The five things we learnt about making your own comedy show
At the Comedy Crowd we provide the contacts, resources and inspiration to allow comedy creators with an idea to turn it into something amazing. Hearing the experiences of other creators is a great way to learn and spark ideas for your own work, and that’s why we invited the creators of two of our favourite new comedy shows to share their stories.
Steve Stamp is the writer and co-creator of BAFTA winning BBC sitcom People Just Do Nothing (PJDN), a show focussed on the key protagonists at pirate radio station Kurupt FM.
Emma Rasmussen, Natasha Velyn Goldup, and Heather Darcy form sketch trio Don’t Shoot The Mermaid, a brilliant new series of comedy sketches observing the modern world of dating and social media.
People Just Do Nothing and Don’t Shoot The Mermaid are at different stages of their development, but the stories behind both shows demonstrate some common messages that really get to the heart of what aspiring comedy creators should be doing.
The five key messages that stood out to us are:
- Collaborate
- You don’t have to be a full time comedian
- Practise makes perfect
- Find your core audience
- The value of making it
While there were many more inspirational and practical tips for people starting out in comedy, these are the five points that we think should be the foundation for creators looking to make their own comedy show.
- Collaborate
It’s impossible to take a comedy beyond an idea on your own. To film or record requires people with technical skills, but we also should consider collaboration as an essential part of the creative process. Collaborating at this stage allows you to:
- Come up with more ideas
- Test characters and lines
- Gain insights by improvising characters or situations
- Combine skills to enhance the overall product.
Steve Stamp is a writer, but rather than writing alone and creating a masterpiece that no one would read, he worked with the skills of his friends. Funny friends with characteristics that made him laugh. One was a DJ, one made films, two were MCs. They all loved comedy. Kurupt FM was born.
It would have been easy not to collaborate. Steve could have written about people he found amusing without their input, or Allan Mustafa (MC Grindah) could have made people laugh through humorous voices and skit MC sets with no vision, plot or character story to aid development, and with no one to record it. By collaborating, the creators of PJDN were able to take inspiration from one another, get immediate feedback on ideas, and produce visual creative content that ultimately would form the basis of their sitcom.
What if you aren’t lucky enough to have a group of friends who share your comedy style? Don’t Shoot the Mermaid met because Emma put out an advert looking for people to form a sketch group. Now you can also use The Comedy Crowd events to find people to collaborate with.
- You don’t have to be a full time comedian
You have to be dedicated to be successful but it’s possible to make great comedy while balancing other life priorities. Most people who want to make comedy are not already working in the industry, and don’t have the luxury of going at it full time.
Despite developing PJDN over a number of years, working with a highly regarded production company, and filming a pilot with the BBC, Steve Stamp didn’t quit the day job until the first full BBC series was commissioned.
The Mermaids are the same. In fact they are still making critically acclaimed sketches and growing their audience while doing full time jobs.
Both Steve and The Mermaids utilised the free time they did have by building a routine into their weekends, meeting to discuss characters and plot scenes. This really resonated with Pete and I as we had a similar experience writing and filming a teaser for our sitcom script during weekends and holidays.
Be resourceful and use the tools at your disposal. Emma Rasmussen has produced professional looking sketches for Don’t Shoot The Mermaid using iMovie. When additional support is required with the filming, The Mermaids have called upon people they know or have hired people at a low rate to work as additional cameramen. If someone can give you access to a venue, equipment, actors or props, take advantage of it!
- Practise makes perfect
It is vital to take action on your ideas. Not only does this show a portfolio of material, it develops your skills and your project. It is part of the learning process. There’s no point working for months to refine your script before you take the idea off the page and play with it. If you incorporate the ‘making’ of your comedy into the creative process, you will learn quickly what works, and you will get better at production.
By the time People Just Do Nothing was picked up by independent production company Roughcut TV, they had a bank of material they had filmed themselves. It wasn’t all top quality, but the fact that they had practised and showcased the characters in different scenarios meant they had enough good material to put a great pitch together. And that’s what happened. Roughcut took the best bits of the People Just Do Nothing webisodes and sent it to the BBC. Next thing they knew they had a series on BBC3.
The Mermaids make one sketch at a time, and try to make them as often as possible. This enables them to learn and develop each time. Each sketch stands alone as being funny and well produced, but as they learn and get access to greater production resources (by virtue of evidencing their quality) they can be more ambitious. Their first sketch ‘Champagne and a Shit Sandwich‘ is simple to produce, using one fixed camera. More recently they made ‘Does this mean we’re going to have sex?‘, a far more challenging but superbly executed sketch. The skill and experience required to make a content like this can only be gained through practise.
- Find your core audience
Roughcut TV were able to find PJDN because they had built a YouTube following and word of mouth was spreading. Roughcut could see from number of views, comments, and posts about the show that people liked it, and that the early fans were really engaged with the content. Finding and demonstrating your core audience allows you to get feedback and suggestions from engaged viewers, and to prove that:
- The show has strong appeal to at least a very specific audience, and is therefore likely to have potential to appeal to a wider audience if given the right platform
- You are serious about your project and are not looking for someone else to do all the work building an audience
- The value of making it
What stood out to us when watching the original People Just Do Nothing footage was how similar the characters and the Kurupt FM ‘world’ was in the early days and by series 2 on the BBC. Even the cast is the same, with only one or two additions to help develop the storyline. When pressed by Comedy Crowders about BBC interference, Steve had very few examples of how they had changed the creative content.
This is a far cry from stories of writers pitching a script to a broadcasting company, receiving a positive response, and then seeing the creative content completely changed. So why did this happen for PJDN? Even Steve admitted he did not expect it, and at best thought he may be able to demonstrate enough skill to get a job as a writer on something else with the BBC.
The reason is that they had already created the world. The characters were written specifically for the actors, who had mastered their roles and were bought into the process through collaboration from the start. The core fan base was in place and ready to see more. A commitment had been demonstrated from the creative team. It was possible for Steve and his fellow creators to clearly show their vision.
Making it yourself does not mean writing a full 6 part series of sitcom scripts and shooting an entire episode to match the plot. In his excellent podcast “Sitcom Geeks” James Cary often discourages people from making their own show because “it will never look as good as a professional production”. We agree with James in so far as what you make will probably not look as good as a professional product (although Don’t Shoot The Mermaid sketches actually do!). The point is to practise and experiment enough to develop your characters and comedy style, learning and taking feedback as you go along, and ultimately being in a position to showcase your comedy.
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