Dare I ask?

[Spike McGuire]

I finally have a website, and it seems like the hip thing to do to put a link up here and have people check it out. So tell me what you think.

https://www.comedythatrocks.com

-----Spike

[Jim]

Where's the crowd?

OK, I'll say something...

I'm glad you wrote: "All clips recorded during live performance" on the video page because I really wasn't sure if there was an audience there!

You really need some crowd sounds and shots of people cheering you on or something. It kind of looks like you set up the tripod off in the corner and just started performing for an imaginary audience.

Next time you're at a gig when you're doing two or three sets on one stage, shoot each show from a different angle and pay a kid $5 to pan the camera around into the audience every once in a while. Then edit the whole thing together and it will look like one show shot with three cameras.

Not trying to be harsh, just helpful.
Jim

[scot]

Video:
Ditto Jim. You can also shoot over the heads of the audience or from behind you.
+ take out cheesy edits
+ make it faster (flashing white in between cuts is easy and looks good)
+ get closer shots of you (head and shoulders) you are your own logo
+ highlight your originality
+ you can mix in the carnival shots with your performance, but don't make them stand alone. It doesn't make sense.
+ Since all you have is shots without an audience find a nice stage and shoot yourself doing tricks without an audience. Or in an alley by graphitti. The vid will look better.


Website:

- where's the rocking? You have a good theme, but you have to stick to it in everything. Your clothes don't look rockin, your site doesn't look rockin.
- get a picture of you looking at the camera.
- chop down the text.
- white on black text is harder to read than say light grey on black. Your fonts aren't rockin either.
- make the menu white with red text (black on mouse over); rock the font
- your text starts to low (there's too much space between the header image and the text.
- In fact, remove the header image (fire) all together.

Again with the rockin. If you pull this off, people will remember you really easily. Putting yourself in a little package is the basis of marketing. You have to give familiar cues back to "rockin" in everything so that people can't picture you or your style without thinking "this guy is pure rock and roll"

Meet some bands and ask to do five minutes before they go on. Or, show up at a rock club, say "I'm in the show" then, find the band and ask them 15 minutes before they start. I've done this several times, and if I wanted to be the rockin' juggler, I'd have had great footage. + handheld camera looks rock.

[Doctor Eric]

Less Talk, More Rock.

I feel it is my duty to inform you, as someone who was raised on rock and roll, that ska does not rock, it never has, it never will.

I personally think #1 that url's like comedythatrocks.com or prettyeffingfunny.com or jugglegood.com or ialsowishiwascool.com are completely retarded. Not only is it generic, comedythatrocks.com is also really long and unnecessary. Furthermore, I watched your video, and there was absolutely nothing in it that was funny, or that rocked, and it was completely lacking in originality. The only thing that even hinted at rock was all the shots of carnival rides (why are those there?) but that makes me think of meth more than rock. Scot is right, packaging is a great marketing tool, but CORRECT packaging is much more powerful. I could wrap a thousand G.IJoe boxes around a bunch of Barbie dolls, but the consumer would be pretty confused and upset. Your resume says you have opened for WAR, K.C. and the Sunshine Band and the Village People, I'm still waiting for rock. Your video looks like a far off shot of a lonely suburban kid practicing stale juggling tricks in a park by himself. Then it looks like he waited until total darkness to ask his own family if they've ever seen a better juggler. The copy on your site is packed with pretentious babble about mythical scientists and Idon'tknowwhatelsebecauseithurtmybraintoreadit. You have two choices young Jedi, change your entire packaging scheme, or start rocking (I have a couple of albums you can borrow if you need some help).

As far as your site goes, you should sue Yahoo! site builder, I looked at your code and almost vomited, the damn program is using advanced Javascript to position elements on the page. I'm left hurt and confused. Your site is very simple, the code should be too. If you have to use a WYSIWYG editor, use dreamweaver, it's the cleanest, and you can see what it's doing and clean it up. Your font choices suck, white text on black looks crappy anyway, don't use garamond to make the problem worse, if you do white on black use a sans-serif font and make it small, or better yet, a pixel-font(as much as I hate them), web text isn't anti-aliased, and it sticks out like a sore thumb when you do white on black. That "environ" font that you used for the right side babble is a font that I don't have (so you shouldn't use it), so I'm not sure what it is supposed to look like, but the replacement that my computer is using just plain sucks, and the information there is useless anyway, so it really does nothing but detract from the site. The graphics on your site are just wrong. Chill out with the photoshop filters, and give us some real photos. Your resume says "skills (click for more information)" but there is nothing to click. Take that sentence out until there is. it just looks sloppy. If you are so damn rockin', then don't call your page with one video on it "Media" call it "Video". I found the rant on your home page to be so completely deluded and self congratulatory that I didn't notice that there is a performance schedule there. Take out all the crap and just have the performance schedule there. The site you have could be coded with 15% of the code that you have, find a friend who knows html and css, and have him/her walk you through redoing it by hand, and have them explain font families to you, so you don't run in to problems like the "Environ" thing again. Redo the video 5 or 6 times, and show us something more than the stuff that all jugglers do in it. Put up some real photos, and redo your graphics entirely. Think about your target market, and streamline the site accordingly, I'm not sure what you're selling. Don't take any of this too hard, you asked for it, and it's better that you hear it here.

Last, but not least, in your new found search of all that is rock, may I suggest you start somewhere near the beginning...

C'mon, c'mon, c'mon now CLICK me babe...

