REPORT ON SITCOMS ANT THE COMEDY GENRE
The main purpose of the comedy genre is to make people laugh; comedies can be TV
programs, movies or radio broadcasts. There different types of comedies. The general
comedy involves humor and funny incidents in them; for example, The Hangover is a
typical comedy that just involves humor and funny incidents. A black comedy is a
comedy that involves death and gory violence but it is funny at the same time. A typical
film to describe this is called The Black Sheep. Another type of comedy is called a
Practical comedy, which involves a character pranking someone else to make that
person look foolish which is for the humor of the audience. And an action comedy is a
comedy where the story is action orientated and the main character is sometimes a
stupid character who is predictable in his thoughts and actions, an example of an action
comedy is Johnny English which is one of the funniest British action comedies.
As said before, comedies are also made into TV programs; one of the most common
comedy TV programs is called a Sitcom, which stands for Situation comedy. So Sitcoms
are part of the comedy genre. Also another type of a TV program comedy is called a
lighthearted comedy, which in the program the humor is a lot softer and less of a crazy
atmosphere. A good example for this is “Scrubs” which is based in a hospital in North
Hollywood.
A lot of comedies these days tend to be over 12 as most of the humor in the movies or
TV programs involve mild or strong sex references or mild or strong uses of language.
SITCOM BASICS
To start off with, Sitcom is short for “situation comedy” normally last for about 30
minutes each episode, which tend to run only one episode a week until the series comes
to a finish. But in sitcoms today, advertising sometimes cuts 30 minute sitcoms down to
22 minutes. Because Sitcoms last roughly around 30 minutes, it is vital that the plot is
simple, small and resolvable. So at the start of the episode, the situation will be found
out, in the middle of the episode the family will be working at the situation and at the
end the situation will be resolved. Sometimes, at the end of each episode the story will
be left on a cliffhanger, giving you a hint of what might happen in the next episode. The
plots tend to be within a family situation and also include the setting.
Sitcoms are narrated in two different ways; there is a sitcom serial or a sitcom series. A
sitcom serial means that the groups of episodes are all one story means that each
episode would only be one part of the story. A sitcom series as said before has their
episodes with there own mini story.
Sitcoms usually have four main characters in them; the characters obviously have
different personalities, which tend to be, a hero, an antihero, a love interest and a
buddy. For example, Modern Family is a sitcom, which involves a love interest and a
buddy. A lot of Sitcoms tend to have a short beginning scene, which appears before the
opening credits, which is called a teaser. Sometimes in the teasers, a clue is given to the
audience of what the plot may be about Some Sitcoms don’t have Teasers, such as
“Outnumbered” which is a British family sitcom.
Sitcoms are either filmed on a studio set or a set location, which is the real world; if the
sitcom is filmed on a set then the sitcoms would tend to have central area where the
sitcom activity takes place. An example for this could a house living room with a kitchen.
The advantage for filming a sitcom on a set is that the crew has more control over the
camera management and the studio lighting; also there would be no interference from
the outside world, such as random people walking past. Sitcoms filmed in a set location
means that the props, extra features and the production are set up by the location.
These set locations can be office buildings, streets or a city landmark.
SINGLE CAMERA TECHNIQUES
In some sitcoms, the sitcom has a single camera setup. Single camera setup can be used
for many purposes in Sitcoms. To start off with, single camera setup is when there is
only one camera being used in each scene in the program, and the camera itself moves
into different angles giving itself a wider variety of shooting angles. But each shooting
angle would have personal managed lighting. Whereas multi camera usage is when each
camera is in a fixed place with its own specific angle, this is used more than single
camera setup. Using single camera setup what would be slower to film rather than a
multi camera setup.
Some examples of Sitcoms, which use Single camera techniques, are Peep Show and
Scrubs. In peep show, the purpose for the single camera techniques is so that the
audience watches the sitcom from the characters eye view. When the characters in
Peep Show are facing each other with the camera fixed on one characters eye view, this
is called 180 angle, as they’re facing each other in a straight line. This sitcom also
involves the cameraman moving in-between one or two characters. As said before this
moving camera would be a moving character in Peep Show. This is to make the Sitcom
feel more real for the audience, so it has more of an impact on them.
Scrubs has similar sorts of shooting angles to peep show. For instance, when the doctors
are looking straight at their patient in a circle, they are really looking down at the
camera.
In our group sitcom, we used single camera drama. This single camera drama was
mostly successful during the filming. In my view one of the most successful parts of the
single camera drama in the sitcom was when the cameraman was walking backwards so
he would have a front view of the 3 characters walking down the corridor. One of the
negative aspects of the usage of single camera drama in the sitcom was the changing of
the camera angles.
SITCOMS HISTORY
The first Sitcoms appeared on Television in the 1950s and were broadcasted on radio
just as much as Television. The Sitcoms in the 1950s were a lot different to the Sitcoms
to this day, the comedians didn’t really play as fictional characters, and they mainly
acted as what they were like in real life. An example of a popular Sitcom in the 1950s
was called Hancock’s Half Hour; this was one of the first big, popular sitcoms made.
From the 50s on, Sitcoms continue to this day and throughout the decades, the style of
Sitcoms has changed a lot.
The 1970s was the decade where Sitcoms were becoming increasingly popular and
successful; also the amount of Sitcoms being was also increasing. Faulty Towers was a
typical Sitcom that was very popular at the time and was a big hit for Sitcoms. This
decade of Sitcoms being shown was known as the Golden Age for Sitcoms as in this
decade many famous Sitcoms had first appeared. The channel ITV was the channel that
was used by most of the Sitcoms in this decade making the channel increasingly popular.
Up until the new millennium, sitcoms started to get into a lot more of a modern style.
New sitcoms came out such as peep show and spaced, the peep show series still
continues to this day so has been a successful sitcom. The comedian Ricky Gervais had
been in a new sitcom called the office and was one of the most successful sitcoms of the
decade. But even though it was very successful, it still didn’t reach the popularity figures
of the sitcoms in the seventies. Later on in the decade a lot of Sitcoms were involving
uses of strong language and crude humor which meant that the age ratings on films
becoming higher as of this. The IT crowd is a also a successful sitcom that aired from the
2000s and still carries on to this day.
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