Affordable strategies to unleash the power of video 💥.

High-impact content doesn’t have to come at high cost.

We caught up with Anna O’Riordan, Brand & Marketing Consultant, to explore the benefits of video content and share some affordable approaches to campaign development.

When done right, video content is powerful, enabling brands to reach the masses very quickly.

People love watching videos. They’re accessible, often entertaining and, sometimes, educational.

Videos are a great way to attract attention and land a message, often helping to increase conversion. Most digital platforms now favour video. Facebook alone amasses some 8 billion video views – with video accounting for 11% of total content on the platform. And an estimated 1 billion hours is spent daily watching video content.

Yet not all video content is created equal. Indeed, some campaigns can be incredibly costly.

Who says you need a big budget to create great video content?

As budgets get tighter – and consumers savvier, the trend towards low-production, realistic video content has increased.

A low-production approach can benefit your brand in many ways:

Authenticity: videos can feel more genuine which helps to build trust and credibility. Showcasing everyday experiences can also be more relatable than a polished production.

Cost-effectiveness: low-production videos are often less expensive to produce. So, brands can create more content and reach a wider audience!

Storytelling: low-production videos are a great way to showcase the personalities behind your brand and build a stronger emotional connection with your audience.

Agility: these videos are quick and easy to create. Brands can respond to trends in real-time, stay relevant and top of mind.

Experimentation: low-production videos are a great way to try out new ideas. They allow you to test what resonates with your audience, without huge investment.

So, if the benefits are clear, how can we go about creating impactful video on a budget?

Some of the biggest costs in branded video production include shooting in multiple locations, having a large cast, using celebrity performers, and high-grade effects. But these costs are often unnecessary for a highly impactful campaign.

The idea stage is crucial for defining the parameters in which the creativity will take place, and this is where you can ensure the costs remain low. A tight brief is essential – there is nothing wrong with setting boundaries for creativity. In fact, it often helps to spark some of the most impactful ideas.

Brands can take a number of creative approaches to significantly reduce production costs – without reducing the impact of their video content. Here are just a few examples we’ve spotted:

Shot in one self-contained location

Setting the constraint that the video has to be filmed in a single location can actually enhance the creativity of the ideas generated. And when we only have a short time to get a message across, keeping things simple, clear and not confusing is vital.

As we will see with the following examples, there are creative ways to keep the video dynamic and engaging without changing location or even needing to use multiple camera angles.

We can see this in the execution of a classic online ad, Soesmans Language Training:

One of the first things you will notice, other than the fact this video is very funny, is that there is no dialogue. This is an English language training video produced for an audience in the Netherlands, and the actors don’t need to speak at all to convey the message. In fact their silence adds to the intrigue and engagement of the video, as we are not distracted from the main joke.

The camera position remains the same throughout the video, and punch-ins are used to get close up shots of the individual characters and their expressions.

We applied similar techniques working with Comedy Crowd creator Yiannis Vassilakis in a film we produced for automated dubbing company Papercup AI:

This is a step up in complexity from the Soesmans example, but is still shot in a single location with a limited number of camera angles. In this case the characters don’t move from their fixed positions at all during the video. Instead dynamism is added through a variety of close-ups applied in the edit, in addition to the creative use of stock footage to show the escalating “nightmare” sequence.

Showcasing products as human characters

This is a simple and highly effective way to give personality to a product or service, getting across the strengths and voice of the brand by applying the “show don’t tell” principle.

One of the great benefits of this approach is that the videos can be very simple. All we need to see on screen is the character representing the product or service. Even a talking head to camera can achieve this effectively.

Let’s start with a famous example: the Mac vs PC.

This ad was a huge hit for Apple, and all it required was two performers talking in front of a white background. Without telling us anything, Apple are showing us their product is young, confident, relaxed, safe, and forward thinking. (We notice he didn’t mention how long he can stay awake before needing to recharge his batteries..).

Taking things even more lo-fi is a single talking head to camera. In this example, talented Comedy Crowd creator, Rob Morgan, plays the role of Bounty finding out he has been cut from Celebrations:

• Bounty finds out he’s been cut from Celebrations

This is a perfect example of a format that enables a quick response to a topical story. We only need to hear one side of the conversation, as the skillful scripting and performance means we can infer the “straight man” role being played by Twix. 

