By Georgia Woodward

Producer of A Shared House

Reading about the life and work of comedy engineers Amy Poehler, Tina Fey and the gals from Broad City – I felt this overwhelming excitement as a young artist. I noticed the thing these broads had in common was that they were the creators of their work, they kick started their careers by getting people together to make good stuff. They didn’t sit around and wait for a phone call or a green light.

I was inspired by this attitude of being a part of a competitive industry by just literally doing it, taking the industry in your own hands by doing what you love. I contacted a Director, Joshua Lundberg who I had worked with in the past on a short film. We had always shared a similar sense of humour and witty banter– I thought he was a visionary Director; he’s one of those very rare ‘actors Director.’ Who treats his crew and cast like kings and queens. I said to him lightly one day ‘’ I want to make something fun, a series, lets just whip it up in our holidays for shits in giggles.”

What I wanted most was to collaborate with likeminded people and tell a good story in my spare time from drama school and work. Joshua agreed. We decided to strike whilst the iron was hot and we met a few days later over coffee to discuss creating a character driven comedy. We spit balled ideas around for hours around character, concept and form and walked away loaded with ideas.

A few more weeks went by, with no contact. Then one morning as I was sipping my morning coffee, it was around 530am, I received the 1^st drafts of A Shared House. I always remember my gut reaction – I burnt my tongue on my coffee and I actually laughed out loud which isn’t always easy to do on paper. I could see these characters and the world they lived in so clearly, Josh had written with such rhythm and clarity it was enticing. Whilst the script still needed obvious polishing and development, I knew we were onto something.

Months went by, Josh was in the middle of a degree whilst writing the series, and I was at drama school also trying to get a degree. All through those months we worked and grew the world of A Shared House. Whilst we wanted to create something for fun both Josh and I share the same values in terms of professional, polished products and work by the mantra of “Do something, do it properly”.

We met with designers early in the process who designed our logo and the branding for the series; we went through the casting process and began our social media marketing (with no experience in the area). I can’t stress enough how much we winged, we learnt on the job. Very quickly A Shared House had gone from being this fun little project, to something we felt had legs and perhaps a journey ahead of it

Then came production week. We gathered up our birthday and Christmas money to pay for food on set and few costumes, wrangled together a group of generous professionals and incredible talent. We felt very lucky to have such brilliant artists work for free.

We had a week to shoot approx. 4 x 15 -20 minute episodes. Josh’s friends gave us their bachelor pad to shoot in. The only available week to shoot was in the winter. In 2015 July had its coldest winter on record during the week we shot. We shot out completely out sequence, our schedule made no practical sense but was the best we could do given time and money, our location was still being lived in the entire week, our family members catered and our lead character had curly hair with the actress (me) having straight hair = 3 hrs in make up.

It was a small pocket of time we had to get the work done, we had every obstacle you could imagine in the way. I was a first time producer and playing Charlotte, I’d arrive on set a 7AM and pull underwear off the line, scrub the bathroom and kitchen with our designer, Rhys Farmer and then be called into make up – it was a bizarre experience. Josh was allergic to hairspray but we needed a tone of it to keep my curls in tact and it was mother f****ing freezing!

Much to Josh and my surprise and delight, there wasn’t an argument during the entire shoot. Our cast and crew worked like one big machine – listening and building on each other’s ideas. We all embraced the reality of working on an indie production and laughed the entire time. It sounds lame, but it was truly magic, everyone was there because they loved the script and wanted to see it made, everyone wanted to do what they enjoy doing in a business where it’s not always that easy. There is an incredible energy that comes from experiences like that, I believe that it develops and engages an artist’s muscularity, patience and teamwork like no other experience really can.

We left the house and went into post production, Josh was up to his ears in editing for a few of his student films that he was working on at the same time, And I had dropped out of school to work on ASH, I had a gut feeling that this show was a game changer and I needed to wholeheartedly participate, I have never regretted it. After many anxiety attacks, sleep less nights, endless conversations – Season 1 of A Shared House went Live on Friday November, 13^th 2015. The same day as the dreadful Terrorist attacks in Paris, a terrible time to release a comedy series on the Internet, we just felt really wrong. On a business end, it meant rightfully so…no one would be watching our show.

