Bombol Comedy Club. Behind the scene #6: editing
Building the kids library
ForBombolsocial media campaign, I wrote and directed 12 stand-up comedy clips about the craziness of parenthood. After shooting separately comedians routines and audience reactions, it was the moment to edit them together in the most efficient way. And did I mention the audience was made of toddlers and babies watching a clown show? The task now was to create a dialogue between the comedian joking about raising young kids and the young kids in the audience who expressed themselves mostly with body language, no words.
I did that looking at 7 hours of footage of kids looking at something else, mining that material for an expression, a gesture, a camera movement that could work well with the comedic routine: illustrating the behaviour the comedian is making fun of, thus reinforcing the joke; or contradicting it, offering the kids perspective on the parents' tale. There were no rules. There was no script, except the comedians' one. No prefixed directions. Writing the scripts, I had some ideas about possible children reactions and how they could punctuate the jokes. But the actual footage turned out very different from what we expected, being the kids not professional actors and to young to follow any direction other than clapping hands and a few other gesture encouraged by the clown. The goal was to create a dialogue between adult and kids. The content and direction of that dialogue would be a compromise between my ideas and the material at hand.
I watched those 7 hours footage over and over again, looking first for applauses, laughs and cute listening shot. But also for interesting reactions or camera movement to which I could give meaning through the editing. Cataloguing every reaction in a lengthy excel file – baby girl turns head, baby boy cries, blond boy smiles, brunette girl makes cheeky face, ponytail girl looks angry... - and colour coding each reaction, sorting them all in basic groups: red for sad or angry or crying, white for clapping and cheering, turquoise for laughing, orange for all the funny things as bouncing and dancing, yellow for saying yes ad nodding
Also I checked them out as I put them in the editing, so as not to overuse one single reaction: trying to choose different laughs, different claps, different bouncing moments...
Experiencing the power of editing
The most interesting aspect of the job: experiencing the power of editing in create meaning. A Bored face could look angry if put right after the comedian caustic remark, confused if juxtaposed with an unexpected punch line.
It was the Kuleshov effectall over again. In the famous experiment from the beginning of last century, soviet film maker Kuleshov demonstrated how the very same close-up of a serious man assumed different meanings according to the image that preceded it in the editing: after the shot of a bowl of soup the man looked hungry, after a naked woman he looked aroused, after a small coffin, sad.
Never before I got to experience it in its purest form, creating a story from shots that were not meant to be together, then mixing them all up again to create a different story.
One young girl's funny dance with hands in the air I used once to signify zombie and once to mimic monkeys: the juxtaposition to the comedian joke, together with the sound effects I especially recorded with my own kids a home, gave those gestures totally different meaning.
One kid shyly attempted a dance move putting both hands on his head, with a concentrated expression: I used that shot many times as if he was thinking “Oh no!”, also enhanced with a homemade sound effect.
Closing the circle
Kids were not professionals and they did what they wanted. One guy got tired of sitting and spent twenty minutes running around in that clumsy funny toddler way, then jumped and kicked kung-fu style, finally went to cuddle a baby who was crying. Those were all amazing unscripted moments that I was happy to use in the editing.
My greatest satisfaction: in one clip I had the comedian compare the kids to puppies: like them they're always running, crawling, they need to got o the park everyday or they jump on furniture and break anything in their path. Also they bite you and they like to lick stuff. Well I found not one but ten shots with kids sticking out their tongue for no apparent reason, just tasting the air, like cute little puppies. Not only I used them to highlight the comedian jokes about how the kids lick everything thy can reach, but my singular view on young kids found confirmation! From parent to scriptwriter, from writing to editing, the circle was closed.
Writer, director (on set & post-production), producer.
12 comedy videos
Bombol ltd.
Hong Kong, 2017