This monologue manages to bring out the personalities of all of the Celebrations in one minute – a highly effective way to generate interest and excitement in the variety offered by the brand.

The camera phone aesthetic

Ten years ago it would have seemed unthinkable for professional content to be produced using a camera phone. But the portrait mode favoured by TikTok and Instagram combined with advances in technology have changed all of that.

Not only is it possible to shoot a professional looking ad using a camera phone, it can actually enhance the authenticity of the video and the human voice of the brand. 

Here is an example of a recent video we produced for the friendship app Friendzr, created by the very funny and talented Farrel Hegarty:

@farrelhegarty

One order of friends please, hold the benefits✌️ Meet new friends doing the things you actually love with @Friendzr https://onelink.to/friendzr . . . . . #friendzrapp #events #friendzr #newfriends #meetnewfriends #comedycrowd #ad #adobviously #viralvideo #viralvideo #comedy #comedyvideo #friendscomedy #memestiktok #funny #funnyvideo #funnywomen #funnywomenontiktok #fyp #northerngirl #comedian

♬ People Talking (Version 1) [Crowd Group Chatting Chatter Talk Noise Sfx Sound Effect Bite Clip Fx] – DV Sound Effects

This style of content is now common on digital platforms and it’s a great opportunity for brands to reach and engage a younger demographic.

Audio with text only

Don’t underestimate the power of visually impactful text on a screen to enhance an audio recording.

You can take the filming location out of the equation altogether and make considerable savings by having the visual as text.

This example of a voicemail recording from a frustrated customer has been seen by over 5 million people (explicit language warning!):

In this case Alamo Drafthouse have used an actual voicemail recording for the audio, so the only production cost is in the editing (and possible royalty payment for the music).

Even if you don’t have an irate customer voicemail to hand, it is often cheaper and logistically easier to hire actors for voiceover than it is for performance in front of a camera.

These are just a few examples of how you can apply creative constraints that reduce production budgets and increase engagement. The simplicity of production in each case actually emphasises the storytelling and authenticity of the video.

Notice none of the examples above rely on the use of celebrities. Having famous faces associated with a brand is great if you can afford it, but you can still make a highly engaging and impactful video without them if you work with the right creative team and make it relatable.

This can also help give the brand space to develop its own personality. After all, the dream scenario is that our brand is the celebrity in our video.

Finally, remember when using low cost production to take full advantage of the benefits it provides. Develop a repeatable format, style and characters that people recognise, and allows you to react quickly to topical news stories or company announcements.

At The Comedy Crowd we work with expert creative talent at the idea and production stage to make sure you get the most effective outcome for your budget, building connection with your audience and showcasing the creativity of your brand.

Find out more here ✨

We posed 2 sketch writing questions to comedy coach Chris Head.

1. How do you generate ideas for a sketch?
2. How do you end a sketch?

The answers are like a detailed “how to” for comedy sketch writing. Hugely insightful and a must read for anyone interested in the art. Here they are:

1. Any tips for finding ideas or premises for sketches? Not just topical sketches like Newsjack, but sketches in general?

Unless you happen to conveniently already have a funny idea, the best way to generate an idea for a sketch is to start with a real situation from life and work step-by-step towards a sketch idea. Below is a process to produce sketch ideas from everyday life situations; e.g, in a shop, at the doctor’s, on a date etc… Follow this 3 or 4 step process to generate a sketch. You can stop at step 3 if you have a viable idea that tickles you or you can proceed to step 4 to try and heighten the idea. And of course if you don’t get an idea that tickles you, then return to the start and work through it again.

Step 1

Choose a situation from life. Below are a few I’d suggest. Do add some or make your own list. The main thing is not to try and think of a funny subject area. Play it straight at this stage. Note, you can modify this process for parody sketches. Simply start with a list of programmes or movies etc instead of life situations. And to produce topical or satirical sketches start with a list of news stories.

Focusing on everyday life situations:

Work

Home life

Friends/ social life

Family

Institutions

Sport

Shopping

Services

Travel

Teaching & training

Pick one and then reflect on situations in this context that you have either:

– experienced directly

– or witnessed first hand

– or been told about second hand

You are looking for situations that were in some way absurd.