A Shared House hit over 1,300 views on it’s first weekend live (a sweet little achievement for an unknown intellectual property) and was titled “The Best Web Series of 2015” by online web series critic WEBSERIES2WATCH (WHAT U WANT 2 WATCH), It received a 9/10 rating by The AU Review and was well received by it’s audiences. It kick started it’s festival journey with an Official Selection at LA Web Fest to take place in April 2016 at Warner Brothers Studio in Burbank, California.

Since the day of it’s release Josh, the team and myself continued to find ways to better the series. In terms of it’s social media presence, marketing strategies and planning for future seasons. We aimed to expand our audiences by releasing a Mandarin Subtitled version of the series. A Shared House was fast becoming a business.

Web Series need to fight hard for viewership with the internet having such high traffic it can be a relentless task to get an audience however the web series format, I feel gives such ownership and opportunities for artists to get their stories out their and flex their creative muscles.

In January 2016 we announced that we would make a Season 2 of ASH with intentions of improving every single element we can. This included starting a writer’s room to get fresh minds developing the project and to achieve sharper, more comedic ally rich writing for S2. We are launching a crowd funding campaign on Thursday March 10 2016 with Pozible to hopefully lock done some funds to increase all areas of production values.

A Shared House was a game changer and has high hopes for the future. It’s been a huge journey, with our goals getting bigger everyday. Our cast and crew have become a family and a team that works efficiently. A Shared House was made with a whole lotta love and dedication, enjoy and welcome to the house!

Recently we ran a a survey to find out the main problems faced by our subscribers.  Thank you to all those who participated – we had over 100 responses and we’ve listed the most common themes below, along with some of the things we’re working on to help.  If you think something has been missed out let us know in the comments section.

Working with others

Just finding and connecting with like minded individuals.

The single most pressing issue facing comedy creators is finding people who they can work with.  This was a problem for writers, stand-ups and filmmakers.

Lack of momentum and opportunities to meet and write with others

For some the struggle is to find the right person to write with.  Having a co-writer enables you to develop and test ideas, but that person has to understand and share your style and be someone who you get on with. The good news is that technology now allows writers to work together from remote locations, but finding the right person remains a challenge.

In other cases the issue is more about needing to find people with the right skills to help take a project from script to screen.  For many that was about attracting a production company, for others it was finding the right director, actors or editor for filming teasers of a script.  Its also clear that there are freelance filmmakers out there looking for writers to work with.

We continue to run our social and open mic evenings where creators can meet, showcase and discuss projects.  The next is on the 28th May – click here for more details.  In addition the Comedy Crowd will soon be expanding onto a platform where members can easily upload their work in progress and find people with the skills they need – to stay updated on the latest on this exciting development make sure you’re subscribed to our newsletter.

Getting people to read a script

Getting scripts in front of the right people. Basically getting past gate keepers.

Sending scripts to production companies or agents is one of the most frustrating exercises in the life of an aspiring comedy writer. In our survey creators repeatedly highlighted getting someone ‘to just read the damn script’ as their biggest problem.  As aspiring writers we have to come to terms with a fundamental problem – agents and producers don’t have time to read scripts.  

This isn’t a revelation, deep down all writers know this.  We know because established writers, production companies and agents go to great lengths to reduce the number of script submissions they receive.  Some will say they don’t accept unsolicited scripts, others don’t promise to get back to you if they do read them and others will offer to read the first ten pages but don’t promise it will happen anytime soon.  We can’t blame them. The time required to separate the wheat from the chaff is considerable.

We believe it’s a system that’s broken, and if aspiring creators are to make an impact we have to do things differently.  Unless you have a profile or track record, a script isn’t going to get the attention it needs to be appreciated.  As an aspiring writer, sending a script to a production company is the equivalent of entering the Dragon’s Den (that’s Shark Tank for US subscribers), confidently placing a design plan for your singing lampshade on Deborah Meaden’s desk, standing back and silently waiting for her to make you an offer.  It might just be the best singing lampshade that has ever been conceived but you’ve probably just wasted your train fare.

