Posts Tagged ‘london comedy writers’

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Red Planet Prize – Dress Rehearsal

Monday, July 26th, 2010

I had hoped to get this out much sooner, but better late than never.  I have before on this blog discussed my own troubles with those precious top ten pages. I have even looked at some examples of great openings.  The Red Planet Prize (and many readers) judge a script on the first ten pages (although a script reader friend of mine says you can tell bad script much quicker than that).  The top ten has to set up the characters, the conflict, the story, the goals, set up the world and establish the style.  It is a lot to ask for and it needs to flow.

In this meeting of the London Comedy Writers the main issues saw the principle dilemma of the script not being readily established, we were introduced to characters, but we had no idea what was at stake. In another script there was a rush to get so much information in that the lack of planning showed up, we were bombard with scenes that would have played better being shown over a larger sum of pages.  This is often what happens in a unplanned first draft when all the ideas are bouncing around trying to get onto the page.

The best example came from Robin Bailes‘ “Empire”, this was possibly one of my favourite things I have seen in the group in a while. In his first ten pages he fully established a world, what was at stake in the episode and set up the themes for a whole series. The flaw in the script was weighting of the stories, it was unclear who the main character was and what the main story was.  Since one character was so extrovert and controlling he tended to dominate the scenes taking focus from a character who had higher emotional stakes. For a successful script we need to be able to move beyond the mcguffin and identify what the emotional journey is, what does that character have to learn and what do they stand to lose if they don’t.

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Tessa, Adam and webisodes

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

This week at the London Comedy Writers we read the first 5 episodes of Brett Snelgrove’s webseries Tessa and Adam.  A simple two hander exploring the relationship between a Brit boy and a Dutch dame.  A strong enough premise, but one that needs to focus more on who the characters are rather than the situations they find themselves in.  A key difference is a recurring sketch and webisode will be depth of the characters. I would write more about Tessa and Adam, but Brett has written an excellent blog on what he got from the meeting, so you should read that instead.

Instead I will look at the debate about the nature of a webisode and the hell it is.

It is hardly surprising people don’t know what exactly a webisode is, despite the term being around for over 10 years Websters only got around to acknowledging it 2009.  Basically put a webisode is a  single episode of a series that first aired over the internet, either streamed or downloaded. If you have a whole bunch of webisodes then you have yourself a webseries. It is generally accepted that a webisode will have runtime of 4-15 minutes, but I suspect that this will continue to increase as web TV gains in popularity. Reasons for the short length at the have been to do with budgets, YouTube limits and bandwidth (ie the speed it takes to download an episode). Broadband is now standard and streaming full length shows is no longer a problem, you only have to look at the popularity of BBC iplayer to see that. YouTube now allows longer videos and there are other sites that will stream and host material. Finally cost. This use to be a barrier in creating good quality shows, but digital technology is now much cheaper. For £10,000 you can buy yourself better equipment than is used currently on many mainstream TV shows. Mobisodes are the same thing, although originally coined  as show for mobile phones the prevalence of the internet on phones has rendered this a thing of the past.

The next thing you have to understand is that a webisode is a broad term, it is basically a TV show on the web.  This means a webisode can be drama, comedy, documentary, hosted, political, animated and even reality.

Knowing this, this should free you up in your writing.  The web provides a massive opportunity for people to break through and get noticed.  Distribution which has been for so long a barrier creatives has now been shattered. A BBC3 show will be considered a hit for topping 2 million viewers.  Meanwhile this episode of Fred has a staggering 37 million views, what makes this more shocking is that Fred is currently the second most subscribed YouTube channel in the world and you have probably never heard of it, much like the number one channel Nigahiga. This shows that your videos don’t need to go viral to be a success, you create characters that people like and then tell interesting stories, the audience will find show if it is what they are looking for.

Hopefully we will be seeing more webisodes in the future as this is an exciting medium ready to be exploited.

So in parting I will leave you with a few different series that are floating around on the web.

You Suck at Photoshop – masquerading as tool to teach photoshop you can enjoy the host’s life fall apart over the series.

The Guild – Streamy award winning sitcom.

Gemini Division – Produced by NBC as exclusive online content the sci-fi drama stars Rosario Dawson and a ton of product placement.

Hardly Working – What goes behind the scenes at College Humour.

Red vs Blue – Now starting up on its 11th season, this web series follows 2 opposing soldiers in the Halo universe.

DJ School – ComComedy launches their first webseries, with hopefully more on the way.

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Cinders and laws of pantomime.