If you were in the situation yourself:

– You can either be the one struggling with the absurdity

– Or the cause of the absurdity (and the other party is the one trying to deal with it)

Or you may have witnessed it or heard about it. If find yourself having trouble thinking of something absurd, you can take a step further back and ask yourself what annoyed you. Once you have found something annoying then ask yourself what is absurd about it. Being annoyed (or even angry) can be a good starting point but to get it to somewhere funny you need to identify the absurdity.

Here’s a simple example of an absurdity. This morning a delivery man appeared at my doorstep (home life) and was fiddling around with papers and asking me to sign for something but he hadn’t told me what it was and it was not in sight. In this case it was an oversight but before he cleared it up there is a clear absurdity right there.

Keep a notebook of these kinds of observations – they can turn into sketches.

An example that became a classic sketch is when Michael Palin returned a car to the garage he’d bought it from because there were problems with it. The absurdity was the mechanic denying there was a problem with the vehicle when blatantly there was. He told John Cleese about this situation in conversation and Cleese felt there was a sketch in it.

Step 2: Set up the dynamic

Having identified a situation with an absurdity you then need to set up the sketch dynamic. You will need two points-of-view (POV) in the sketch.

– The absurd point-of-view (the protagonist)

– The normal everyday point-of-view (the foil)

The one with the absurd POV is the comic protagonist: they are stopping the situation from proceeding normally, reasonably or logically. The one with the normal POV is the foil as their reactions are needed to heighten the absurdity and create the comedy.

The simplest way is to make it a two-hander but you can have any number of characters as long as there are two points of view. For example, a three-hander with two points-of-view could be a married couple with the normal POV and a marriage guidance counsellor with the absurd POV. Or on a bigger scale twenty-two footballers with a normal POV and one referee with an absurd POV.

In the case of the faulty car:

– Normal POV: customer – the foil

– Absurd POV: mechanic – the protagonist

Now you need to ask yourself why the protagonist holds that absurd perspective. Normally it’s:

– They just do. It’s the McGuffin of the sketch. You don’t need to explain it or justify it.

But sometimes there is added value in giving them a motive. Here there is a strong sense that the mechanic is trying to fob the customer off to avoid expense and work. The alternative would be he is simply mad and genuinely doesn’t see any problems with the car.

And finally, boil down the situation into a game:

The game of the car sketch for the protagonist (the mechanic) is to get the customer to accept there is no problem with the car and to go away.

The game for the foil is to make the mechanic accept that there is a problem.

They stick to their POVs and play out this game. The game is them trying to solve their problems. The customer’s problem is his car is broken, the mechanic’s problem is he doesn’t want to spend time and money dealing with this car. OR if the mechanic is simply mad, from his POV his problem is trying to make the customer see there is no problem with the car. (If you follow that fine distinction).

Step 3: Heighten the absurdity

Now you have your situation, absurdity and characters you can now find the funniness by asking yourself:

What would make the situation more absurd?

Or from the character’s points-of-view:

What would make the problem worse for your foil? Or put another way, how could the protagonist’s attempts to solve their problem and get what they want be more absurd?

Here you take the existing situation and heighten the absurdity. In the case of the delivery man not revealing what he is delivering, in reality he quite soon realised his oversight and told me. In the sketch version you can heighten the absurdity by having him simply refusing to reveal what it is (is it a letter, a parcel, a fridge, a three piece suite…) until he has a signature. The recipient would be reluctant to sign and would want to find out what the thing is. The deliver man would refuse until he had a signature. And so on. Going round and round this argument with both characters sticking to the game and trying to solve their problem is what makes a sketch.

In the case of Michael Palin’s car situation, Cleese and Chapman wrote it up into a sketch for the 60s sketch show How to Irritate People (Chapman and Palin performed the sketch). The absurdity was heightened by the foil’s problems with the car being dangerous and blatant – eg the gear stick comes off, the doors fall off etc. The protagonist’s attempts to solve their problem, to get out of dealing with the car, are even more unreasonable and ridiculous than in real life.

Notice that YOU ONLY NEED ONE IDEA FOR A SKETCH! New writers often try too hard. They think: it can’t be enough, just having this man trying to get his car fixed! I have to introduce more funny ideas. YOU DON’T! Just develop and heighten this one idea, which is what Cleese and Chapman do.

This is enough to make a sketch. You can stop here is you have an idea that is tickling you. If you want to try and more out of it, move on to the next step.

