First of all, both videos used very similar framing of shots. There was an affinity between their senses of space. In the first joke, there were a wide variety of how close the camera was to the United Way representative. It showed the size of the office and also showed the representative’s emotions and reactions. In the second joke, there were a lot of close-ups of the detective and his actions while the wider angles showed the entire room and table the detective was at. Also, the detective leans back and forward in his chair to transition from his reverie where he is farther away from the United Way representative into his close confrontation with the representative.
The videos contrasted in their use of rhythm between shots. In the first joke, the film had fairly similar rhythm of shots throughout the video. It had fast and short segments broken up with text boxes, and the middle part of the joke had the same formula of a shot of the lawyer, text box, and then reactions from the United Way Representative. The second joke however stayed on the detective and only showed him and various close ups of his face and body.
Finally, the videos contrasted in whether they used active or didactic storytelling. In the first joke, the story was very straightforward, and did not stray away from the joke at all. It showed visuals, then supplied text boxes to tell the audience exactly what was going on. In the second video however, it seems like the joke is telling the actual story, but has a twist ending. There were also subtle jokes that required more scrutiny to find. First of all, you had to understand how internal monologues are a huge part of film noir to get the punchline. Finally, there was a subtle joke with the detective’s name. The United Way representative asks if the detective is Mr. McCrevis, and the detective responds with “please, call me Phillip”. This means the detective’s full name is Phillip McCrevis, which is a joke name, like Biggus Dickus (Monty Python’s Life of Brian reference).
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