-
Day 2 Assignments
Reply to post your assignment.
-
12 Replies
-
Ira Drower’s Comedy Plots
What I learned doing this assignment was how much fun it was to brainstorm ideas of comedy plots based on the 3 types, Fish out of Water, Incongruent Pairings, and Hilarious Purpose.
Premise: A fashion designer meets a garrulous cab driver
1. Fish out of Water:
Fashion Designer breaks a leg and has the cabbie produce their Paris Fashion Show.
2. Incongruent Pairings:
Famous fashion designer and cabbie linked romantically
3. Hilarious Purpose:
Fashion Designer wants to create a line of clothes for the ‘common man’
Character: The sultan of a mid-east kingdom desires to cook.
1. Fish out of Water:
Having never cooked before he attempts several failed recipes from online.
2. Incongruent Pairings:
Sultan employs a fast food worker to assist creating complicated dishes.
3. Hilarious Purpose:
Overweight sultan wants his country (and himself) to be healthiest in the world to win a grant from the World Bank.
-
Janeen’s Comedy Plots
What I learned doing the assignment is that I’ve crammed most of these three in my action/comedy’s logline.
A mall Santa rescues the President’s parents from a kidnapping by foreign nationals and a rogue FBI agent.
Fish out of Water
The mall Santa has no idea how to hide off-grid stateside. He’s used to war zones and all of the assets of the intelligence community at his service instead of working against him.
2. Incongruent Pairings
The ex-special ops guy with a teacup poodle as a PTSD service dog.
3. Hilarious Purpose
Keep the President’s parents safe from kidnapping while on the run from the kidnappers, the FBI, local police and the parents’ secret service agent.
-
Denice’s Comedy Plots
What I learned from this assignment is how this process makes it easy to come up with ideas without having to think about the whole plot. I just wanted to keep creating more concepts.
Premise: A spinster meets an outlaw.
1. Fish Out of Water
A spinster is kidnapped by an outlaw of the wild west because she’s seen his face and he doesn’t want to kill her.
2. Incongruent Pairings
A spinster teaches an outlaw how to be a gentleman so he can hide from the gang trying to kill him.
3. Hilarious Purpose
A spinster teams up with an outlaw to rob the banker who stole her land.
-
Brad’s Comedy Plots
What I’ve learned doing this assignment is how to differentiate different types of comedy plots.
PREMISE: Vivaldi is reincarnated, and is once again a talented composer/musician
1. Fish out of water: He still has 18th century ways of thinking but it’s the 21st century.<div> 2. Incongruent pairings: He joins a sex and drugs hard rock band.
3. Hilarious purpose: He tries to convince them the play a piece he just wrote: The Four Seasons.
CHARACTER: The girl who didn’t give a damn
1. Fish out of water: She lives in a world of hypersensitivity and cancel culture
2. Incongruent pairings: She falls in love with a guy who’s always seeking others approval.
3. Hilarious purpose: She runs for mayor on the platform of not giving a damn.
</div>
-
Mary’s Comedy plots
What I’ve learned doing this assignment is to keep playing
A perfectionist woman superhero who does very little because she’s afraid of making mistakes.
•Fish out of water
Our perfectionist superhero has to be a motivational mentor to a young woman superhero.
•Incongruent pairings
Our perfectionist superhero has to rehab a former “devil may care” villain.
Hilarious purpose
The “former” devil may care villain tries to trick our perfectionist superhero to carry out the “perfect” crime.
-
Anthony Ward Comedy Plots
What I’ve learned doing this assignment is, three comedy plots that I can use for my stories. I think I see these all the time in movies but did not know what they were called.
Premise: A drug dealer’s overbearing mom has to move in with him.
Fish out of water: Stan sells drugs out of his two bedroom apartment. His mom shows up to his place one day with suitcase in hand needing a place to stay.
Incongruent pairings: Stan’s mom has Christian values and would be crushed if she found out her son was selling drugs.
Hilarious purpose: Stan still has to conduct business with his mother living at his place. She unknowingly drives him to drug deals.
-
Title: Amanda’s Comedy plots
What I’ve learned doing this assignment is this a very handy way to create the plots.
PREMISE: A man has a romantic encounter with his potential new boss in the eve of the job interview.
Fish out of water: A job applicant sleeps with his potential new boss.
Incongruent pairings: A boss and her potential employee.
Hilarious purpose: He tries to convince her to give him the job.
-
Cooper James
What I learned from doing this assignment is to look for situations/conflicts that aren’t obvious to find ideas that allow for comedy to occur naturally.
PREMISE: An environmental activist meets a beautiful fishing boat captain.
1. Fish out of water
A fishing boat caption hides a wanted environmental activist.
2. Incongruent pairings
Fishing boat caption and environmental activist in love.
3. Hilarious purpose
The activist tries to convince the fishing caption to give up fishing and become a poster child for the cause.
CHARACTER: An activist with a broken heart
1. Fish out of water
After being cheated on and divorced by his wife, he quits his job and becomes an activist to heal his heart.
2. Incongruent pairings
After a failed attack on a fishing boat and being rescued at sea, he falls for the beautiful fishing captain.
3. Hilarious purpose
The activist wants to hijack her fishing boat to gain notoriety for his cause and prove to his ex-wife that he can accomplish something worthwhile with his life.
-
Lindy Baker Comedy plots
What I’ve learned doing this assignment is that characters and actions that don’t fit together can be funny just because of the pairings or the situation.
1. Fish out of water
A middle aged psychic is forced to take a job at a day care center.2. Incongruent pairings
Her boss is a 25-year-old college student, majoring in psychology.3. Hilarious purpose.
She uses her abilities to stay one step ahead of him when he tries to get her fired. -
Joe’s Comedy plots
What I learned is that all three of my scenarios all had strong elements of “fish out of water”, “incongruent pairngs” and “hilarious purpose”. In fact, as I continued to refine the concept, I moved them around. My original “fish out of water” became my “hilarious purpose” and so forth. Also, when I came up with the initial premise, I had no intention of making the main subject of the movie the main character, but that’s what happened for all 3 of the “premise” one. Also as a by-product, all 3 of those stories are now either family-fun animation scripts or dystopian sci-fi (but still funny). That was not my original vision at all!
PREMISE: Humans clone the first wooly mammoth, and it escapes, of course.
Fish out of water:
– The domesticated cloned mammoth escapes into the African jungle and tries to adapt. It’s Frankenstein, but in the animal kingdon.
Incongruent pairings:
– The humans introduce this “ancient-instincts” mammoth to a new robot with potential “AI” capabilities to see if it can learn anything from the mammoth. It goes so well they use the mammoth to teach a whole fleet of giant robots. The robots use those newly honed survival skills to escape and do things that serve the well-being of both animals and machines. To hell with the human’s agenda.
Hilarious purpose:
– the mammoth, fearful of humans that are chasing it, finds its way to the ocean; the only place it feels it can hide. It befriends a dolphin who teaches the mammoth to swim and introduces it to other sea mammals who help it adapt to living in the water. It uses its trunk to exhale like a blowhole. And because it is genetically modified, it discovers it has the power to ingest large chunks of seawater and filter out the plastics and expel them onto land, thus becoming a hero/saviour to the sea-mammal populations everywhere.
CHARACTER: A Young Brilliant head-strong scientist
Fish out of Water:
– A young naive but brilliant and somewhat smug vegan environmental sceintist gets a paid scholarship to his dream institution. While there, he steals a genetically engineered wooly mammoth from a lab and gets caught. He pleads guilty and as part of his community service, he has to work in the slums of a third world country, full of people who depend on meat for their only food source, and can only find jobs that harm the environment.
– Incongruent Pairings
A young brilliant scientist has to team up with a blind flat-earther mechanic and flight enthusiast, to help solve a crime that forces them to travel around the world in a sophisticated airplane. It has no windows and flies on auto-pilot most of the time. When it goes haywire, the flat-earther has to help fly it.
– Hilarious Purpose
While doing an internship at MIT, our hero gets to work in a lab where they are breeding tiny mammoths. He thinks they are being bred to sell as pets, but discovers that they want to breed them as a healthier alternative to cattle. He constantly finds ways to thwart them by finding defects/flaws in each specimen. He claims he is destroying them, but in reality is re-homing them “Schindler’s list” style.
-
Sierra’s Comedy Plot
What I learned: so many pairs of incongruent people come to mind easily to pair up…raises the possibility of a lot of films, at least shorts, just for fun.
Premise: Hypochondriac agoraphobic man meets Fitness fanatic female
Fish out of water:
Fitness female discovering him on the 76th floor surrounded by hoarded newspapers is tasked with getting Hypochondriac agoraphobic man out to the park to work out & to take long walks
Inongruent Pairings:
Hypochondriac saves Fitness gal from dread disease, she inspired him to move
Hilarious Purpose:
Fitness gal wins prize if she can pry Hypochondriac guy out of his rat’s nest.
-
Daniel Turner’s Comedy Plots:
What did I learn? That comedy is serious business. That even though you are trying to create something humorous, it takes the same level of skill as doing drama, action or anything else.
Premise: The Prime Minister of England falls in love with the Prime Minister of the UAE(United Arab Emirates).
1. Fish out of water: The English Prime Minister, who does not speak Arabic, tries to secretly visit the UAE Prime Minister and just blend in in Abu Dubai.
2. Incongruent Pairings – Two male world leaders fall in love.
3. Hilarious purpose – A UFO lands at the island resort where the two leaders are secretly staying. And legions of press arrive on the island to cover the landing.
Log in to reply.