Step 4. Change the given circumstances

If you want to try and get more out of the sketch you can try changing the given circumstances of the original situation. They key thing is to maintain the game and the dynamic. For example:

Change WHO: Try changing the protagonist or the foil to different characters. Eg: make one or both children or babies or dogs or celebrities or ghosts etc..

Change WHERE: Move the characters and situation to a different context.

Change WHEN: Move it to the past or the future.

For our delivery sketch, I think there could be mileage in changing where it takes place – e.g. it’s in the maternity ward of a hospital and the midwife won’t reveal the sex of the baby being delivered. This is upping the ante – it can often be an idea to look at how you can up the ante of the scenario. Or you could change when and put it in a historical period but keep everything we recognise about modern day deliveries.

In the case of the faulty car sketch, when Cleese and Chapman revisited the idea for Monty Python, Chapman suggested instead of someone taking a car back to a garage it could be someone taking a parrot back to a pet shop. Then the question is: what’s wrong with it? The answer: it’s dead, that’s what’s wrong with it.

They also introduced an additional game for the foil, the customer. He has to find as many different ways of saying the parrot is dead as possible. Notice that this is not simply because it’s funny; he is trying to solve his problem of getting the pet shop owner to recognise the parrot is dead.

You can make all sorts of changes. For example:

Change HOW: This could be how characters are behaving, speaking, moving.

Change WHAT: Change what the central object or subject is.

Change WHY: Change the character’s reasons or motivations for their actions.

All of these kinds of changes have potential comic mileage provided the starting point was a real, recognisable situation. If you start with an unreal funny idea it can drift too far away from anything recognisable and not be grounded in anything the audience recognise.

Then write the sketch!

The last thing to do is write the dialogue. An issue writers can have with sketches is that they launch into dialogue before everything is thought through. Starting to write dialogue with unclear POVs, an ill-defined dynamic between the characters, little sense of the game of the sketch or what problems the characters are trying to solve is a recipe for producing an unclear and ultimately unfunny sketch. Audiences do not laugh if they are struggling to make sense of things like: who are these people, where are they, what do they want, what’s stopping them from getting it…

And finally, the structure to write your sketch in is:

Set-up: Establish the who, where, what etc. The given circumstances. Do this economically. (There can be laughs here but the game, the central comic idea, is not yet revealed).

Reveal: Having set it all up you now reveal the game of the scene.

Escalation: The characters play the game; they try and solve their problems.

Pay-off: A surprise conclusion or twist.

And how do you generate a pay-off? See my answer to the next question!

2. Can you give some tips for writing effective sketch endings / resolutions?

Yes, endings can be the biggest problem with sketches. John Cleese bemoaned that he and Graham Chapman would write a sketch in a morning, then spend another week trying to end it. Python themselves of course abolished the punchline with meta endings and stream-of-consciousness flowing from one thing to the next. Aside from doing that, here are three initial very common and effective endings. I will explore in a follow up response…

A VERY common ending. The straight character suddenly buys into the worldview, or takes on the behaviour, of the funny one.
eg: If in the sketch a man has gone into a library, asking reasonable questions but shouting his head off, then the reversal pay-off has the hitherto straight librarian shouting their head off.
This is either done inexplicably or in a calculated way. See Fry & Laurie’s policeman/ name sketch for a calculated version.

Another classic. It looks for a moment like the torment is over for the persecuted character, or the problem is solved, but in fact it isn’t. False dawns can also work mid-sketch – they can serve as a breather in the escalation.
e.g: A waiter has been getting two diners more and more annoyed by bringing the wrong dishes. Finally it seems he has understood and is now going to bring the right dish. The couple relax, but he gets it wrong again (but in a new or more extreme way).
See the ending of Rowan Atkinson’s Fatal Beatings.

A new character comes in and enters the situation.
It may be that we know what’s going to happen but they don’t. (Dramatic irony.)
Or they can be a way of the sketch starting again, the whole thing going full-circle (see below).
Or they can changes our perspective on the situation or the existing characters’ relationship to one another. (A way to bring out an ‘extra killer fact’). e.g: A patient has been struggling with a very strange doctor in a hospital. Then a psychiatric doctor comes in and takes the original “doctor” back to the mental ward.
See Armstrong & Miller’s man who doesn’t know what his job is.

