Black Comedy

What is black comedy• Typically, a black comedy - or dark

comedy - is a film which takes controversial and disturbing subjects such as death, suicide, mass murder, war, and treats it in a humorous manner. Most dark comedies set out to shock their audiences with their unexpectedly humorous take on a serious subject.

The first ever black comedy • Dr Strangelove was a film directed by Stanley Kubrick

and was made in 1964. The subject of the film is nuclear warfare and the possible annihilation of life on Earth. Normally, dramas about nuclear war treat the subject with seriousness, but Dr Strangelove instead plays the subject for laughs.

Setting• The majority of dark comedy settings are placed in

normal locations where somewhere has gone wrong e.g. Germany during world war (Inglorious bastards), a theme park that has a zombie apocalypse ( Zombie land), and a normal village that has a lot of deaths (Hot fuzz).

Characters• The main character can usual be one of three things in

the movie, he can either be the idiot or the bad guy or the good guy in the movie. The actions the main character takes usually leaves the audience thinking what kind of a person he is and why he is the main character. Sometimes the characters are not expected to be in the theme of the movie they are in and makes them seem out of place.

Narrative• In order for a dark comedy to be a dark comedy it has

to have a serious subject put into it for example death, war, destruction, gore. Many of the most successful dark comedies start with things beginning out bad, but then things continue to get further & further out of hand. Normal problems become exaggerated to comic and tragic proportions

Camera Shots

Close upsMedium close upTwo shotEstablishing Shot

Mise-en-scene• Commonly the costumes a character wears in a black

comedy represents what kind of a person they are. The bad character would be dressed in black clothes or dark shades of clothes. The good characters would be dressed in light shades of clothes, if they aren't in light shades they would be dressed in their own outside such as superman, batman or ironman.