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For anyone interested, below you will find collated responses to my
query about humor in large format, only including those which were
specifically about large format.



Mary Nucci







1. How about the sperm scene in "Human Body", where the sperm are
"swimming" toward an ovum to the cleverly chosen soundtrack, "Let's Get
It On"? That scene kept us from booking the film (considered to racy for
our environment), but, man, was that clever.





2a. This might be relevant.... Fisher, M.S. (1997). The effect of humor
on learning in a planetarium. Science Education (Special issue on
informal science learning) 81(6), 703-713.



2b. That study in the planetarium tested for a show with and without
specific jokes.  (The results suggested that humor interfered with
learning.) I think it implied that for the show without the jokes, they
simply blanked out the volume.  Perhaps giving the audience that extra
time to absorb the content resulted in the higher scores, not removing
the actual jokes.  (btw, I'm not sure they all qualified as humor; some
of them weren't that funny.)





3. For some reason the scene in the IMAX movie Antarctica with the
penguins popping out of the water on to the ice always got a laugh at
our theater.  They are just so darn cute!  I guess that's why my idea
for a penguin tasting event when we had "Shackleton" didn't go over very
well.



The lemurs in "The Greatest Places" were pretty funny as well.  I guess
the lesson is to have cute animals bounding about.



The background music is also really important here.  If you play the
theme from "Jaws" behind seals hopping out of the water your reaction is
"Whew! that was a close one."  If you play ragtime piano and show them
slipping and sliding out of the water onto the rocks it suddenly becomes
hilarious.





4. Bill Murray in the popcorn scene in MICHAEL JORDAN TO THE MAX.





5. One example that immediately comes to mind is in "BUGS!".   The
sponsor of BUGS! is Terminix. In the opening moments of the film, the
audience frequently chuckles at the apparent irony when they see the
credit appear: "Presented as a public service by TERMINIX" . Even in the
preview trailer, we hear giggling at the end when the TERMINIX logo
comes up on the screen.





6. There was an IMAX movie on volcanoes and earthquakes (probably called
Ring of Fire). that I saw a few times when it played at the Children's
Museum of Indianapolis years ago. After several intense scenes about
earthquakes in Tokyo, the movie showed another geothermal effect: hot
springs. The shots of monkeys enjoying the springs (in a snowstorm)
always made people laugh.





7. One example of this is in "Ocean Oasis" where there is a scene of a
young Osprey in its nest with the mother standing over it.  The shot is
a clear almost front on view of the Mother bird with the camera looking
at the "tail" end of the baby bird.  This baby rises up till you can see
his bottom and then projectile defecates over the edge of the nest
(avoiding messing where he eats) while the voice over says - "because
the baby's are always hungry the parents are always hunting" (or
something like that).  This ALWAYS gets a giggle from school age boys
(usually an uuuugggh from the girls).





8a. The old IMAX flick "Search for the Great Sharks" featured
danger-attracting shark diver Rodney Fox. Sharks just couldn't seem to
kill him, but not for lack of trying. The way he wandered into danger,
panicking his coworkers, yet emerging to dive another day, always struck
me as kind of funny.



8b. Yeah, by the end of the film, the audience was rooting for the
sharks...!





9. I don't know if this has been mentioned but some people have said
that Everest is one of the best IMAX films of all time.  It may or may
not be but it has sold a few tickets.  I always thought it funny that
during the climactic scene in which our hero ascends to the peak without
oxygen tank and we watch as he struggles through the deep snow and ice,
that there is obviously a full camera crew making the same assent just
yards from him.  What's even funnier is that I have head very few people
ever question that.  I suppose that is the case with many such
documentary films but Everest sticks in my mind and always brings a
smile.




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