broken in an edit. So hiring an editor with no comedy instincts can make the edit a real slog.”
When it comes to comedy sketches, Natalie is fresh from Edinburgh where she was one of the writers on an all-female sketch show called The 11% Club produced by Funny Women, Female Pilot Club and Gobby Girls Productions. How did that experience compare to working on short films?
“I had an amazing time working on the comedy sketch show although the sketch writing itself was a bit of a challenge for me as I have never really written sketches before and also never for theatre which was another challenge in itself. I was lucky enough to be working with my comedy writing partner Xara Higgs, which is always easier as you have somebody to bounce ideas off of, to riff with and also to tell you that your joke is rubbish and you need to try harder and be funnier, BEFORE you present your work to anybody else.
“Two of our sketches were quite low concept and real world, because the ideas were born out of actual conversations we'd had with our producer Gina Lyons. So when we first started writing them, they were funny in a quiet, clever (even if I do say so myself) filmic way, but as we heard them read and discussed them and got notes back we realized quickly that they needed to be bigger and bolder and more heightened in order to hold the stage.
“We also realized very quickly how key the final beat was and if you’re gonna make people watch a three page sketch - it better have an absolutely hilarious ‘out’. It was a really collaborative environment though and it was a great place to learn and it was also really interesting working with so many funny women and collaborating on each other’s sketches, offering up alt jokes and really pushing our comedy muscles to their limits to make sure all the sketches were as funny as possible!
The show, produced by Gina Lyons, was created to highlight the very different experiences women have compared to men when trying to work in the world of comedy where only 11% of British sitcoms are written by women. As well as the live show, the hope is to release a female only sketch show on TV or Digital after. The show’s writing was said to be very ‘on point’ by Sally Phillips and even picked up a review on comedy site Chortle.
Producer Gina Lyons
“The reason I set up Gobby Girl Productions is because I had sold two scripts to a very big, successful production company. The Head of Comedy left, and even though the scripts had been with their legal team for 9 months, they then got shelved. And I thought ‘my poor writers’, they’ve been working all that time and then never got a penny, so I set up Gobby Girls as a place to house great scripts with great writers. I’m also pretty un-hireable because all the men who work in comedy don’t hire gobshites from Northampton!”
“The question of sketch versus short film is an interesting one because I made a sketch called Not Sophie’s Choice which was literally a sketch that used to be performed live on stage. There’s probably a bit of a shape to a sketch that differs slightly, it should have three parts; a beginning, middle and then punchline/reveal. A short film can and should play with that shape but I do think a sketch can be a short film, which is a naughty thing to say.”
And how did producing the sketch show for Edinburgh compare to her other comedy projects?
“It’s not that different. We’re still clearing music, editing the script, and changing things all the time. I started in live comedy anyway, I used to direct live stand up; Stephen Bailey, Adam Rowe, Kate Barron. I used to run a night for Graham Norton’s company So Comedy. If anything, live comedy is a bit easier, but the difference is that in the script you can’t go to a pub or an office to film the sketch. You can’t have unlimited props and costumes and things to show the audience, so a lot of the world-building at the start of the sketch has to be told in dialogue. How do we establish that this is a primary school teacher and this is an adult playing a kid, for example? So much of the world has to be built through the dialogue because really it’s just two actors on stage wearing t-shirts.”
And what is it that Lyons looks for when choosing a comedy short to produce?
“Something I can cast up and get some great talent in. That it’s funny, being the obvious one, but you’d be surprised. Quite different. I think shorts are a place to be a bit more experimental, so I do tend to work with newer writers. I love short films, I think they’re brilliant. We should find a way to monetise them, and I’ve said for years the TV should put them on, or there should be an hour-long TV show every week that just showcases shorts because I think people would love them.”
