Humor is an essential element to everyday life. We all laugh at ourselves, and others, and sometimes humanity as a whole. We laugh at our bad luck and good fortune. Sometimes we even laugh when we cry.

I read somewhere that laughter is a nervous release.

This explains why we laugh when people fall and why most comedians joke’s are really close, often uncomfortably close, to what is perhaps the truth. It is that same discomfort that makes us squirm in our seat and let out the steam through a snorting, chortling, spasmodic giggle fit.

And humor is an essential element to every film. Just think about it. What film doesn’t have some form of humor? Even Schindler’s list has it: one liners, moments between characters, funny looks and reactions, odd situations. I’m not talking about slapstick of course, but rather those little moments in a scene that make the audience crack a smile or let out a little ‘ha.’

I realize now I missed a valuable opportunity to inject humor into a scene in my new film, Play anyway. There’s a scene where the lead character is strumming his guitar on the couch. Next to him, his faithful dog.

Now towards the end of the shoot the dog had left the couch and wandered to some other place in the house, probably a more quiet place to take nap. I didn’t think anything of it because the shot was about the lead character working on a song. We see as he struggles through the chords, tries a bit of this and that, and suffers writers block while trying to come up with the lyrics. The scene ends without any dialogue because I felt there was no one there to have a conversation with.

But what about the dog?

Wouldn’t of been great if I had brought the dog back onto the couch and had my lead character look down at the dog and ask aloud, “How does it sound, buddy?”

The loyal dog would do what any loyal dog would do: look up lovingly, panting, just excited to be getting attention. 

My lead character could then say, “Yeah, I know. Terrible.” Or something to that effect. 

Maybe it’s just me but I have these kinds of interactions several times a day with my pet. This kind of inter-species communication would represent what an average person would do and provide a sort of external verification of his internal monologue. 

Of course I’m not going to beat myself up about this.

The scene was performed wonderfully as written. I did not anticipate my actor’s roommate’s dog being on set that day. I think this is a potential drawback to being both a director producer at the same time. I tend to act more on my producer behalf than I do supporting my creative director side when time is ticking and for some reason… there’s no air conditioning. Get in/get out tends to be my driving motto in my low-budget/no crew productions.

So…

I’m going to make more the conscious effort in the future to have someone take on more responsibilities on the production side so that they can keep check on the watch while I focus the mental energy on how to make a great scene for my audience. 

Watch the short film on Youtube here.

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