One Location, One weekend

By Shem Pennant of Amelia Comedy

Wanna make a webseries? We did and had a blast doing it. 2 Standup Comedians Living in a Flat is an 8 episode web series about exactly what you think it is. We made it all in one location, with a skeleton crew and minimal budget and thought we’d share a few tips with the Comedy Crowd. Ideally so you’ll watch it and tell us if you get the R Kelly joke, but also because we went from a blank page to finished show in 7 days and feel we learnt a few useful things from the many, many mistakes we made over the process.

Research

There’s an Italian expression “everything shapes good taste” and we watched a bunch of shows to work out what we loved and just as importantly, what we didn’t respond to. The Comedy Crowd’s forums are filled with people sharing their work and it’s useful to watch what people are doing for inspiration. Having a critical eye and self awareness of your collective taste is super useful when you’re creating and at the very least you’ll make something that’s funny for you. One of our key inspirations was the PFFR produced sitcom Delocated. Check it out.

Writing 

Writers write! Ideas don’t mean anything in your head so get them on the page. If you’re reading this you probably have at least three viable ones. So write it down! Too many people talk about what they’re writing and never go through the process of putting pen to paper. Writer’s block is more of a myth than the world of Entourage.  We locked the writer in a hot room in Cairo with no access to the Internet for 24 hours and forced him to polish off the scripts. You probably shouldn’t do that. But having a really hard deadline to produce *something*, is super helpful as you can really surprise yourself under pressure. And it gives something solid for you to bounce off with the rest of the team – or for your online peers.

Improv

Improv … yuk! But wait. Come back.Improv is more than just riffing lines on set – although that can be very useful. We all studied improv and sketch at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York and one of the central principles they impart to students is “if this unusual thing is true, what *else* is true”. UCB-style improv is super useful for writing as you train yourself to really unpack ideas, and surprise yourself (and hopefully your audience). It’s also really good as you learn how to find interesting, relatable premises in real life and discover the various beats. The UCB Comedy Improvisation Manual is a great guide to the basics. And it’s easy to find some collaborators, pitch premises and use improv guidelines to really unpack the various beats that your idea presents. But just because you can improvise a fun scene in the moment, still put in the work to write, enhance and edit your material.

Limitations

Amelia’s old improv teacher Michael Delaney used to say “discipline is freedom”. Having strict limits imposed forces you to make hard choices and work with what you have. One of Amelia was about to leave the country for the rest of the year, so we only had a few days in which to shoot. We also had spent a fortune on improv classes, so had no actual money for budget, lights, locations etc. So we used what we had. The kitchen was the brightest room in the house so that because the focal point for most episodes (Puns, Shower and the Have You Ever Noticeboard). Once we decided that everything would be set in the flat, we thought it would be fun to centre an episode around them trying to leave (WillLyns) and trying to be noticed from the flat (Agents).

Shooting 

We’re very lucky that we have access to an ok camera, but you can do a lot with a smartphone, good light and attention to sound. And if you have a little money you can rent a great camera for a day or two. None of us are talented DOPs so we made a tonne of mistakes and had to redo a whole episode – you can see the painful puppet edit on the Shower episode. Good light is essential. Capture a tonne of coverage so you can edit around shots. Do multiple takes. Really ensure that you have nice clear sound. And when you hit the edit booth be ruthless.

Apps are also your friend. And apologies in advance that all these are on iOS, we’re sure there are Android equivalents. We wrote outlines in distraction free editing software IA Writer, and the full scripts in the iPad version of Final Draft, which is so much cheaper than the desktop version it’s silly. And there’s a free Final Draft Reader app so you can share with your team easily. On set the Light Meter app was super useful for making sure everything was properly exposed, and that we could have consistent look across shots. We forgot to use it sometimes and kicked ourselves. Filmic Pro is a much lauded camera app that gives you granular control over exposure, ISO and white balance. Sound is super important and iRig Mic Lav is a super cheap way of gaining access to Lav mics. We popped them on Will and Lyns, slipped a smartphone in one of their pockets and synced everything up in the edit later. And we used iMaschine and Garageband to compose the theme song and incidental music, as it’s quick to sketch out a jaunty ditty (WillLyns) or a dope trap beat (Queefy Keefy’s theme).

We edited in Final Cut Pro X which, whilst not as loved as Premiere, is pretty cheap. Our one expense was on the Colour Finale plugin for grading – you can get a free trial but we loved it so much we really wanted to reward the developer with money.

Do it just to do it and then do it again 

We made the show just to see if we could. And that was all. We’ve shared it a couple of places, some people have liked it, some people have *hated* it and most people haven’t watched it. And that’s fine. It’s very unlikely that Lorne Michaels is going to be on the phone asking you to host SNL tomorrow, but it is satisfying to have made something. And once you’ve done that … go make something else.

You can check out the ‘2 Stand-up Comedians’ web series by clicking here. And to see more from Amelia Comedy head to their YouTube and Facebook Pages.

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