Comedy, the things you should know.

First thing I'm going to warn you about is that when you start learning comedy theory you will start appreciating jokes less as your head becomes programmed to look out for the punch line rather than enjoy it. Programs like the big bang theory and two and a half men will lose all of their humour (because you look for the joke and there isn’t one just canned laughter). Like frogs, comedy dies when dissected.

Now there is no formula for how to write a joke, there are however formula’s that help discern if a joke is funny. I'm going to be touching on a few in this blog at some point but until then you should know humour comes from the release of tension, where in a joke the last few words will alter your perception of the current situation causing a release in tension and people to laugh. Normally a joke will explain a situation and due to a well known cliché that viewpoint will be taken allowing the joke to take another route. For example here’s a joke from Mel Brooks. 

“When I was your age, my parents used to rock me to sleep. The rocks were as big as your head.”

The first sentence is used as the “set up” where it sets up the situation that everyone is familiar with parents rocking a baby to sleep in a crib, however he takes rock in a literal term this change of situation causes humour. Allot of jokes can be put into this category, and if you look at some jokes you can pull apart the "set up" and the "reveal".

Next time I’ll probably do a blog about observational humour, then maybe i'll write a blog about writing jokes.

Videogames, Sitting in the bubble

Videogames to the populace have always been seen like the saw films by people who haven’t seen them, you’d ask someone if they had seen Saw and they’d complain about how horrible it is even though they’d only seen the trailer and have just made a blind guess as to what it’s about and avoid it. This has lead to gamers having the happy little bubble to themselves, until the entire family joined them with release of the Nintendo Wii.

Just to start off here’s a link to an American TV crime drama “Life”:

http://www.gametrailers.com/user-movie/life-prince-of-persia-sequence/150009

Seem weird? It wasn’t when it was made, it was only a few years ago, but videogames have moved into the spotlight with the Nintendo Wii. To most people who’ve played videogames the controller is as easy to use as a TV remote, but to people who haven’t it looks like you’ve taken a keyboard and warped it into a scary “Tardis-like” fashion. The Nintendo worked out how to fix this problem, give them a TV remote. Since its release videogames have been enjoyable to all and casual gamers have become a big section of the market. As a side effect it has forced something together, videogames and family socialising, causing a new awkward

occurrence where the console will be brought downstairs so your aunt & uncle can have a go at tennis and we have to be umpire, explaining that simply waggling won’t get them anywhere yet watching in silent pain as they move from waggling to arm flailing.

But the thing is as bad as people are starting out, people do get better and eventually the family will get bored of "Wii sports" and "Just Dance". Eventually, families will sit around playing “castle crashers” 4 player co-op, all happily in the wonderful bubble of videogames.

 

Well that’s been the first blog, more of a test run really, it’s more going light observational reading than hard hitting philosophical views and hopefully you’ll enjoy reading.