From zero to comedy show

Making a great comedy show requires the writing, acting and production to all work well together. Each one is equally important and if any are not right then the show won’t work.

So what does this mean for someone starting out with no expertise in one or more of these areas?

If you keep it simple, you can achieve more than you think.

Writing

• A lot of people, us included, dive straight in and try to write a sitcom. But if you start with a short sketch and make it as sharp as possible, you will learn a lot more and have something that you can actually produce yourself
• Find a writing partner, ideally someone you know and whose judgment you trust. So many successful comedies have been written by a 2 person writing team bouncing ideas off one another and making each other laugh, rather than an individual trying to create in isolation. You will quickly learn which parts of your work are funny and have instant feedback

Acting

• Try limiting the number of characters in the scene to 1 or 2. As we said above the acting performance is every bit as important as the writing or production. If you limit the number of actors in your scene then you can focus on making sure they are perfect for the role

Production

• Use a single camera or even a mobile phone to film the scene. Most personal cameras are very high quality now and you may well already own one that can be used for filming. This way you can practise getting those comedy shots just right (check out the Filming and Editing page in our Comedy Academy for some helpful advice)
• Consider making a sketch with no dialogue to practise filming. The hardest part of production is recording the sound, and people are really turned off by a video with poor sound quality (think back to some you have watched and immediately flicked away when the audio is not easy to follow). This is an example of a well executed simple sketch made by two guys in the Comedy Crowd, with no dialogue.

• Post production edits can be made very simply using applications such as iMovie on the Mac, allowing you to add music or sound effects over the top of the picture, and to cut sections of the video.

With more available digital platforms than ever to show your material, commissioning bodies are starting to take notice of well produced amateur comedy shows. One of our favourite examples is People Just Do Nothing, a show that started with a group of friends using their collective skills and improving the quality of the scenes until it was eventually picked up by the BBC:

To make a great comedy show the writing, acting, and production all need to be right. If you keep it simple you can practise all 3.

Don’t wait for opportunity to find you. Take charge yourself and start making your own comedy