Bombol Comedy Club. Behind the scene #4: filming the actors
The cameras set up
How do you film an actor impersonating a parent stand-up comedian whose routine is about raising young kids and whose audience is made of toddlers sitting in a white studio?I decided to film their act with three camera simultaneously, as for real live comedy shows: I wanted their performance to flow uninterrupted, to gain momentum. It would make it easier for the actors to pretend they were on a stage. This also gave us the possibility to try different approaches for different takes, the comedians walking up and down, or sitting on the stool.
Camera A was positioned in front of them, down on the ground so that the actors would look exactly where the kids were supposed to sit and the they were filmed as in the kids point of view, from the ground looking up.
Camera B was a close up: the performers would look in that for some of the punchlines. That would be like addressing the real audience, the parents that will watch the video and get the jokes. The third camera shot from the side, half figure, to add some variety.
The right tone
Once all those decisions were made, The tricky thing was they had to be warm and smiling while saying things as “my kids are like dogs”, in the way us parents can tell to our friends the most outrageous things about our children, but nobody would ever doubt for a second our unconditional love for them. The comedians could not come out as cynical, nasty, kids haters. But at the same time I made clear that that they were no kindergarten teachers, they had to keep an edge. After all, our real audience, on social media, would be an adult one. The actors impersonating parent comedians had to warmly mock the kids and their idiosyncrasies. Laughing at them and with them.
Heather and Henry did a great job, bringing their own style to the material: Heather was a passionate, ironic, often caustic young mum; Henry a sweet, chill, playful dad .
Writer, director (on set & post-production), producer.
12 comedy videos
Bombol ltd.
Hong Kong, 2017