Macbeth

On Saturday night I went to see The Rude Mechanicals production of Shakespeare's Macbeth. I have seen quite a few performances by the Rudes but this one was by far the best. The acting was the best I have seen from the cast, the battle and fights scenes were fantastic, and the entire tone of the play was downright creepy. I know when the cast is good when they can make me cringe in my seat (which does not happen that often).

I did know most of the story of Macbeth before hand, which did make it less confusing as most Shakespeare plays can be to those who are unfamiliar with the events. The play was the longest I've seen the Rudes put on (it was 2 1/2 hours) but the pacing went relatively quick). Overall, I was very impressed by what the Rude Mechanicals were able to do. Great job!

Episode finished

So last week, we filmed the last sketches for the episode. As I had problems gathering people to be extras for the original sketch we had planned, I had to quickly come up with a new sketch that we could film in the allotted time we had schedule. Overall, that sketch came out relatively well, even though I was worried that it was not going to be any good.

With the help of Chris, we edited the project together, adding both opening credits and transitions between sketches. I am very pleased with the overall outcome. It looks (to me) as something that could be shown on Adult Swim. It has the independent look and is only 15 minutes long.

I am looking forward to being able to show it to an audience to see what they think. From the few people who we have shown the sketches have given us a good response. So, hopefully, other people will appreciate the comedy as well.

Now all I have to do is create my presentation board and create my portfolio. I'm hoping that will be less stressful than trying to get the episode filmed.

Cultural Events

I believe I have mentioned the cultural events I have been to so far, but I am not sure I correctly managed to explain exactly what I did and what the events were about. I felt I should take this opportunity to revisit the events which I have attented.

This past Tuesday, Oct 25, I attended the Sigma Tau Delta monthly poetry reading. This group meets at the Blue Moon on the last Tuesday of every month and people are welcomed to read poetry (or anything else). Usually there is a theme to the readings, and this weeks theme was "What you believe in". There were quite a few readers who all read something different. A few people read their own work, which is always interesting to hear. People have many different tastes. While the work that is read surrounding the theme is interesting, I noticed that above all, there is a lot of fun and friendship that goes on at the readings. The listeners do not care what people read, they just like to be there and share in the artistic nature of literature.

Along with this, I attended Sigma Tau Delta's Literary Conference earlier in the month. I believe I posted a blog after on this subject. During this conference, I presented two papers (one creative, one critique) as well as sat through many other presenters. It was very interesting to see what students, not only from Shepherd, but other colleges write about. There are some very bright and intelligent people around, and it is good to know that young people are willing to work hard on English papers and critique other works.

The week before the conference, I attended the Writer's Masterclass with Ron Rash. These were different people from not only Shepherd, but Shepherdstown, who submitted their original work, in both poetry and prose, and were able to read their work in front of Ron Rash and an audience. They were than able to receive critical feedback from both Rash and the audience in how they might be able to improve your work. What I found most interesting about this, was that I got to hear work from people other than students. Mainly, I am only able to read original work from other students in classes, but this allowed me to see what other writers were working on. I noticed a strong difference between the older writers and the younger writers. I felt the younger writers had a stronger (or maybe more energetic) voice. This is not to say the older writers were not good, but there is a difference between the generations.

So far, those are the three events I have been to and they have all been worthwhile in my opinion. I would recommend if people get the chance they should try to attend a similar event.

Sketch #3

This past Monday we shot our third sketch, which I feel was our best one so far. As a sketch, I feel that it has a more narrative structure, with a full beginning, middle and end. The humor is still rather random and outthere, but I think it is our stongest work so far. After having feedback from other people, they also think that it is the strongest one so far.

The next few sketches that we are going to be filming are much longer and have more story to tell so I think that will be a good challenge for us to see how well our filming skills are.

First sketches shot

On Monday, we had our first filming and completed two sketches. They were only the very short sketches, about a minute each, so it did not take us too terribly long. They came out rather well too. I was pretty impressed of what we created in such a short time. This coming Monday we plan on shooting another sketch. The only thing I really have to work on next is music for the show and opening and closing credits. I also thought, depending on how long the final product is, we might need to add segue shots, such as they do in Kids in the Hall. Just clips of town or random bits.

I have been reading the book "Gasping for Airtime" by Jay Mohr, who of course is a well known stand up and actor, but he also spent a few years behind the scenes at Saturday Night Live. From his stint there, he was not as successful as he wanted to be, but he gives great insight to what it is like there and why he was not as successful.