Here are some further ending ideas:

Extra killer fact
A revelation that casts everything that came before in a new light. Be wary of these though. Make sure the sketch is funny in its own right prior to the pay-off. (Or make it a quickie).
e.g: We don’t discover until the end that the two women chatting about babies are actually chatting about their husbands.

Variation
The punchline provides a variation on the central joke.
e.g: If the sketch was about the mayor complaining that squirrels were being employed to drive buses, the variation could be underground trains being driven by lemurs. (Bit surreal but you get the idea!)

Meta ending
The artifice of the situation is acknowledged, or the illusion is broken in some way, or the conventions of the performance situation are broken or exposed.
E.g: “I’ve forgotten the punchline for this sketch so let’s end it here.”

End on a strong laugh line
The sketch just ends on a good line. It doesn’t twist again or do something unexpected, it just stops on a particularly funny line.

It was all a trick…
The situation is revealed to have been some sort of practical joke or trick. This can be used as a false dawn too.

Victory
One of the characters wins the dispute or gets their own way. Needs to be done in an unexpected way. Can be effective if the victim of the scene suddenly turns the tables.

Violence
One character hits, attacks, shoots, kills etc the other. Fry & Laurie did lots of these and Python did a few too.

Natural end
The scenes just end naturally, on a dramatically right note.

Full-circle
The sketch finishes as it begun with no progress having been made.

Mix into the next item
As I said at the outset, the Python’s (and Spike Milligan’s) solution to the problem of ending sketches. They don’t end, they just flow in to the next one.

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So there you have it comedy creators. If you found this helpful and want more comedy opportunities, tips and tricks, our weekly newsletter inspires 10,000+ comedy creators every Monday. Receive it for free here

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Get inspiration for your comedy writing from Chris Head, comedy coach, teacher and author of “Creating Comedy Narratives for Stage & Screen” in engaging 10 minute episodes. Each episode gives you a question to chew over that will inspire. Produced in association with Comedy Crowd. Comedy Crowd listeners can receive discounts and special offers on Chris’ acclaimed courses and one-to-one coaching.

Listen now on Spotify, Apple and Amazon!

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‘Comedy-Drama’ is increasingly being recognised as a genre of it’s own, including a number of the opportunities we share creating specific categories for submissions. But this Nerdstalgic video argues that comedy and drama are already interlinked in the example of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, a fast paced and joke packed police sitcom.

Click here to read more »

A new style of comedy is emerging. It’s a trail blazed by the likes of ‘The Eric Andre Show’ and Tim Robinson’s ‘I Think You Should Leave’. These shows reflect the themes, trends and behaviours observed in the online world, and it’s a rich vein of comedy.

Click here to read more »

In a World where people are perpetually consuming content, brands feel the need to work harder than ever to cut through the fog.

Click here to read more »

The last decade has seem the proliferation of the panel show. It’s not been a welcome development for many, as opportunities for new creators of original scripted comedy have been squeezed out on mainstream TV.

Taskmaster is different.

Click here to read more »

On one hand we’re often told that comedy is about structure, and on the other we’re told that truly innovative creators plough their own furrow and break rules.

Could there be a happy middle ground to seek?

Click here to read more »

By Chris Head. My book, “A Director’s Guide to the Art of Stand-up”, begins by exploring ways of identifying and developing your persona as a stand-up comedian. This is your unique voice, outlook and identity that you present on stage. It stems from your actual self but is not identical with your off-stage self.

Finding this persona is key. It’s your on-stage character, a simplified, exaggerated version of yourself. Understanding this character helps you find the angle you’ll take on any given topic and the kind of jokes and material you’ll write for yourself. In effect you have a character you’re writing for. A character based on your actual self.

Finding this persona is the Holy Grail of stand-ups and typically takes hours of stage time to find, but I can offer some insights that can help in the process and might even speed up nailing your on-stage voice. In the first chapter of “A Director’s Guide to the Art of Stand-up” where I discuss persona, I explore status, archetypes, attitudes, likeability, shadow and self-awareness. I’ll introduce these in turn and then, below, is a link where you can read the entire first chapter for FREE (which covers some further angles) so you can start thinking about how to apply all this to your own act.

