This document outlines various elements that are commonly seen in comedy film narratives, including different character types, settings, scenarios, and approaches to story structure. It discusses both the classical Hollywood three-act structure and comedian-led narratives that are loose collections of gags and quirks. As examples, it provides an overview of the narratives of the films Love Actually and Four Lions, noting how they both incorporate elements of gags while generally following a classic structure. It also lists typical comedy characters and prompts the reader to research different subgenres of comedy.

1. Narrative in Comedy films

2. 1) Eccentric Characters
2) Love Interests
3) Attractive Females
4) Unattractive Females
5) Attractive Males
6) Unattractive Males
7) Revealing Outfits
8) Colourful Outfits
9) Crazy Outfits
10) Wise Characters

3. 11) Popular Characters
12) Unpopular Characters
13) Sex
14) Drugs
15) Random settings
16) Meaningful settings
17) Ridiculous scenario’s
18) Violence
19) Weapons
20) Money

4. 21) Music
22) Swearing
23) Nudist scenes
24) Physical issues
25) Domestic characters

5. Two Key approaches
• The Classical Hollywood Structure
– Order – chaos – order restored
– Equilibrium – disequilibrium – new equilibrium
– The Three Act Structure
• Comedian led narrative - Showcase of individual
gags, personal quirks and set pieces loose held
together by a ‘plot’
– The Three Stooges
– Charlie Chaplin
– Monty Python

6. What is the narrative of Love Actually
• The film begins with a voiceover from David
(Hugh Grant) commenting that whenever he gets
gloomy with the state of the world he thinks
about the arrivals terminal at Heathrow Airport,
and the pure uncomplicated love felt as friends
and families welcome their arriving loved ones.
David's voiceover also relates that all the
messages left by the people who died on the
9/11 planes were messages of love and not hate.
The film then tells the 'love stories' of many
people:

7. What is the narrative of Four Lions
• In groups mark out the plot using the Three
Act Structure

8. Four Lions and Love Actually
• Are mostly the classic Hollywood style but
they both do include element of gags and they
do play with conventions
• Single goal oriented protagonist
• Narrative is driven by character traits

9. Four Lions and Love Actually
• Cause and Effect
• Use of subplots
• The Happy ending

10. Typical Comedy Characters

11. Researching Different types of
Comedy( 20 mins)
• There are many different types of comedy
films.
– Your job is to identify at least five ‘sub genres’
– Define how they fit the general conventions esp
narrative and Character types
– Highlight specific conventions esp narrative and
Character types
– List at least 5 British films that are typical of the
sub genre.