Creating a Winning Comedy Short - with Matt Golding, part of the RONG Collective that got it right
Matt is part of the RONG Collective from Bristol that won the 2005 New Film Makers Award with the spritely, spirited short Oedipus.
Their quirky take on familial relations touched the judges' funny bone and landed them the top prize.
Here Matt looks back on that success and offers advice to people interested in making short comedy films.
Watch Oedipus on Film Network
Q1. Tell us how you came up with your awarding winning short Oedipus.
We came across a stand-up poet performing Oedipus in a pub in Bristol and it seemed a good opportunity to use somebody else's story and script and put our own pictures on it.
Q2. Why have you decided to work in comedy?
Comedy is a really interesting way of looking at life. I love the fact that we are not all perfect and that we balls up all the time. Comedy is good at taking a wry look at people rather than taking them at face value.
Q3. Oedipus was pretty close to the bone. Are there any subjects that are taboo in comedy or is everything fair game?
Taboo is defined by culture and comedy is useful for pushing back against those things. It's bad for a culture if it stops reflecting ideas back to itself and saying, 'hang on isn't this a little absurd?'. That said, it would be a bit bad to get blown up by someone you had never even met for making a joke.
Q4. How easy is it to make a comedy short?
It's easy to make a comedy short but hard to make a good one because they're are a lot of them around. Comedy works well at short lengths. A good short film has to tell a good story very quickly.
Q5. How important are actors in producing good comedy?
Good actors make our scripts funny. It's important to work with people who share a certain sensibility. We have a certain pool of people we work with regularly and we often write for them.
Q6. What are the advantages and disadvantages of working on low budgets?
The advantages of a low budget is you don't have to ask anyone permission to do anything. The disadvantage is always asking people for favours. It gives you a different scale on the things you can try and achieve. If you haven't got money you get to see it as a way to inspire you to do things imaginatively.