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

It was another packed week at the LCW with people forced into corners as a fresh stock of actors took to the stage.  With Christmas just round the corner it seems fitting that this week’s feature script was a modern retelling of Cinderella dubbed Cinders.   The finished product is due to be performed in Primrose Gardens, Belsize Park on the 12th, 13th, 18th (adults only special) 19th and 20th of December (more details soon). The big lesson for other writers at the LCW to learn from this reading is how beneficial a polished cast actors are to a reading. Although we try to cast scripts ahead of the meetings, we don’t have the time to rehearse them, so to some extent much of the reading is done on sight. Sarah and Tom took the time to put together a cast who were fully aware of what the roles required and were thus able to give a confident performance.

Moving onto the script itself, there was much debate about traditional pantomime laws (someone said the army had to be involved, someone else said you can no longer throw out sweets as health and safety wants to prevent blindness by Haribo). A phrase often used is “You must know the rules before you can break them”, and in the case of ‘Cinders’ while there was a nod towards the panto genre, there was much that seemed missing.  There was no audience participation song, no cries of “behind you you”, very few double entendres and the Ugly Sisters were woefully underused as villains to rile up the crowd and make Cinders’ life a misery. But all of these points are easily fixed in rewrites and after all that is why a script comes to the group.

Structurally the script suffered from a large ensemble cast all fighting for attention.  The traditional role of Buttons was split between him and a new character dubbed ‘Narrator’, Buttons came off worse in this deal.  Instead of being the best friend and confident of Cinders he just wandered in every now and again giving him very little opportunity to interact with the audience or become a character we cared about.   In this humble writers opinion the two characters would be better off if they merged into one serving the duel purpose of guiding the audience and also showing us why we care about what happens to Cinders.

As mentioned before the ugly sisters were underused, they should be more involved in Cinder’s miserable life so we can see why she wants to escape to a better life.  However this use of introducing something and not using it to full effect within the story was perhaps the biggest problem.  With so many ideas being thrown on the table many of them felt like weird insider jokes rather than tools of story telling. The lesson here is if you introduce an idea, you should pay it off. In Cinders one of the characters can read minds, it is repeated over and over again and in the end the skill is used to find Cinders in the basement… except like a real mind reader, he only claims that she is in there after she burps and someone says “that must be her!”  So there was no reason for the character to have this skill.  A comparison would a Bond film where Bond gets given a car that can go underwater and then gets in a boat to cross a river. Sometimes these things remain in a script because it is hard to bite the bullet and kill your darlings, but sometimes it has to be done.

On the plus side Cinders is an ambitious project with a very talented cast, there are some fantastic characters such as the Supreme Makeover Fairy (an excellent modernisation of the fairy god mother) who really lift the script up.  I have no doubt that the production will have successful run, so stay tuned for details in the near future.

Finally there is no pantomime law that says the army has to be involved.

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Against Nature and asorted sketches

Friday, October 30th, 2009

We have a format at the London Comedy Writers that goes sketch, sitcom, sketch; occasionally we will play with the format and it is a success – such as Sketchageddon. Sometimes we bend the rules for regular members and read a play or the first 30 pages of a film script and for reasons that are not clear, it never works as well.

This week we bent the rules and allowed the first 40 pages of a feature length screenplay and it didn’t work. The main reason appeared to be that it was not a reading script, it was a shooting script loaded with shot after shot of visual details that were insignificant to the plot. Narrators kill the pace of scripts as actors rarely had a chance to build a back forth before being interrupted with more visuals. Furthermore because “smoke rings kissing the skylight” was given the same weight as water ski washing up on the shore which turn was given the same weight as pubic hair plucked from the couch the audience have no idea what is an important detail and what is glitter.

As rule people watch films and listen to TV, so it is understandable that a film script will include far more visuals than a sitcom. However, unless you are a great writer and in demand neither the director nor the actors care when you think someone should put their arm around someone else or when the camera should focus on a skylight. If you feel so strongly about these choices then you might as well direct.

The other problem with film scripts in this forum is that the audience does not get a full sense of the story, even with the last 100 pages summed up, it is not as satisfying as a reading where we get to hear the ending performed. In a way it’s sad, but we will close the door on feature scripts, it is still something I would like to explore in the future, but the LCW just is not the venue for such ventures.

Sketch wise we were on form with the tightly written Pirate Day, it knew the ending and wasted no time getting there. PC Hulk explored too many ideas and doing so lost its sense of purpose.

An interesting meeting to be sure and the feedback from those in attendance was some of the best thought out and delivered I have see in a long time.

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Misanthropology and more pronouncable sketches

Saturday, October 17th, 2009

It was the smallest gathering in some time, but I put that down to only week passing since the last meeting; that aside, the numbers still kicked ass compared to what they were like when I first wandered into this group 6 years ago.

