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(Kory) Between Two Ferns: campy, low-budget goodness

(Kory) Between Two Ferns: campy, low-budget goodness

For the final project, I’m currently toying with the idea of doing something similar to Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis. If you’re not familiar with these YouTube videos, they’re comedic interviews between Zach and famous people such as President Obama, Justin Beiber, Brad Pitt, and Bradley Cooper. Zach asks ridiculous questions and makes passive aggressive remarks throughout the videos, undermining his guests and causing a feeling not unlike the one you get watching a car crash in slow motion.

I think it could be funny to do something similar with an entity like “The 5-Paragraph Essay” or “Traditional Grammar-Teaching” as the guest (and possibly “generic ENGL 431 student” as the host), pointing out flaws in both while they try to argue as to why they still matter/are relevant. I like the idea of creating a satirical video about these since they are so accepted in the traditional education system. As teachers, we’re aware of how laughable they really are and the flaws they have. I’d like to use comedy as a tool to demean their importance in teaching writing.

Oftentimes, changes to the system are a hard pill to swallow. I think that creating a campy video allows access to a discussion that might otherwise be dismissed as confrontational/useless/hippie-ish/etc. The initial distrust isn’t there because it’s entertainment rather than a debate or podium-preaching.

I really enjoyed The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report for the same reasons. They presented the news in a way that was informative, but also entertaining as they unabashedly satirized everyone and everything. Somehow they still managed to have more integrity than other “real” news stations.

From my end, it’s intentionally low-tech which would make production super easy. I could record the video on my phone or digital camera. Any shakiness, bad lighting, crappy sound quality, etc. wouldn’t detract from the overall feel of the video. However, without cool music or flashy images, I would really need to make sure that the repartee is fierce. I think that this makes the actual dialogue a lot more important… and possibly difficult to write. Also, the delivery must be dead-pan. No stifled giggling allowed.

This is all I’ve got so far.

One Reply to “(Kory) Between Two Ferns: campy, low-budget goodness”

  1. I really like your idea of doing the “Between Two Ferns” video. I think you could honestly use either the five paragraph essay or traditional grammer teaching, or maybe a combination of both! I think using sarcastic or passive aggressive comments would be a great way to show how these teaching practices don’t exactly work and what their negative qualities are. Again I think it’s a great idea and I can’t wait to see how it turns out!

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