I’ve been a writer since I was able to put pen to paper, but I’ve never written comedy before. So, I gave it a go.
Comedy – like most things – is subjective. One person could find something hilarious while the other doesn’t even muster a smile. When it comes to writing, comedy is one of the hardest things to gauge. With songs, there is a formula one can follow to produce beautiful sounds – most of the pop songs over the past half a century have favoured only six cords. If you write about love or action you are sure to get a good following of fans in the literary world and pack enough explosives and special effects into a feature film for a shoo-in box-office smash.
Comedy is different.
I love to laugh and can find humour in almost everything; which is why I thought I would be able to write a short comedy sketch for YouTube. I came up with the idea of Franny Baker a few years ago. She brings together my love of cookery combined with camp comedy. I always envisaged her as a man in bad drag and a heavy smoking alcoholic who actually couldn’t cook.
The first scripts had been heavily reliant on swear words, but as it progressed, I didn’t want to have to rely on the f-word to get a laugh. So all swearing was taken out… I kinda wished I left it in now.
I bought a cheap wig from eBay and some lipstick and eye shadow from Superdrug. Lipstick gets everywhere. Everything I drank or ate or even touching my mouth; it drove me crazy, How do women cope? I also had to smoke. I had given up two weeks before filming this, but I loved the script I had written and it just didn’t work without the smoking. Of course in the new edit, the reason is lost which is a shame. Luckily it didn’t get me smoking again and at least now I know if I ever do accept a role where I have to smoke, I can do it.
Even though I have worked in television production, I’ve never physically edited anything before in my life. It’s hard to get to grips with. It has taken me two months to get to the stage where I know what I’m doing and the basic controls. So with everything filmed, I started to piece together my sketch. After two months of planning, a week of filming and a month of editing – it was ready. I managed to cut it down to just under six minutes which I thought would be about right for a cookery sketch… I hadn’t of course taken into account people’s attention spans.
I was so excited when I posted it at 8pm tonight. I shared it through all my social media sites and asked for people’s feedback. I wanted to know if they thought it was funny or not. The hours passed by and only two people had messaged me to say they liked it. I had also text my closest friends and family and asked for their opinion. Their responses were not great. They will get better with time was the best one, another said it was too long and not funny. But the worst one was from my Mum with this response “was ok x”. When asking her why just ok, she ignored me… Thanks for that.
So, I looked at it again with fresh eyes. Perhaps it was too long. I have never before thought about how much editing makes the final cut what it is. If the jokes were tighter, maybe it would be funnier. So, I’ve just spent the past hour cutting it down to just under two minutes. I distanced myself from my personal attachment and edited in the important or funny parts. I didn’t have all the cut-aways I needed, but did what I could with the material to hand. Here is the result.
Is it funny? I honestly don’t know. I thought the extended version was funny. I guess you can’t test your own humour on yourself and perhaps I need to show my work to other people in the future.
It’s been a good experience and I have learned so much about seeing something through the entire process. There is still a long way to go and maybe I should steer away from comedy and stick to what I know I’m good at.
I would like to say it wouldn’t have mattered if I had succeeded or failed, it was the experience that was more important… I would like to say that. But I guess there’s no point crying over spilt smoothie!
Oh, this is the original edit in case you were wondering just how bad it was.
#TerryGee