It appears to be a very fast paced and difficult show to work for. Of course, you have to pitch your sketch ideas and hope that they get picked up for writing, but even if they do there is no chance that they will air, even if they are picked to air on the show. Mohr says that they have a really strange work schedule, which is basically random at times. People making decisions and rewriting scripts that they did not come up with. He also says that they are up at all hours of the night and day writing scripts, since the main writing comes on Wednesday for a Saturday shoot. That does not give the writers or performers a lot of time.

While at times, it does seem like it can be a cutthroat business there, I don't know how I would like to work there. On top of that, I don't know if I would even last there. I think I could come up with some good sketches but whether they make in on the show is a whole other thing. It also appears to be difficult to even make it on the show, as a writer or performer. Many of the staff are stand ups and the producers would go out to see them perform and then ask for them to be on the show. I am not a stand up so I don't know how my chances would be to even be considered.

I'm not too worried about it though, since I haven't found much of SNL in the past few years to be any good. I'd still take a job there though.

Sigma Tau Delta Conference

Yesterday I had the pleasure to both attend and present papers at the Sigma Tau Delta conference in Knutti. I was in two panels; a fiction panel, and a Postmodern/Modernism panel. There were some very good stories in the first panel. The four of us who presented were all from Shepherd. There are some pretty good writers within the school. i also saw good writers last week when i went to the writer's master class for fiction and poetry which had Ron Rash as a guest.

My second panel dealt with post-modernism/modernism and post-colonialism in novels. I was really impressed by the work and originality students have with a difficult subject like those. I think my paper was the least impressive out of the other 3. I think I had a good idea, but i don't think I had the best written paper. But, what can you do.

Overall it was a great experience and a fun day. Hopefully next year, more students from Shepherd and other colleges submit papers.

Ramis on Comedy

In the book "And Here's the Kicker", there are many interviews with famous/ established comedy writers and what they think about their profession and comedy in general.

One interview inparticular I really liked reading was with Harold Ramis, who wrote Ghostbusters and Caddyshack and many other great 80's comedies (as well as being a pretty good director in the comedy genre). Before he wrote those movies he worked at Second City and wrote for SCTV. He said that SCTV was good because it was obscure and they embraced their obscurity. I like to think the comedy that I write and will be doing in my sketch show is obscure and underground.

I feel that the comedy we do is much more creative and "out-there" compared to what I see other students doing. I don't find a lot of the videos I see unique or very creative. I hope that what we are going to do is obscure and will get people watching because it is so underground and punk-like. As Ramis said, SCTV were the underdogs comapred to SNL. I think that is what we are. We don't have a lot of people backing us, we don't have a lot of connections and materials. We have to focus on being creative, trying to be funny, and doing something new and on our own.

I prefer to work like that too I think. That way we can come out of the blind side and hit people with something their not expecting.

Finally!

Through all my research so far I have finally found talk about sketch writing. Gene Perret who wrote "The New Comedy Writing" also wrote for the Carol Burnett show and has a chapter in his book all about sketch writing. The information is also pretty detailed and gave me a lot of insight to sketch writing.

Perret says that sketches need to consist of 1. A Premise 2. Some complications 3. As resolution (or ending). By the look of the sketches I wrote, I feel I have all 3 of these. However, my sketches are not very long so the 3 of these elements seen to blend together.

Perret does a lot of detailing of how he wrote sketches and the problems he had in trying to work out the resoultions. Some of them worked and some didn't, so rewrites had to be done and that type of thing. What he does a good job at is explaining what a premise actually is. It is not simply, "A man works in a power plant" as that is just a setting. The premise would be "A man works in a power plant and spills coffee on the board knocking out power to the power plant" (that is a bad example but shows exactly what a premise is). You have to have something happen. I think, for the most part, the sketches I have do that.

After reading Perret I think that I work somewhat backwards in the realm of sketch writing. Instead of coming up with a premise and working to a resolution (which Perret says is the most difficult part) I always seem to have the end of the sketches in mind, and have to work my way to that. I prefer this method since to me, the endings are the most important, it gives the audience the jolt, or the punchline. I don't think there is a right or wrong way, that is just the way I write my comedy.

As well, Perret made a great point in that not all jokes have to be great jokes. Some need to be less funny than others as the laughter is a type of snowball effect. Little laughs grow to bigger ones, and than after the big laugh the little jokes carry on the laughter. That made me feel differently about my main sketch in the script I wrote. Someone said that the jokes that ended the segments may need a sharper punch. I agreed but after reading that I thought that the main sketch has the greatest surprise ending, so I shouldn't have enormous laughs before it. Leave those to the littler sketches and end on a crazy note.