[scot]

by the way

Eric and I write like this to each other constantly.

[MarcusM]

my 2 cents

I agree, the video does need work. I wanted to hear you talking, and what you actually do in a show, it is obvious that you are very talented...show it!
Also...
The transitions in the video was a little too much, the page turning, the shooting stars, after a while it was like ok he's good with imovie or whatever you used...Not that that's bad, once and a while a good transition is ok.

Make the font stronger, I just feel like it's to plain. I like the red color theme you got going on. nice work,

[eurobuskers]

fotos and videos

This is for everyone!
every now and again people say to me,"hey, I saw you last week/month/year and i took this video or this foto".
it has to be said 99 percent are not presentable because although I may be good to look at, they are nearly always taken from the public and so all one can see is me in a very large square all on my own !
the best fotos are taken from the side a little or even from behind!

[worldwidese]

Hirer's Point of view

I looked at your site from a presenter's position rather than a webmaster's and this is how I see it.

First, I want to congratulate you on having got your presence up on the web. Good! Now you can start to refine it.

Hirers don't care that you made your site on a Yahoo template. They just want to learn a bit about what you actually do, where you've done it, who you are, the audience reaction and if you're suitable for their venue.

So you are a product, and you have to make sure you have an appropriate marketing package that fits your act.

What you actually do
I think you covered that OK. But you need some closeups in the video.

Where you've done it
On the video you've got far too much County Fair Midway coverage. It's starting to look like a promotion for the Fair, not you! Cut it way down.

Who you are
This is where you need to look at the site design. If you are "rocking" you don't want a Font that's used for publishing online books. Go for something more informal and modern. Sitebuilder doesn't give you much choice. Impact? Comix sans?
Red, white and black are suitable colors. But if you want to use white text on black, making the text larger makes it easier to read.

About you- It's OK. Your costume doesn't look very "rocking"

The audience reaction
Hard to tell. Not enough. See what the others have written.

If you're suitable for their venue.
Here again, all that Midway stuff could turn some hirers off. You can't be all things to all people, but give yourself the maximum opportunity. You may find yourself wanting to try some more"cultural" venues later on.
Your list of venues is OK. But try and get some reviews and accolades from past hirers to post online. Hirers feel more confident if they see others have found you acceptable to their audiences. if they goof up on the hiring they'll get blamed.

Don't be discouraged. You've made a start.

[le pire]

The juggling video-

-This should be obvious, but you're doing a rola bola routine and in the footage the rola bola is almost entirely obscured by a shrub.

[Spike McGuire]

Ah ha!

Guys,

Thanks for all the comments, I am really going to start kicking out all of it soon. I just wanted to let you know that I figured how to put the videos I wanted on the site, so check those out. Way better representation.

https://www.comedythatrocks.com/videos.html

-----Spike

[le pire]

These are the videos I watched, and the shrub is still there.

Love the closeup of your jiggling belly in the "big trick." If you're not rocking, you're certainly rolling.

[eurobuskers]

better

this is much better, to be recomended

[Spike McGuire]

progress

I took all of the suggestions that were in my power to fix immediately, and did. I think I hit what you guys mentioned, but if it needs some tweaking, by all means I'm listening. No new pics yet, but I'm working on it. As I said, new video's up. I figured out how to get my promo dvd into my machine, so that section is where I feel it should be. I also think all video comments made, were coincidentally hit in what is up.

And to the good Doctor -

I don't mean this in anyway to come off as bitchy, but why does my source code matter? I defiantly bow to you on web based knowledge, just wondering if you could explain (in lay terms), why this would be an issue.

so once again - www.comedythatrocks.com/index

-----Spike

[le pire]

If I may respond for the doctor-

I took a look at your source code and it basically takes the "long way" to do very simple tasks, like menu bar rollovers for example. Right now, this is not a big deal because your site doesnot have a huge amount of graphics or script-intensive features.

However, when you start to expand the site, less efficient source codes will slow your site down DRAMATICALLY.

Case in point- my own site. Right now the drop down menus on my site were programmed by me and use the show-hide layers to make them appear and disappear. I didn't want to use a template which would clash with the overall look that I had created for the site.

The downside to this, however, is that the way they are currently programmed takes up WAY to much code and slows down the site when it loads. In addition to that, it also makes the pages load up kind of funny. (There's a long explanation for this, but the short answer is making sure the /div tags worked on EVERY kind of freakin' browser out there.)

So to get back to the point- leaner code = faster site. Faster=better. The Doc's right about dreamweaver too, it even has a feature to "clean up" the HTML and take out any redundant code. This is not something that you really have to worry about now, but as your site expands and improves, it will definately become an issue.

Good luck,


etienne

[scot]

tons better. Take the bevel off the buttons in your menu. Make them all white/greY and put a black boarder on them so that when they turn black, the border doesn't show.

The header looks better, but now, it looks like bubbles or something.

The yoyo video is good. I would just leave that one up until you get better vids.

Then, put a description of other bits in your show.

Go with the typewriter font in your resume.

I agree with Eric on the code stuff, but I didn't see that as something you could change quickly. The alignment displays wrong in my browser, and will probably continue to be different for everyone. It's just ridiculous code. It's like building a robot to hold your shoes on instead of buying some laces.

Oh, you're doing images instead of text. It's a waste and it doesn't look as good. You can still have headlines as images, but use "courier, courier new" for the font in the body. That font works on everyone's computer. http://www.crashcourseshow.com is an example of this.