And in my brand new book “Creating Comedy Narratives for Stage & Screen” I further discuss stand-up persona in the opening chapter, considering positives and negatives and also persona games, both of which I also introduce below along with another link where you can also read this material for FREE. (Alongside stand-up, this new book also covers sketch and sitcom, and discusses improv too).

Let’s now go through these aspects of your stand-up persona in turn.

Status

What is your funniest status? In my model of stand-up’s status you can be:

‘high status’, ‘low status’ or ‘audience’s mate’.

In high status you look down on the problems of the world and your life (or simply on the audience) from a lofty position of insight and wit (eg Chris Rock). In low status you are put upon by the problems of the world and your life (or by the audience and the performance situation) and are struggling with them (eg Lee Evans and Brian Regan). In audience’s mate status you share the problems of the world and of life with the audience, and you laugh at them together. (eg Sarah Millican).

This approach can be finessed by considering a primary and secondary status. Stewart Lee is a high-status comic but, as he says, he is always undermining his status in order to not become objectionable! So he might be looked on as high-status (primary), low-status (secondary). And I identify Brian Regan as low-status above, and certainly when he acts out himself in various situations he plays the fool, but he is a great friend of his audience so perhaps he could more accurately be described as mate-status (primary) and low-status (secondary). And returning to Sarah Millican, there is certainly a strength and at times fierceness to what she does, so I’d see her as s mate-status (primary), high-status (secondary).

You may have some insight into your own status on stage, but even better ask people who know your act well how they see you, and have them reflect it back to you. When you have a clearer understanding of your status, you can more confidently embody it on stage.

Archetypes

In the book, I also discuss how the twelve Jungian archetypes can be keys to your persona. Again, rather than trying to figure out which archetypes you embody on stage, it can be more effective to ask someone else how they see you. They work especially well when used in combination. On p.8 of the first chapter you will find the complete list and an explanation of how they work in stand-up. But here for example are two: sensualist and sage. Bringing them together you get Russell Brand. Finding the two archetypes that you embody – or at a push, three! – can also help define who you are on stage.

Attitude

Next in the book (p.9 – p.11) I consider attitude. Your attitudes are key aspects of your stand-up persona. For example, here’s Al Murray’s Pub Landlord with a typically no-nonsense attitude: “We do not go in for philosophy in this country. We have our own system. It’s called wondering”. (You can find the persona of a stand-up character in the exact same way we are discussing incidentally).

In stand-up, an effective persona will have both positive and negative attitudes. The positive being why we like you and the negative being why we find you funny. Where an act is overwhelmingly negative there is something about their charm, cheek or sheer front that is appealing and enables at least some people to warm to them. At any rate the funny attitudes are the negative ones. There is precious little funny in positive, well-adjusted, reasonable, forgiving and sensible attitudes to things! Once you have the positive and the negative, the light and shade, on your ‘palette’ of attitudes’, it can be effective to jump between them as the Godfather of Alternative Comedy, Tony Allen, describes. (See below for more on positives and negatives).

Self-awareness & Likeability

In the opening persona chapter in my Director’s Guide to Stand-up book, I also consider self-awareness. There are two ends of the spectrum. How aware is the version of you on stage?:

1. Self-aware. Insight into own failings. A high-status or audience mate stance.
2. Totally unaware. Here you see yourself one way, and the audience see you completely differently. Eg, you see yourself as a hit with the opposite sex, the audience see you as a loser. The comedy comes from the gap between how you see yourself and how others see you. A low status stance.

Another aspect of self-awareness is this: is your on-stage character aware that they doing a comedy performance? Or is your character just talking about the world and their life without meaning to be funny? Or even knowing or realising why they are funny? This is a niche area, but can really pay off when you play the weirdness entirely straight (eg Emo Phillips).

I also consider the question of likeability in stand-ups. Stand-ups who have a likeable persona, are flawed with a clear shadow and yet aware of it (high self-awareness) and struggling to be better can be very likeable to an audience (for Brian Regan). These stand-ups care and want to be better but keep tripping themselves up.

If however a stand-up’s persona is comically unaware of their shadow (low self-awareness), then they are more tragically comic and less obviously likeable. Alternatively they can be aware of their shadow (their nastiness or rudeness or aggression) and simply not care. This can work (for instance Frankie Boyle), where the stand-up does behave appallingly BUT does and says the kinds of things we the audience would love to do if we were bold or reckless enough. They are aware of their shadow, don’t care and we love it.

