Parody - a form of satire that imitates the characteristic style of a particular writer, musician, artist, speaker or genre using deliberate exaggeration for a comic effect.Satire - the use of humor, ridicule, irony or exaggeration to make fun of or expose and criticize a person's vices or lack of intelligence. Link 1 (https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-parody-satire-and-farce)
Initially, I presented my country western parody scene inclusive of direct glances to the camera, edited into black and white with the soundtrack from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly over the visuals. In my second edit, I have retained the same music, but chosen to opt for a more subtle form of parody/satire visually. I'm interested to see which approach is more comedically effective, and whether removing layers of the satire I had built up, are actually the most effective in creating a humorous response to these scenes, or whether subtleties would resonante further with the audience. As humour is a fairly subjective concept, it is interesting for me to see if the audience will understand these comedic aspects through something as simple as camera angles, without the use of black and white to represent the clear shift from present day, to satirical reality within the final film.
Personally, I find the first version a lot more effective as there are more conventions within film, within media culture and within the piece that I found to be satirised or commented upon. I found this interesting in relation to the perspective Laura Basu (link 2) takes on satire when she states:
‘What does it mean for the show to be adopted so enthusiastically by the system it so aggressively derides, and what can it tell us about satire’s relationship to cynicism, politics, and democracy?’
I believe that using film to comment on some of the comedic, arguably overly-used tropes in cinema could be a very interesting means of also revealing further parallels, and potentially overused ideas. Essentially, as I aim for my entire project to serve as an allegory for current social affairs, I intend to create further levels of duality within the aesthetics of the film, for example - mimicking popularised film scenes and stereotypes - further reinforcing the farcical nature of stereotypes and generalising populations.
Generally, I do not appreciate overt humour as much as I do that of subtle comedy, however in this - I feel the comedy is heightened due to the extent of which the satire goes.
In this version, although the camera angles are the same style of mimicry, and the soundtrack provides a clear framework to view the atmosphere of these shots, I didn't personally, find as much satisfaction without the black and white interjections, as I felt this added even more drama to an already farcical scene, and ultimately provided a more anti-climatic ending.
In addition to this, I have also removed the direct glances into the camera - and therefore removed any breaking of the fourth wall in this version - again, to test the effectiveness of a more naturalistic performance. Once again, I personally prefer the first version as it does include these non naturalistic elements. I find that in using these elements in film, I can also test the boundaries of film itself, and comment and potentially satirise notions of naturalism and performance.
I plan to do another edit of this piece without sound, and without these breaking the fourth wall moments, to see if this would translate what I am aiming to achieve, and from this reach the best balance for presenting these aspects of satire within my final piece. I've attached a link at the bottom to the second edit, let me know which you liked best!
Link to Edit 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMhWlNecYTA&feature=youtu.be
Link to Laura Basu's Article: