Britain has an extensive comic tradition in the arts from theatre in Shakespearean times, through to contemporary situation comedies on television and streaming platforms. Although in the history of cinema, British comedy has been present it is not as prevalent and varied. Indeed, the dominant types of story and genres are relatively restricted to a few areas in British cinema; e.g. social realism, period drama and Working Title style comedy are dominant UK outputs. In America, many successful careers were born out of DIY, nano budget, American indie comedy films and filmmakers (e.g. Richard Linklater, Robert Rodriguez, Wes Anderson) which have diverse strands in many story areas. Historically deriving from New York and Austin, Texas, American indie film comedies are not necessarily laugh out loud but retain meaningful, resonant, and heartfelt stories identifiable across the world; Slacker (1990), Clerks (1994), The Brothers McMullen (1995), The Puffy Chair (2005), In Search of a Midnight Kiss (2007). Such films have a liberal cool approach and may include stories of people who refuse the status quo, but are not necessarily raging against it. This study explores how to invent a different type of British comedy, through the lens of American indie film. The results were identifiable qualities transferable into a British context, and a methodology developed that could be used in future with different story types and genres. The wider implications of this are the broadening of approaches to British filmmaking, without using conventional styles to comedy more commonly found in British cinema. The guidelines produced also enable the transferring of the sub genre of indie film comedy, into another country or cultural context.
My methods were to employ a literature review based on my research questions, case studies of examples followed by a series of practice film experiments. This was then cascaded into a series of guidelines which were then tested in screenplay and example scenes form. The literature review was divided into the below research questions for systematic investigation. This then set the platform to explore case studies and practice film experiments that played with new form and style,
informing how to make a British Indie film comedy. This enabled the formation of guidelines to takeinto the final practice of feature film screenplay and example scenes. The literature review was critical in underpinning and exploring what information existed on the subject. The two foremost texts were Michael Z. Newman’s ‘Indie: An American Film Culture’ (2011) and John Berra’s ‘Declarations of Independence’ (2008), which uncovered the genesis and philosophical underpinnings of an indie film in practice and the context as to how it developed. Others were critical too, such as Ted Hope’s ‘Hope for Film’ (2014) which revealed many insights about the indie industry, but the above two texts straddled the two areas underpinning the approach in practice.
The case studies of films enabled a development of that practice described, by observing the different ways three different case studies films engaged with the principles of the literature review. From the literature review, four key interim findings were moulded from these works. The interim findings of indie comedy were; the counter culture alternative to national cinema; contains a buoyancy and life affirming quality with existential themes; gives the impression of spontaneity,
improvisation and authenticity; is idiosyncratic, weird and different in some way. These were exciting to discover, if not completely practical at this stage to implement. But adequate to take into practice experiments where I could explore and test to discover further.
The three practice film experiments escalated from personal voice exploration to filmed scenes of comedy drama, rigorously reflected on each time, to deeply draw out the intension of the process: guidelines of how to make a British indie film comedy. This testing process was mainly unsuccessful but therefore informed what not to do, than successfully conveying what to actually do, to inform a British indie film comedy approach. That lack of success uncovered a roadmap of additional details beneath the interim findings and laid the platform to produce more detailed solid guidelines to take into my final practice, of a feature film screenplay and example scenes. The resulting final screenplay and example scenes produced the dynamism I was working towards. Applying these rigorously produced guidelines to the creative ideas process of a screenplay and then filming some selected scenes managed to birth a new indie approach which was invigorating to experience and observe and circle back to my original research question, aims and objectives. The
original contribution to knowledge to this field are therefore a refined set of guidelines to make a British indie film comedy, and a structure to deploy on further genres and styles of filmmaking to transfer in to a British context, but also which could be adapted to any country, or different cultural context.
