First I watched a TED talk given by Peter Mcgraw from The "Humor Reaserch Lab" or "HuRL" Get it? hehe...
So he makes several points in his talk about laughter and comedy. He describes that for something to be funny 3 conditions must be met. A violation, a benign nature about it (whatever that may be) and the two together form what is called a "Benign Violation". The violation in itself could be anything from something that seems out of place, a violation of social norms and moral norms and what he means by benign is that the entire situation is harmless, that it doesn't pose a threat.
This sounds all great to someone like me whos begging for some ounce of a formula for comedy. But now i dont think that this is the case. There is no formula for comedy, its is entirely dependent on so many factors like timing, engagment with the audience, setting, cultural background. This idea of a benign violation covers the entire field of comedy in general. In its raw form like this it doesn't seem to immediately apply itself to comedy performance in animation.
However, lets see how far we can go...
So in the case of my short film about bankrupt orcs who must atempt to earn cash in normal society before thier next battle.
Well, first off. We have a violation. Orcs trying to temporarly fit into a normal society breaks the visual norm. Whats benign about it?
Its possible that it could be multiple things. The fact that they have one mission and that is to simply get rich quick which is a non-threatening goal comming from Orcs who would rather be killing and being barbaric.
So from a quick application to my current material it seems to work, But I need to test out the idea on other people other than myself.
So for now, were getting closer but we need to dwell deeper.