As writers we need to either demonstrate that the script can work by making it ourselves, use more engaging and imaginative tools to sell it, or develop a different relationship with production companies so that creators present more of what they want to make.  These are much easier to do as part of a community and with our upcoming platform we are working on supporting you on all three.

Getting Feedback

Quality feedback. ‘Thank you, it’s not for us’ doesn’t really help a writer.

There are many reasons why getting feedback is difficult (we cover this in length here) and this was reflected in the survey responses. Sure it’s easy enough to ask for the opinion of family and friends, but is that feedback going to be impartial and valuable?  It’s just as easy to get professional advice, but it will cost you so how do you make sure that you’re in a position to get the most value out of it?

The fact that there has been no easy mechanism to get good feedback during the creative process forces many creators to hold tightly to their content until they have refined it to the point that they are satisfied that feedback is worth paying for, or worse, never show it anybody.

We feel this isn’t a good approach, particularly for new creators, which is why we’ve launched our feedback panel.  This enables creators to get feedback on any content (script, scenes, monologues) throughout the process from their peers, rather than spend a lot of time creating something that could have been improved much earlier.

Finding opportunities to write or perform

You only have to read our newsletter to see that there are lots of opportunities to get involved in comedy.  The problem is that most of these exist in the form of competitions or open submissions where relatively few can be successful.

We particularly like to promote opportunities that not only have the prospect of comedy being produced or performed, but also provide learning for creators (see Dan Tambing’s sketch competition as an example).  If our only aim in entering these competitions is to win, then we will likely fail, however, if each submission is a chance to develop and learn then the experience it can be really valuable.

We don’t think there are enough schemes that put an emphasis on this. There is too much of a ‘winner takes all’ outcome.  The good news is that the Comedy Crowd is now large enough that we can run such schemes ourselves – and we are currently developing some exciting partnerships – so watch this space.

Time and Money

Finding opportunities to receive payment for my writing – I would love to dedicate more time to it but without the opportunity to earn money or progress in my career I can’t do as much as I would like.

Comedy is a passion, but let’s be frank, it is time consuming and not very well paid.  This came across loud and clear on the survey.

It’s evident that nobody starts out in comedy expecting to become rich. What people can aim for, and what many would define as success, is earning incrementally more money to allow them to spend more time doing what they love.

As a part-time comedy creator its key that we make the most of the time we have.  Here at the Comedy Crowd, we are continuing to work on ways to make use of our community to make each member more productive and effective.

Finding an audience for my comedy

The most commonly expressed problem amongst creators who had filmed a comedy show or sketch was the difficulty in finding an audience.  With the growth of online platforms there are now many more ways for creators to get their content seen, but its also easy to get lost in the mass of material that’s out there.

The demographic and behaviour of an audience is different depending on the platform.  The attention span of somebody watching on Youtube is much shorter than someone sat in front of the TV.  This is something that needs to be factored in when creators decide how to structure and market their content.  There is hope however, and in an upcoming blog we’ll be talking about a different way of thinking about building your online audience.  Stay tuned to our newsletter.

If you liked this article you might find these blogs useful:

5 tips for writing alongside a full-time job

From zero to comedy show

The 5 things we learnt about making your own comedy show

We are always looking at ways to support creators, and if you’ve got something which our community could help you with, don’t hesitate to email us – theccteam@thecomedycrowd.com.

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:

1. Collaborate
2. You don’t have to be a full time comedian
3. Practise makes perfect
4. Find your core audience
5. 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.

1. 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.

2. 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!

3. 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.

4. 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

5. 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.

To make sure you stay up to date with the latest opportunities and insights in the world of comedy, join thousands of creators and fans receiving our free weekly newsletter.

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

This is a rallying cry to all comedy creators to think innovatively.

