A scratch night for sketch comedy films
Or: let's nerd out about what makes people laugh!
TL;DR: I run a scratch night for sketch comedy films called Sketchburn! The next one is on Tuesday, 17th June at the Etcetera Theatre in Camden. More details here!
The Problem
As you know, most live comedy is forged with audience feedback. If you get a laugh, you know you’re onto something; if you don’t, you tweak things and try again. (Or in my case, you existentially re-evaluate all your life choices.)
But it’s harder to get this feedback for filmed comedy, even though it’s just as useful.1 For example: when I’ve made sketches in the past, I had to rely on manually showing them to people — but it’s hard not to skew the data when you’re e.g. standing behind them and insisting they please laugh out loud when they find something funny.2
And then when you actually publish them, there’s still no way of knowing what works and what doesn’t on a granular level. Sure, you can get pretty engagement graphs from YouTube, but I’m not entirely sure what I’m supposed to do with this:
But maybe some kind of scratch night could help??
A Possible Solution
Sketchburn brings together a rag-tag group of comedy writers, performers and ne’er-do-wells to present works-in-progress of their latest sketch comedy films.3
It’s specifically designed to bring the feedback loop of live comedy to filmed comedy sketches, at every stage of the process. To do this, it’s divided into three sections:
📚 The Readings: live readings of brand-new sketch scripts
🎬 The Rough Cuts: screenings of rough cuts fresh from the edit
🍿The Showcase: screenings of finished sketches, ready to go
As well as listening out for what makes people laugh (and we’ll record the audio so we can refer back to it), there’ll be time for more direct feedback too. And if the first one goes well, I’m hoping to run this on a regular basis — which means you could feasibly develop a sketch through each section over multiple nights.
Perhaps ironically, I have no idea if this is going to work. But I’ve long been inspired by things like Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s nights of short plays or Dan Harmon’s Channel 101 — so I really think this could be a fun way to nerd out about comedy, ship more sketches, and (dare I say it) make some new comedy friends along the way.
So if any of that sounds of interest, and you’re based in London:
The Details
The next Sketchburn is on Tuesday, 17th June, and you can buy tickets here!
Regular tickets are £7.50, but Supporter tickets help fund the show (and come with an appreciative head nod if our eyes meet across the bar). Plus, you can skip the booking fee by calling the box office directly on: +44 (0)20 7482 4857. And if you’re interested in taking part in future nights, you can find submission information here!
I can’t think of a good way to end this, so hopefully see you there?? 🚀
Historically, of course, this was solved by literally filming your sketches or sitcoms in front of a live studio audience. It’s a shame this is so out of fashion now, because it seems like both a lot of fun and an invaluable training ground for writers. (Multiple people got in touch after my last post to say that it’s not okay to mention Will Smith yet, but screw it: I love how he describes the electric atmosphere of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air set in his memoir, Will.)
If you’re interested, you can watch them on YouTube! This one is my current favourite. (Please laugh out loud if you find something funny.)
I know I’ve used the very fancy word films here, but this includes sketches that are shot on smartphones. The more sketches the merrier! The only constraint is that the audio needs to be clean; I’m still figuring out a way to do this well, but will report back…
So excited for you! This is feeling like it's going to be a piece de resistance for you. Are you going to release the snippets?
Awesome! As someone who long revered Dave Chappelle and Neal Brennan and is too big a fan of Tim Robinson, this sounds awesome. Best of luck to you on this.