Comedic opening sequences typically use bright colors, settings like schools or families, and fast-paced camera angles. Titles are colorful and use bubble or exciting fonts unlike block fonts in horror. Props are used for slapstick humor like characters getting hurt. The sound starts with diegetic sounds then transitions to a non-diegetic happy soundtrack title theme with loud atmosphere. Lighting is natural and bright to convey a happy tone rather than artificial lights used in genres like horror.

1. THE CONVENTIONS OF
OPENING SEQUENCES OF A
COMEDIC GENRE
BY NATASHA AND LARA

2. MAIN TYPES OF COMEDY
• Dark Humour – Tends to involve a tragedy behind it but uses things like rape, terrorism and
drugs, yet the characters tend to make each of these scenario’s funny
• Slapstick – Overly exaggerated and uses lots of props and amusing costumes such as trousers
that fall down and baggy clothing
• Wordplay – Intellectual comedy such as big bang theory, which uses lots of clever vocabulary
but the way in which they are presented by characters tends to make it funny, such as
characters not caring what the clever ones have to say about a situation

3. TITLES
• The titles tend to use a colourful theme
within the writing of the credits at the
beginning
• The writing tends to use bubble writing or
more exciting writing unlike block writing in
a horror

4. CAMERA ANGLES
• Normally uses a naturalistic angle to show
each character and represent them in their
own ways
• They tend to be quite fast paced as
something tends to happen like in hangover
when they originally find out how far away
from home they are
• The title comes in and the camera angle
zooms out to give a long shot of the scene

5. SETTING
• Location tends to be in a social area such as
a school or in a family environment
• Bright colours and places which show
normally a happy or amusing area like
being hit in the head after doing a long shot
of a bright field

6. PROPS
• Props tend to be used in a comedy
environment such as in slapstick comedy
when a character gets hurt by being hit or
falling over a car when riding a bike
• If the character is seen as dumb, they may
have some sort of messy food with them
that they drop over themselves or other
people like a ‘chilli dog’

7. SOUND
• It normally starts with diegetic sound of a
character shouting or waking up and after a
small amount of dialect, there tends to be
non-diegetic sound of the title sequence
• The title tends to have a soundtrack that is
quite excitable or happy such as ‘dumb and
dumber too’
• There is normally loud non-diegetic sound
to provide a full-on atmosphere

8. LIGHTING
• Often uses natural light rather than any
artificial like they would use in other
genre’s like a night light in a horror film
such as paranormal activity
• It tends to be extremely bright and set in a
daylight area to show it is a happy scene
• Bright colours tend to be used if it isn’t set
out in daylight