We kicked off with a sketch by Gareth, he normally has something in his back pocket and today it was a tribute to X-Factor sob stories, well observed, but climaxing in his usual dive into the gutter and an ending someone pointed out was similar to Little Miss Sunshine (I didn’t have the heart to say that the film had now been ruined for me), but it was an enjoyable way to start the meeting.

Jon Neale stepped up next, following his last effort which was perfectly criticised for being a series of great jokes in search of a sketch.  This week he was much more focused with a simple phone call.  In the sketch we only hear one person’s voice and it was pointed out that in general people don’t handily repeat everything they are told  and some other devices to reveal what the operator was saying would work wonders in what was another well observed and funny sketch.

Our third sketch ‘Where Have All the Bistros Gone‘ came from Robin Bailes who has a known dislike for the style. Intended for stage, the sketch was based around the town and country divide. Main criticism was levelled at the slow start and the half page of additional material that followed a passionate and funny speech.

Finally we come to our main feature, ‘Misanthropology‘ by self confessed Seinfeld addict Alex Papakyriacou. Pulling no punches Alex was quick to confess that although the names were changed this was his attempt at a Seinfeld script, from the situations, locations, characters and running jokes.  This is a situation we have never had in the group before, we have never had what is, in almost every sense, a ‘spec script’. This made criticism that slightly more complicated as people tried to rack their brains about what use such a script would hold. Although it is possible to get on a show’s writing team by producing a great spec script, it helps if that show is still in production. Taken on its own merits, people unfamiliar with Sienfeld were lost under the weight of so many characters, those familiar however, could follow with ease. While this might be deemed a success in the tribute box, it means it was failure as a pilot. The three plot lines were given almost equal weight which made it hard to identify an “A” story  or a primary perspective. Structurally the characters were kept apart for too much of the script and the non-recurring characters thrown into the mix were given as much screen time as the main characters. Anyone who was in the group at the start of the year would have remembered the ending from an earlier short from Alex. Sadly this ending in the new context was too convenient, relying on series slightly implausible events followed by a gross misunderstanding to get the pay off. With the loose theme of meat to tie everything together Misanthropology was an interesting exercise, but I doubt much can be done with the finished product.

One thing I do need to address, because I hear it too often, Seinfeld did have plots and was a very well constructed sitcom. Just because they built episodes around small things like buttons, toys and spare keys does not mean there was no plot. I thank you.

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The Daily Grind & other sketches

Saturday, October 10th, 2009

Another packed meeting, so let’s get down with what we had.

First up was Joel Soetendorp two-part sketch “Drawn Together“, a clever title that was actually not mentioned (but also shares the name of an cartoon reality hybrid show ). As is often the case with sketches, they go on too long, they are built around a single joke and then padded out because a one page script looks a little sad.  However when the script is built solely around a single idea, one page is plenty, any more than that and you have to have worthwhile characters who your audience invest in.  Joel’s script fell into this trap with an early punchline that was never matched by anything that followed, but it was a great early gag.

So, speaking of character led comedy, next up we had Brett Snelgrove’s webisode idea “The Knot”. The 5 minute scene presented us with a unique couple in a fun situation, sure it was saggy and needs some rewrites, but he is definitely on the right track.  The question is, was it a sketch or was it webisode? Tough to tell, right now I am leaning towards sketch because I got no sense of an over arching storyline for the future, but this could change.

Our last sketch came from Jon Neale and his script “Miss World”, packed with some great gags, it was best explained as a bunch of jokes in search of a sketch. The sketch jumped around all over the place and while it got laughs, the inconsistencies in structure makes it useless in it’s current form.

Our main feature “The Daily Grind” by Shereen Docherty was warmly received following a passionate reading from our actors and as usual it generated much debate. One of the things that gets thrown up in feedback is correct formatting, since Shereen’s script was 1.5 spaced, the 30 pages took just over 20 minutes to read, shorter than a sit-com should be. The page a minute guide is a good one, but personally I don’t care that much on a script which is coming to the group for feedback.  I expect them to be too long, or too short because it’s a draft.  Even when it comes to correct formatting these are many different styles and at the end of the day as a long as it looks like a script you will be just fine. Of course formatting on Word can be hard, so if you are looking for a free script writing program try out Zhura or Celtx. Next up was the use of named music tracks, this falls into the same category of putting in named products.  There is this myth that a prospective buyer of your script will look at your choice of music or use of a name brand and bin your script lest they have to pay out the big bucks to licence them.  In reality they don’t care because hopefully your great story, snappy dialogue and fascinating characters will out weigh the mild inconvenience of changing “Coca Cola” to “cola”.   This is not to say that you now have a green card to ram your script full of product placement and hit songs, a good rule is only put it in if it helps enrich your script, if you can cut it, cut it. That might sound like I am going back on myself, but that “cut it” rule should apply to everything in your script; if it serves no purpose, cut it.

