Wow thank you so much for this Mike! I'm brand new, my background is in chemical engineering and I feel like an alien that has touched down and met a really kind local who could describe art and laughter to a graduate of Vulcan University. Helping me understand the mechanics have made sketches playful to me in a surprising way--like when a prism scatters white light into rainbow--you can see all the component parts of what mystified you before. I'm excited for the exercises--I'll be looking with hunting eyes now! So glad I subscribed!
One of the reasons I love Key & Peele is they’re great at heightening. It would have been easy to end the sketch with a quippy line as Keegan boards or the plane gets overbooked. Instead, they take it to the most extreme possible scenario (plane crash) to call back to what seemed like a throwaway joke (Jason Schwartzman). The second scene sticks to the game because it continues to show the unimportance of boarding group one. This sketch shows the importance of milking a premise for all its comedic value.
Slightly related, a lot of Mr. Show sketches seem to do this thing where they end a sketch with a sketch. It’s related to the previous scene but acts like a transition to different sketches. One example is the sketch trio where 1) David Crosby tries to poop on the American flag for performance art but gets nervous and can’t deliver. The sketch ends with Crosby suing the flag, so 2) the court finds a flag expert to take the witness stand, who explains 3) the story of how the American flag was invented. They’re three unrelated sketches that work on their own, but put together have some narrative value. With Mr. Show you can enjoy any given sketch on its own, but their writing make watching a full episode more worthwhile. I don’t think this contradicts what you said about sketches not having narratives, but it adds a different dimension. Does that make sense? What do you think about how Mr. Show ties the premise/game of sketches together?
This was a good read! I'd recognized and talked about a lot of these terms before ("that thing where the ridiculous thing just keeps happening") and heard a few of these terms with enough context that I could sorta follow ("heightening" comes to mind) but it's nice to have a semi-concrete link between the terms and concepts now.
Looking at the sketches you linked, it feels like one could not foresee that the sketch would be good based solely on the script. I feel like the script by itself should be funny, though. Otherwise, what is even the point of a sketch writer ? Won't that make annotating the scripts we send you very hard ?
First thanks for this. It's nice to get some understanding behind the stuff I've learned only by watching comedy for years.
2nd our homework is to... watch TV?! Someone earned their apple for the day. Well not a real apple but maybe one of those NFT apple deals I've heard about.
C) I submitted 2 sketches, and afterwards felt they were on equals in comedic value and sketch writing and after just 1 post I realize how wrong I am. One sketch does all the these things and the other doesn't really. So I've already improved.
In conclusion, do we email our homework to you directly or just post it as a comment?
Great stuff. I just finished recorded a sketch yesterday and this is all stuff I implement but I learned more reading about the little pauses to fill with comedy to heighten surprise. I'm glad I subscribed lol
Great post. I submitted a sketch earlier today just as a way to test myself, and also to have a starting point that I can build and reflect on in the future. It’ll be interesting to see how my approach changes after carrying out the exercises you recommend here.
Reading this, and finding the vocabulary to structure the stuff that a lot of viewers of sketch have internalized, I'm curious how you actively deal with keeping the audience on board with the game when the subject matter becomes more esoteric or academic. British sketch comedy sometimes pulls this trick where the jokes it is making have a lot of academic or historical context but they somehow communicate that context while also making accessible jokes. The one that comes to mind is A Bit of Fry and Laurie's "Treaty of Westphalia". Key & Peele also pull this trick with sports, producing sketches that I still find funny even though I know almost nothing about the sport in question.
Wow thank you so much for this Mike! I'm brand new, my background is in chemical engineering and I feel like an alien that has touched down and met a really kind local who could describe art and laughter to a graduate of Vulcan University. Helping me understand the mechanics have made sketches playful to me in a surprising way--like when a prism scatters white light into rainbow--you can see all the component parts of what mystified you before. I'm excited for the exercises--I'll be looking with hunting eyes now! So glad I subscribed!
One of the reasons I love Key & Peele is they’re great at heightening. It would have been easy to end the sketch with a quippy line as Keegan boards or the plane gets overbooked. Instead, they take it to the most extreme possible scenario (plane crash) to call back to what seemed like a throwaway joke (Jason Schwartzman). The second scene sticks to the game because it continues to show the unimportance of boarding group one. This sketch shows the importance of milking a premise for all its comedic value.
Slightly related, a lot of Mr. Show sketches seem to do this thing where they end a sketch with a sketch. It’s related to the previous scene but acts like a transition to different sketches. One example is the sketch trio where 1) David Crosby tries to poop on the American flag for performance art but gets nervous and can’t deliver. The sketch ends with Crosby suing the flag, so 2) the court finds a flag expert to take the witness stand, who explains 3) the story of how the American flag was invented. They’re three unrelated sketches that work on their own, but put together have some narrative value. With Mr. Show you can enjoy any given sketch on its own, but their writing make watching a full episode more worthwhile. I don’t think this contradicts what you said about sketches not having narratives, but it adds a different dimension. Does that make sense? What do you think about how Mr. Show ties the premise/game of sketches together?
This was a good read! I'd recognized and talked about a lot of these terms before ("that thing where the ridiculous thing just keeps happening") and heard a few of these terms with enough context that I could sorta follow ("heightening" comes to mind) but it's nice to have a semi-concrete link between the terms and concepts now.
Thanks for this !
Looking at the sketches you linked, it feels like one could not foresee that the sketch would be good based solely on the script. I feel like the script by itself should be funny, though. Otherwise, what is even the point of a sketch writer ? Won't that make annotating the scripts we send you very hard ?
First thanks for this. It's nice to get some understanding behind the stuff I've learned only by watching comedy for years.
2nd our homework is to... watch TV?! Someone earned their apple for the day. Well not a real apple but maybe one of those NFT apple deals I've heard about.
C) I submitted 2 sketches, and afterwards felt they were on equals in comedic value and sketch writing and after just 1 post I realize how wrong I am. One sketch does all the these things and the other doesn't really. So I've already improved.
In conclusion, do we email our homework to you directly or just post it as a comment?
Great stuff. I just finished recorded a sketch yesterday and this is all stuff I implement but I learned more reading about the little pauses to fill with comedy to heighten surprise. I'm glad I subscribed lol
Great post. I submitted a sketch earlier today just as a way to test myself, and also to have a starting point that I can build and reflect on in the future. It’ll be interesting to see how my approach changes after carrying out the exercises you recommend here.
Reading this, and finding the vocabulary to structure the stuff that a lot of viewers of sketch have internalized, I'm curious how you actively deal with keeping the audience on board with the game when the subject matter becomes more esoteric or academic. British sketch comedy sometimes pulls this trick where the jokes it is making have a lot of academic or historical context but they somehow communicate that context while also making accessible jokes. The one that comes to mind is A Bit of Fry and Laurie's "Treaty of Westphalia". Key & Peele also pull this trick with sports, producing sketches that I still find funny even though I know almost nothing about the sport in question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-WO73Dh7rY