Why I love(d) Happy Endings?

Friends. A show about six friends, three males and  three females, and their 'adventures'. A historical comedy show right? Even if you hadn't watched every episode, you knew about it, you'd watched it, you'd enjoyed it. Even if you didn't know that blonde one's real name (Lisa Kudrow btw), you laughed at what she said because it was funny. Fast forward just under a decade later, an ABC pilot, with so little hope that one of the main character's secured a job on a different show, aired. This particular show, Happy Endings, was about six friends (sound familiar?), two of which were getting married, where the woman left her male counterpart at the altar for a man in rollerblades. This situation led to rift within the group of six and thereby creating a premise of whether these six friends would be able to stay friends with such a... history between two of them. But by the second episode, this show felt like it was dropping this premise for another one. A show about six friends, three males and three females, and their 'adventures'.

Now people were quick to write it off as another 'worse, modern day Friends', but after the show's fairly average pilot, it began to pick up, surprisingly quick and the chemistry between the six main cast members was infectious. And if you know anything about, ensemble comedies (Modern Family, Community, The Office), you know, group chemistry is REALLY IMPORTANT, yet extremely hard to build quickly. But suddenly this group of six friends that we had only known for 10 episodes had inside jokes, recurring gags and were very likeable characters. They felt like a real group of friends, and realism is practically what all pop culture aims for nowadays.

Now not only did this group have great chemistry, but they were propelled by brilliant acting, fantastic writing and jokes that flew at breakneck pace. Yet all they were considered as by those that had heard about the show, was some kind of Friends' knockoff. Now I'd have to blame ABC for this, particularly for poor advertisement, and really poor scheduling. For emphasis, let me tell you the order in which the season 1 episodes aired as opposed to how they were supposed to air: Episode 1, Episode 5, Ep. 9, Ep. 8, 12, 7, 4, 11, 10, 2, 3, 13 and 6. Because screw chronology right? And considering this show has a great sense of continuity, it hurt it even more. But despite that, the show continued to excel even further in its surprise second and third seasons, receiving critical acclaim and creating a cult following, as it crafted the world around the protagonists with recurring characters and lengthened storylines. But then it was cancelled after its third season, due to low viewer ratings, because once again it was just a 'bad Friends' remake' that no one really knew about.

But the reason it's not fair to say that, is because Friends was such a genre defining show, that its influence can honestly be sensed in pretty much all sitcoms since its success. And when I see Happy Endings, Friends does come to mind, but it doesn't remind me of it as much as one would think. Its single-camera format as opposed to Friends' multi-camera one made the show feel more dynamic. It was a lot more fast-paced and a lot more courageous. They went for parodies, their characters were wackier, and to be honest, it worked! Their weird contrasts paid off! And it was great to see that, because it gave it a different, more welcoming atmosphere. You didn't want to have friends like them, because it made you feel like you were a part of them. The show even actively made fun of their copycat naysayers with this scene from the season 2 episode, 'The St. Valentine's Day Maxssacre'.

As a result, I prefer Happy Endings to Friends. Even if it doesn't have a cool episode naming system! And I say that having watched every episode of both shows. Maybe I'm just a hipster, but when I watch Happy Endings, it has such a feel-good factor. So good that I have a playlist for it on YouTube. And pretty much every time I watch a clip of it, I ask myself, "Why the hell was this show cancelled?"

From a media standpoint, the use of editing and lighting in this show has always been outstanding. Mise en scene in the show is brilliant, using positioning, costume and props for comedic advantage frequently. Making use of smart camera angle goes to compliment the great mise en scene changes to reveal things that were previously hidden (usually for a funny effect).

Damn that post was long! Anyway, favourite episodes (there's quite a few): Dave of the Dead, Baby Steps, Secrets and Limos, Spooky Endings, The Code War, The St. Valentine's Day Maxssacre, Everybody Loves Grant, The Butterfly Effect Effect, The Kerkovich Way, Boys II Menorah, More Like Stanksgiving, No-Ho-Ho, The Ex Factor, The Marry Prankster, The Straight Dope, Un-sabotagable, Brothas and Sistas

My VERY favourite are in bold! I wanted to include more on that list by the way...

Sample footage

This is some sample footage (surprise, surprise!) from our filming, acting credits for this post goes to the wonderful Miss Kerry-Ann (et moi). Filming credits go to the talented Mr Gavin Bowyer. Not to brag or anything but I also was the set designer and controlled the lighting. Your're welcome :)

This is our final decision of how to represent the thriller opening that we wanted as we had the correct  amount of lighting which shows the main character and the actions that they are doing. We also decided on the the focusing in and out which gives the effect of someone just waking up to seeing someone but for us it helps because it makes the main character seem distorted. 

At first we had thought that this would be the perfect lighting  for the scene however it was too bright and had not created the effect that we had wanted to aim for.

We also had thought that this would be a good place to film our scene however there was minimal light so it was hard to film and although we had found out that shining a touch on the lights created a twinkling effect which would be great for our thriller opening it was still hard to film. We also thought that it would suit a horror opening more than a thriller opening. 

Animatic

This is our first iteration of the our animatic from the first storyboard. As you can see, a lot of the shots are drawn out, in order to lengthen the opening, we also included some random transitional shots, to set the atmosphere and to insert titles cleverly. Animated by Mr Gavin Bowyer.

Storyboard

This is the storyboard for my group project. In coming up with this idea we brainstormed whether to use abstract shots or attempt to fill up time with transitional shots. We eventually settled on filler shots of cards and glass cups as it adds to the atmosphere and was a more sophisticated way of using time, especially in the genre of a spy thriller. The choice to use slow motion also stemmed from the idea of making a spy thriller look 'cool'. The art was made by the one and only Gavin Bowyer.

 

1 minute reshoot of thriller

For the preparation and research of our thriller, we recreated the first minute of the critically and commercially successful thriller. 

Could you guess what film it was before the end? No? Not surprising. We didn't exactly have a pendulum, but we made the most out of what we had.

Comparing this to the actual SE7EN opening, our version is a fairly accurate depiction, in terms of narrative, audio and camera angles. The lighting was also slightly higher key in our version, making it lose it's mysterious edge. Lighting that is too bright in a thriller does not create a sinister or mysterious atmosphere which is the main goal of a thriller. Being able to learn from this mistake will ensure that the lighting in our final product will be sinister enough to create the atmosphere of a thriller. Our remake however made effective use of sound. Not only did using the ticking clock emphasise the passing of time, it also sounded quite creepy, causing the viewer to feel fear. This did teach us that sometimes minimal sound like quiet background music and a clock ticking can form a very eerie environment, that would be very useful in our final product. The editing in our remake is noticeably little making it very slow-paced, to match the SE7EN which uses the slow pace to elongate the ominous effect of the shots and clock ticking to ensure the audience is pushed out of their comfort zone. We could use this combo of eerie sound and slow-paced editing in our final thriller opening as it has the effect of making the audience feeling awkward, which is one of our intentions for our thriller.