We will see how it goes.

1st Script Finished

I have finished the script for the first episode of the sketch show and am pretty pleased with it. Of course, during the course of filming more than likely things will change (dialogue, plot, etc) but at this moment I think it is pretty solid. I have shown it to quite a few people and have heard good things. I would probably have prefered some more critique but for people who aren't writer's, sometimes they don't know what to look for. As long as it makes sense to them and they find some of it funny I take that as a good sign.

As for my research, I am still looking around for books and articles. There still does not seem to be a lot of books about sketch comedy. But, today I recieved some more interlibrary loan books on SNL and Second City, so hopefully they will have some useful information.

Next thing I plan to do is have a film crew meeting as well as drawing up some storyboards and finding locations (most of those have already been found).

Comedy Resources

It has been relatively difficult to find many sources (or at least scholarly ones) on comedy, and especially sketch comedy. For some reason, people don't feel the need to write about it. However, I have found some books of comedy techniques and how to write for TV and that sort of thing. The book I am looking through right now is called "The New Comedy Writing". It is written by Gene Perret who used to write jokes for Phyllis Diller and other television shows.

What he has said is that comedy, like anything else, can be improved through practice. He also gives examples of what a comedy writer should do to help their writing. For instance, he says that writers should be able to proficient with language, since most jokes come from words. The better you are with words, and their meanings, the better your jokes could be. He also says you should be able to visualize and scan your surroundings for jokes.

Some of this may sound straight forward, but he does a great job of explaining why it is useful (something i probably haven't done). These are things I normally do anyway, but it is refreshing to hear someone say this, especially who has become a big shot in the comedy writing game. It makes me feel that I'm on the right track.

Some writing, more needed

Recently, I have just been working on writing the sketches for the television show. The ones I have written I am pretty happy with. They are short, but so far I have received a good response from the people who I have shown them too. Hopefully, they will translate well to the screen. I have a good feeling about them though.

I still need more sketches. I have other ideas, but a lot of them may be out of the realms of what I will be able to work with. I know other ideas will come to me, but I need to stop forcing them, since that is when nothing comes to me.

I have been watching The Kids in the Hall and paying close attention to how they structure their sketches, as well as the content within them. I find them very funny because the sketches are, at times, very strange (or the idea around the character(s) scenarios is weird). The sketches can be pretty smart too, which I think makes them funnier. I would like my sketches to be within the same realm as theirs in a sense. Though, my ideas don't tend to be so outrageous to start with, but the endings of them should have a type of shock element to them. I think that is how good comedy works, since you don't see the joke coming.

Also, with The Kids in the Hall, in the later series they are sketches that continue throughout the episode. That was how I was planning on doing mine. Have one major sketch, with a story arch, and placing mini ones in between. This idea comes up in another show that I will mention in my next post.

Here is a sketch from The Kids in the Hall I think is really smart.

Quick update

So far, I have basically just been working on the sketch/tv show ideas. They are coming along. I realise that it is going in a slightly different direction than I initially intended, but one which I think is going to be pretty weird. A little darker perhaps too. The different direction is mainly that the sketches are longer than I anticipated, but they are going to stretch over the entire series (There would be a 6 episode season, which I'm basing off a normal British series length, which I am influenced by).

Also, I have been looking for different resources. The main aspect of that is just digging around to see what I can find and what I feel will be useful for my project.

Other than that, nothing too exciting to mention. I find these initial stages pretty slow. Whoa is the life of sketch comedy.

How to Begin a Comm Capstone

I am re-posting this post on this blog since I think I did it incorrectly on the previous one. So if anyone read that one, this is the same stuff.

This is my first entry for the Capstone and so far I've been running behind. I missed the entire first week of school due to some stupid flu (which I never get) so I have been playing catch up with all classes.

What I have done for the Capstone, is I have decided on what I will be doing. I am going to center my Capstone around my comedy writing. I will also be doing a complete first episode of a comedy-sketch television show. I also want to try to finish the play I wrote as well as write at least another script (considering a comic book format) so I will have an extensive portfolio.

The main focus for my Capstone is going to be on the writing, so while those of us who will be in the show are not professional actors, I am more concerned with the overall structure and writing of the episode than on the quality of the filming.

With that said, I am going to make this the best I can and am not going to half-ass anything. I figure this is a unique opportunity so better take advantage of it.

So far, I know what the show will be about and the structure I want to take it. I have most of the sketches planned out, but I just need to begin to actually write them. That should be the easiest part. I hope.