But typically for the audience to laugh they have to like you – even acts that are deliberately nasty are still in fact liked by those who laugh with them. So try and identify what makes you likeable and do more of it. Self-deprecation is one potential route to likeability. Also, identifying your negatives and then balancing them with positives can help and also opens up the opportunity to switch from positive to negative (and vice-versa) which can amplify the laughs.

Positives and negatives

This very week I worked with an act who, despite having been going several years, feels he hasn’t fully developed his persona. On watching videos of his act it struck me that his issue is that he’s too nice! The audience like him and the material is good, but he hasn’t developed the negative side to create a comic friction with his positive qualities. Another way of looking at this is to think in terms of persona and shadow, where the shadow are the negatives that undermine the positives of the persona.

Sitting opposite him, I took the liberty of reading out a list of negative qualities I felt he could develop. (Having softened him up with some positive ones). I’ve compiled a table of 108 negative qualities and 108 positive that you can see for free via the link below to my “Creating Comedy Narratives for Stage & Screen” book.

In a class, I’ll get the group to pick three positives and three negatives for each comic. Then I’ll get them to stand up and share the attitudes that the group identified in them. This in itself generates much hilarity, especially when the qualities ring true for that person. For example:

“I am affectionate, cheerful and tolerant. But I am also arrogant cowering and resentful”.

Once you’ve identified this persona/shadow for your persona, how might you set about exploring it in action? One way is to pick a situation where you were expected to be positive but in fact you were pissed off about it (eg a work situation with clients or a family situation where you were meeting someone new). You then try and talk about it in a positive way to the audience but the negatives keep slipping out and revealing your true feelings.

In the writing of it, get yourself flipping from positive to negative, from persona to shadow, repeatedly. It’s these sudden changes that can make it really funny rather than having one negative attitude throughout.

Persona games

Finally, in my new book “Creating Comedy Narratives for Stage & Screen” I boil all of this down into my concept of persona games. Read all about this for FREE via the link below.

You can read the complete opening chapter about persona from the stand-up perspective in Chris Head’s book “A Director’s Guide to the Art of Stand-up” here:

https://bloomsburycp3.codemantra.com/viewer/5b6331436b2f0700011dd33b

And you can read the first 17 pages of Chris’s new book “Creating Comedy Narratives for Stage & Screen” here which includes the positives and negatives and Chris’ discussion of persona games.

https://bloomsburycp3.codemantra.com/viewer/607d587152faff0001578d16

Buy:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Directors-Guide-Stand-up-Performance-Books/dp/1350035521 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Creating-Comedy-Narratives-Stage-Screen/dp/1350155756

For more info about Chris and the courses he runs:

www.chrishead.com

By Eleni Young. Using social media when you’re posting to your friends and family is easy, you already have an audience who’s interested in you and you don’t have to think too much about what or when you post. But when you’re posting for an audience who doesn’t know who you are, social media can be a bit more tricky, just because Auntie Sue and Dave think your hilarious on your personal account doesn’t mean you’re going to get the same reaction on your Facebook or Instagram comedy accounts.

Identifying your audience

That’s easy isn’t it, it’s people who like comedy, d’uh! Yes, but there are billions of people out there who like comedy and there are hundreds of different types of comedy, so we have to be more specific. You know what you like, but do you really know what your audience likes? Targeting your audience to get those all important likes and follows isn’t just about throwing your content out there and hoping for the best, you need to be specific about who you want to reach and who is going to keep coming back for more. Here’s a few questions to get you started:

● Who are they? Is your comedy aimed at more men or women or both? How old are they? Where do they live? Peep Show is a great comedy, but dry humour tends to work better in the UK than it is in the US.

● What types/style of comedy does your audience like? If your comedy is similar to or has the same traits as other comedians or shows, target those audiences. If you ever do advertising on Facebook, it will ask you about audience likes and interests.

● Which comedy/TV personalities do they follow? Have a look at those pages/profiles to see what type of content they’re putting out. Are they always just posting their own content or are they doing live videos (Facebook Live or IGTV)? What hashtags are they using that could also tie in with your content? You don’t have to use everything they are doing (be smart with your content and ensure yours is still original) but you’ll be able to see from the level of engagement how their audience (your target audience) is reacting and if it’s something you could incorporate in your content.