On the character front Shereen had succeeded in creating some interesting characters, although it was disappointing that on the rare occasion where we have a female scriptwriter we were still lacking in good roles for women. As a pilot the ensemble piece was a little confused since we did know who’s story we were really following. Something we see often in a script at the LCW is the main character just seemed to be along for the ride, things happen to him and around him without him having to make any decisions. The inactive protagonist is a common problem in event led scripts, remember let the characters lead the story, no the events.

Well that is all for this week and just in time as we have another meeting in 3 days.

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Please Help Me, Toilet Humour and Porn

Saturday, September 26th, 2009

While the turn out at the meeting was high, we were quite short on the ground for ladies when it came to the reading.  Sad really, as this was a rare occasion when we actually had roles for them (as a male dominated group, female characters only seem to rear their head to provide a companion to the males in the script.)

Anyway, our main feature tonight came curtsey of Martin Price and Lawrence Scholey, their script entitled Please Help Me saw a group of flat mates throw a party.  Warmly received by the group for its humour and creative events, there was of course plenty of ideas for improvement. Although the script flowed quite nicely, many considered it to be a series of sketches rather than coherent plot. A slave to the devices, the script failed to set up any of the events before they happened, this left audience surprised, but missed out on the trick of building anticipation.  The idea of throwing a party although a fine idea does not work for a pilot or spec script.  Since a party involves so many people it does not give a good idea of how the series would play out, we don’t know who are the regular characters, and who are just around for that episode. The originality of the idea was also questioned, it is well known that every writer has a flat share script in their back pocket, right next to their heaven and hell script, there would have to be something special in that script to make it stand out in the crowd. Being Human after a year in development solved this problem by making one character a werewolf, one a ghost and the other a vampire.

As writers we will often draw on our own life experience when writing a script, the mistake we often make is to take just the events and characters that we fondly (or not) remember and forget the emotion behind it.  We hide our deeper feelings behind the visual, but it is that emotion which makes real characters that the audience connects with.  Inside we share many of the same vulnerabilities and fears and we can sympathise when we get to see it in others. Since Please Help Me was based on many real life experiences it could have benefited from revealing a little more depth and brutal honesty in the characters.

Sketch wise we had The Flush by Mark Leeson a charming piece of character interaction on the serious matter of phone etiquette. The visuals needed Porn Sketch by yours truly brought up interesting debate, but from my point of view the visual nature of the sketch could not be captured in a reading, so I am still not sure the best way display what I believe is a very strong idea.

ComComedy had a weekend full of filming, a series of office sketches were produced using material supplied by members of the group and call has been put out for sketches based in a park.  You can find more details on ComComedy here.

Right, back to writing for me now. Until next time.

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Sketchageddon III

Friday, September 11th, 2009

Well it has been quite the exhausting couple of days, not too much sleep and stressful days, but duty says I have to comment on our last meeting or this blog is a bit pointless..

Sketchageddon III was yet another mighty success for the London Comedy Writers, at least when I remembered to cast the scripts. Whoops.  Anyway, lets see what we had.

Acceptable Discrimination?, Body Harvest, and Big Issue by Gareth Moore, – The winner of last months blog contest hit the floor running three sketches, general consensus was tighten them at the top… except the last one which at 3 lines was short enough.  Debate rages about whether you can still take the piss out of ginger people.

The Art of Wally by Olly Allsopp, – Equally well received and with one person even commenting that it was one of the finest Wally based sketches he had ever heard.

The Present by Sally Ingrey, – Not so much a sketch, but scene from a film, wonderful dialogue, interesting characters.

Owning a Break-up and Carbs and Bombs by Ahmed III – The first sketch pulled an excellent slight of hand on the audience, while the second one that paired an airhead and a suicide bomber had an interesting mix emotions, but ultimately very funny.

I Was Also Thinking of Writing a Script by Anon II – In response to last week’s anonymous script, another was submitted, a fantastically funny homage to the original.  If only we knew who were writing these… maybe it was the same person….

Absolute Weakest Link by Luke Llyons, Class Conscious by Jeremy Davies and John’s last minute submission were all well received, however all suffered from similar ideas being done before.  This lead to an interesting debate about the originality of characters and ideas, or whether once they are performed, even be it over 20 years ago can  no one else go there? Deliberate or not.