So many TV comedies, particularly in the UK, fall into the category of the ‘stand-up written sitcom’ – a comedian with an established profile gets bored of the panel show scene and decides to spread their creative wings. Except they don’t. They simply perform the exact same exercise we all did in English Lit class – take a product in one genre and convert it to another – observational comedy to sitcom. So naturally they’re the main character, and seeing as most of their material is based around everyday observation or personal experience so is the script. The situations are real world and relatable. There are a few good gags in there and the main character feels authentic because its only a slightly exaggerated version of the comedian themselves. Its usually well crafted even if it’s clear when a stand-up line has been crowbarred in…

As creators, let’s think more creatively and explore the opportunities comedy affords. Here’s my thoughts on how:

1. Good comedy does not have to be ‘realistic’, it has to be authentic. There’s a big difference. The easiest way to engage an audience is by presenting situations that they relate to. However, the key to this working as comedy is not in the actual physical situation the characters find themselves in, but the behaviour and interaction of the characters. Observational comics use situations we all recognise, but what makes them funny is that we felt the same way about them, not simply that it happened to us. If your characters are authentic (i.e. they react logically within the rules you define, see 2.) you are free to experiment with human behaviours outside ‘real’ situations. Consider taking relatable characteristics outside of relatable arenas and you open up a lot more possibilities.

2. Define your rules and be disciplined. Fictional worlds or situations need rules, its just that they don’t have to be the same as here on planet Earth. You need to define what these are and be consistent to them. They might relate to the physical world, to a character, or to the format of the creation. In the video below (4.59) Chuck Jones talks about the way he applied these rules to the Looney Tunes cartoons.

If you decide your rules, and your characters act authentically within them, you are free to be creative with your setting. Red Dwarf is a great example of a show that created a fantasy world, but also had clearly defined restrictions for each character.

3. Play with format. We can get trapped into a linear way of thinking about situation comedy – try something different in structure or presentation. Play around with time – maybe even give your character the ability to rewind or fast forward. How about telling your story from a different perspective, like Peep Show, which broke the mould by using the inner dialogue of the characters.

Why not break away from the traditional narrative approach and create a new structure for the show, like Review, where the character presents a show in which he must review life experiences suggested by viewers.

These are some of our ideas on how to think differently. Often innovation is about taking a base idea and being willing to explore different ways of executing it for best effect.

What do you think?  Let us know by leaving a comment.

Behind every great venture there is a personal story. This may or may not be true, but it works well for an intro to this blog so please accept it. We want to tell you our story and why we founded The Comedy Crowd.

Peter and I wrote a sitcom together. Like many old friends and comedy enthusiasts we had talked about doing this for a while, sharing ideas and making each other laugh, without ever actually trying it. Why?

1. 1. One reason was time. We both had full time jobs and family commitments, not to mention important social commitments like playing football manager. We soon realised that if you want something enough you will prioritise and find the time, even if that means failing to lead your fake football team to virtual glory. So we started writing sketches and scenes to one another, and we decided the concept had potential as a sitcom (check out our 5 tips on writing with a day job, and the productivity area of the Comedy Academy for more on making the most of your writing time)
   2. So was it any good? Well we loved it. But then our feedback wasn’t exactly objective. Our thought process went as follows: “We’ve got a script. Now what we need is a production company with a budget to invest in it and source actors and technical filming expertise.” Easy. Unfortunately it turns out productions companies with budgets don’t read scripts from people with no contacts or experience. Also it turns out no one really wants to read a script. This became apparent when even asking family members to have a read proved challenging. So we decided to film a short scene.
   3. Where do you find a project team of like minded comedy performers and people with technical filming expertise based in the same location? Well if you don’t already know these people, the answer is its very difficult.  We did manage to film a scene, but it would have been better if the project team was created based on a group of like minded people all bought into the content.

These challenges are all common problems for people starting out in comedy and often lead to wasted talent and ideas. We started The Comedy Crowd to help people on this journey and to create grassroots comedy without the obstacles. Find out more and by signing up to our free weekly newsletter for creators