● When is your audience online? This is a key question to ask yourself. There’s no point marketing yourself at 8am on Saturday if your audience don’t bother logging on until 1pm on Monday. If you have a Facebook page or business Instagram account, check your analytics and look for times and days for when your audience is interacting or viewing your content.

One of the best things about identifying your audience is that unless you diversify your content drastically you don’t have to do it again. Having said that, put 10 mins aside once a week to go through your analytics to check you’re still getting the right audience and getting the engagement you want.

If you decide to advertise online, you’ll be asked all these questions and more and it’s easier to work this out now than when you want to post an ad and have a ton of questions screaming at you on your screen.

Now don’t worry, it may seem like a mammoth task, but it’s really not. Grab a pen and paper and start scribbling who your ideal audience is, you’ll find that you already know these answers, it’s just that you’ve never had to write it down before. So, what are you waiting for?

If you want to find out a bit more about Digital Marketing I’m hosting ‘An Introduction to Digital Marketing’ on Thursday 22 October at 10:30am (BST) online, tickets are normally £15 but for Comedy Crowders use code IntroFr33 to get yours for free!

Writer and journalist Joanna Tilley has launched a script companion service that focuses on female characters. Here she tells The Comedy Crowd the reasoning behind the new Pay What You Can service and what it can offer comedy writers.

In 2018, The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain found that only 11% of comedy episodes on TV were written by women. The findings came just months after 76 female writers signed an open letter accusing drama bosses of not giving them primetime opportunities.

To its credit, the industry has been quick to respond with a raft of comedy and drama commissions driven by women. Pure, the brilliant Back to Life, the even more brilliant I May Destroy You, are just a few of the female-led shows to hit our screens. Former ITV comedy commissioner Saskia Schuster continues her excellent initiative Comedy 50:50, which aims to achieve parity for female writers by holding events, workshops and offering paid TV opportunities.

However, despite these positive steps, comedy still skews male and almost without exception male-written scripts are dominated by male characters.

After watching a number of male-scribed comedies recently, I believe there is still a long way to go when it comes to female representation. Sitcoms written by men usually feature male leads (Code 404, The Young Offenders, Man Like Mobeen, Dave, Sliced) or a male majority cast (People Just Do Nothing, Plebs, Norsemen, The First Team). Even two of my favourite programmes, Brooklyn 99 and What We Do In The Shadows, over-represent men.

Perhaps it is unsurprising that men like to write men, but as a viewer I find it frustrating when time and time again I am following a male protagonist, or when I see these amazing female actors in the bittiest of parts.

For me, the issue of female representation is not just about getting more women to write comedy (although this is crucial), it is about improving the way men create and develop their female creations in the first place. Because until we reach that pivotal place of 50:50, male writers are still predominantly responsible for ensuring women are represented and their voices and issues heard.

Sadly, the situation at the grassroots feels no different from the top. In fact, without the layer of producers and commissioners checking work, it can be worse.

Over the last decade, I have regularly attended London Comedy Writers, a group where sitcoms are read out by actors every two weeks. I have read and listened to many scripts and while there’s some brilliant work on show, the way male writers represent women is hit and miss. In a room mostly filled with men, the script feedback frequently returns to the lack, or weakness of, female characters. Even when writers start with an equal gender split, it is usually the male characters that deliver the action and excitement.

male writer: people complain when I write female characters, then they complain when I don't write female characters!!! there is no possible solution to this

— Ken Cheng (@kenchengcomedy) September 25, 2020

In the aftermath of #MeToo and Time’s Up, I wonder if it has ever been more difficult to write female characters and storylines. With gender and sexual politics in the spotlight, the audience are ready to jump on anything that doesn’t feel authentic or socially responsible. It has never been so easy to offend, and whether that is right or wrong, it is where we are at.

However, the worst thing that could happen is for men to just stop writing female characters and for them to leave it to female writers. Instead, men should be working that extra bit harder to ensure their female characters are credible enough to weather any controversy. Going forward, we need an abundance of strong female character, not safe ones.

This is why I have launched a script companion service that focuses on the development of authentic female characters. Whether it is at the start or final draft stage of a project, I want to keep an eye out for areas where men can slip up – and provide a sounding board for people to bounce off their ideas. You can find out more about my Pay What You Can service here.