The Lamb and Lion by Douglas Hooker – again this was less a sketch and more a scene from something larger, there were nice moments, but ultimately most felt that this was character exploration for the writer rather than a story.

Cuba Libre by Sally Sheringham – Two men in Cuba, this script had some great moments, although as is quite often the case, was over written at the start and the ending didn’t quite work. Some thought it would be better to explore a longer version, perhaps a feature film.

Middle Earth and Drone Controllers by Joel Soetendorp – Two short nicely written if somewhat surreal pieces, great take on the military and Middle Earth.

Finally Matthew Jessee presented the first of what I hope will be many webisodes from the group.  Sadly by the time we got round to this everyone was tired, while we are normally done by about 9.30, in an effort to get everyone’s sketches in we had over run and it was nearing 10.15.  The energy had left the room and reading came out oddly flat. Comments were fairly positive although the script still held too close to a scene from a sitcom rather than a single self contained story. Since the script Desperate was originally written as sitcom, it now needs a lot of changes to make it work in significantly different medium.  This means cutting down on locations, telling smaller stories and focusing mainly on a single character.

Well that is all for now. At some point when I have processed my thoughts I will comment on my Fourth Plinth disaster, and thank you to all those who offered such kind words of support. Like they say, life goes on and it doesn’t matter how you fall, but how you pick yourself back up.

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The Commuters and other anonymous adventures

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

Packed house for this London Comedy Writers meeting and for good reason.  A new dawn is indeed dawning, but I will get on to that in a bit.

The main feature saw Jeremy Davies return with a new version of his script “The Commuters”. When originally read in the group 2 years ago the idea got the thumbs up for a great idea, but there was criticism that it didn’t use the setting to its full potential.  The audience was desperate to see their experiences immortalised in script form, but felt these opportunities had been missed. So what good has 2 years done?  Well the version read out tonight was a cut down version for the Sitcom Trials and although Jeremy had planned to extend and tighten the deadline came around much quicker than he expected and was forced to hand over the script as was.  The result was a script that was not too dissimilar from the last. Again the majority saw the promise and the possibilities in the idea and credited some of the comic characters such as the happy train driver and gossiping ticket inspectors.  Jeremy himself admits it may be time to bring on a co-writer to help formulate the idea further and give himself more time.  Send me a message if you are interested.  Or you can swing by Jeremy’s blog “The Happy Commuter”.

Controversy followed after the break with a sketch entitled “I thinking of writing a script”, anonymously submitted.  Well I say anonymous, but that is my fault because after the sketch was submitted the author wasn’t sure if it should go in.  I maintained it should and so I forced it in under the protection of anonymity.  Although slightly mental towards the end the script tapped into ideas that many members of the group have considered writing themselves. Like schools or workplaces the London Comedy Writers is full of characters, some crazy, some withdrawn, some opinionated and some just wrong. Anonymous may have opened the doors to something.  Already lined up for next week’s Sketchageddon is another anonymously submitted script “I was also thinking of writing a script.”

We also had the announcement of a partnership with ComComedy and London Comedy Writers.  You can read more about that here and I will discuss it more next week.

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Blames Direct

Friday, August 14th, 2009

This week at the London Comedy Writers Alex Howley returned with another episode of his animated sitcom. This proved to be a unique experience because it was quite obvious that he had taken onboard all the feedback from his last reading at the beginning of the year. So was he successful?

I say it many times, but if you can get a laugh out of room full of writers you are doing good and let’s just say there were plenty of laughs. One of Alex’s strongest attributes is his writing style and his unique voice.  I can point to nothing like it and this is a definite bonus.

A problem with readings is that any stage directions can kill a script.  It is not that they shouldn’t be there, but in a reading they should be looked at to see if they are all really needed.  Alex suffered from this in his last reading and so in this script he weighted it much more heavily on dialogue. The response from the group is that he went too far in that direction and didn’t take advantage of visual opportunities that animation provides.

Last time the plot was all over the place, loads of things going on and tons of characters, so this time Alex focused the script on one simple story and again there was the feeling he went too far in that direction. The lack of a sub plot meant that characters spent too much time discussing what was going rather than doing it (Like in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) and a favourite character from the last reading was left in the wings.

Another interesting point was the name calling, the running joke in the show got big laughs in the first half but died off in the second. There was debate whether name calling got less funny or we just got bored of the joke. It was decided we got bored of the joke and that it should be used less liberally.

All in all a great night as we set the record for the most “Twats” in a single script (58 in total). Alex being an animator himself has plans to make a pilot at some point in the future.  You can see some of his animation below.

Quote of the night: “I loved the Judge Dredd joke… and that was about it.” (meant as a compliment)

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