An anonymous person managed to change the outcome of a slightly sexist sexy-secretary joke, (using only written correspondence), by influencing a camera action at a specific time during a live televised comic routine. The contextualised high profile event was an annual student celebration held in America. The guest speaker and entertainer for this function was Will Ferrell—an actor, comedian, and all-round smart dude.

The first task in this little deception was with respect to anonymous and their gender, anon had to decide how to appeal to both a female and male camera operator. Therefore, the camera view instructions where—a Hitchcock like move—designed to be appealing to either gender, and subsequently help get the point across. The joke become vice versa, due to the camera movement, therefore the punch line was on Will, as he became the subject of the joke and not the female secretary. True miss-direction.

The Hitchcock camera movement mentioned is known as the dolly zoom, (used in the moves, Jaws 1975 and Vertigo 1958). When timed correctly, the background focus will distort but stay in-focus on the subject, depth of view/field, this is achieved with a zoom lens. The subject in the frame remains the same size while the camera dolly moves towards or away from the subject. Therefore, the foreground and background become compressed or decompressed, depending on whether the camera moves forwards or backwards…lets put it like this, the camera 'pulled out' at the right time, but not the right time for the risqué joke!

Will had a struggle calling the camera back, while still performing the finished joke and setting up the next one. It had the desired effect, Will’s sexy dogeared secretary joke was sabotaged because he had the wrong camera view for the punch line. In effect the camera inadvertently stole the joke. This was, hopefully, as amusingly thought provoking for the viewers as the general idea was appealing to the participants.

You may ask yourself how was it known in advance Will would use he’s sexy female secretary joke at the no seating student event. An educated-comic guess. You may wonder how was is known the DOP would use the given camera view and at the right time. The suggested instructions where portrayed as educational; comic appropriate; gender specific to the joke, and where explained with prior knowledge to the punch line. There was no mention to sexism or feminism in any correspondence to the participants just to mutual visual academia and general entertainment, you might like to know. Officially this all started because someone online taunted Anon that they weren't qualified enough to perform a Hitchcock camera move let alone write one, in case you're interested.

Now, no one other than those involved in this silly little stunt is ‘still’ any the wiser. It can’t be proved either way, unless they kept the correspondence. No one was insulted, no jobs were lost, and potentially no egos dented. It was just playfully amusing, non-sexist, and all-round educational, it was supposed to be all three.

It should be said the person who set up this deception has a keen well documented sense of humour; is not particularly feminist or sexist; has formal DOP and directorial knowledge with skills; did research with intent to the topic and to that specific joke, and the written correspondence where constructed with an appreciative understanding to behavioural psychology. Also, Anon had no intention of taking any credit.

“Unofficially I just didn’t want to be seen as a sex kitten-dog slave forward stroke secretary...anymore... and decided this was a good opportunity to prove an understanding of that camera move by slightly adapting it to suit the situation.”

Anon    (Cash not charge!)

P.S

"I used to be a dyslexic come part time secretary, I gave good phone, amazing what a good joke can do and a little bit of male (gender specific) taunting...as I new I could do it!"