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Is this forum for professional performers, or a battered women's support group?
Now that the "Oh, it's good enough, !@#? it" contingent has had their say, let's get back to the questions at hand.
1. Titling-
The hat is atrocious, it looks like MSOffice clip-art circa 1996, lose it, it's unnecessary.
The colors are glaring and childish, and so are the italics. It's a commonly held misconception that marketing towards a family-friendly and/or children's audience requires childish design. It's not true. The italics you are using to express motion, that's unnecessary, moving pictures convey motion pretty well on their own. I think you'd be a lot better off using white, or light grey text in a nice sans-serif font (Franklin Gothic is a classic, you might have it, Tahoma is nice and you definitely have it, there are a few other nice ones that are free, delicious is one, but it might have too much character of it's own for this). Bring in "MARCUS" as big as possible, right at the beginning, use 18-21pt for everything else, no italics.
2. File Format-
Pinnacle will make mpeg's, avi's and all sorts of other stuff, if you have flash, exporting flv is very easy, and flash delivers video better than anything else on the web. There are free converter's for flash video as well, RIVA is one. However, if you are doing it without the flash software, you need someone to make you a player. This website has all the information that you need about free file converters.
3. Gen. Comedy Stuff-
I'm writing an article for the library about this right now, so I don't want to spend too much time here, but..
First off, those last three posts are just bad advice. This forum is rife with it, and it's one of the reason's I'm so !@#?ing angry all the time. There is no excuse for using other people's material, it's lazy, plain and simple. Read that last line like 9 or 10 times. It's just lazy. Street acts justify it all day long, and if they'd spend half of the time that they do so writing or sharpening original material, they wouldn't feel the need to justify anything.
"If anyone has any suggestions on how to deliver the go ahead and text it that will be faster line without the 911 set up I'm listening."
NO.
Do it yourself. What is the premise there? That teenagers can text faster than they can talk. And you need a minute and a half to set that up? It's just a collection of words conveying an idea, it can be rearranged, sliced up, and !@#?ed with endlessly. It's not written in stone, it's a joke for chrissake. Screw with it, shorten it, throw it out randomly, have FUN with it. Then, write something new and throw it out.
"The Rules of Stand-Up" are the rules of comedy. I've been performing on the streets for 7 years. My authority on the subject is based on the frequency that my jokes are stolen.
Your material can always be better, and no matter what other people might tell you, you should be constantly striving for that. You owe it to your audience, as well as yourself. People lift lines all the time, but no matter how "well" you think you deliver your plagiarism, it's still a knee jerk reaction based on fear. When you get that fear to go away based on your own effort, an entire world opens up before you. The "easy way out" is nowhere near as rewarding.
I'm ranting, and I should be saving that for the article.
I'll break down one of your jokes as an example. In my opinion, this one is the worst offender, and is filled with mistakes. There's a good joke underneath it, you just haven't excavated it properly. The Garage Sale thing
First off, it's a stalling joke. You stall a trick to tell a joke, it's inherently a cruel thing to do, like offering a kid a lollipop and yanking out of his grasp. At that moment, you're being an asshole on purpose, and you'd better make them love you for it. Trust me on this one, my entire show is stalling, and when I'm not funny, people want to beat my ass for making them wait all that time.
Why count to five? They're ready on three, you're already dragging this thing out.
Stop mugging so much, it's amateurish.
"You ever thought something that was a good idea before you tried it?..."
There are two sentences here, you only need one. "And Then you tried it and it was a bad idea"(or whatever you say) is implied by the first sentence. The first sentence is also a question, which lacks confidence. You know damn well we've all had that bad idea, you don't need to ask, it sounds more like what you're asking for is acceptance, but you already have that. Also, here you're trying to do the right thing: talk about them first. That's important, people only inherently care about themselves, talk about them first, before you start on some story about yourself. You're trying to make it relate able, and that's good. The problem is that you don't really make it all that funny. And you mug all the way through it. You're telegraphing in big letters, "HERE COMES A BIG CHEESY JOKE!" It rings false. You could also throw a punch line in here, there are a million examples of this, many of which can be expressed in six syllables or less.
"It's kinda like that time I went to Junior High, and I decided to wear a shirt that I got at a garage sale."
Really? You were buying your own clothes in Junior High? And you went Garage Saling? What, did you graduate at 40? That's what I would have to infer after hearing "It's kinda like that time.." You only went once? It's grammatically poor, and it sounds fake as all hell. You need a laugh here, not a bad setup.
Now you're into the joke, "shut up Tiffany" gets a good laugh" (I'd play with different girls names, that are funnier, and have harder consonants, like maybe "Beatrice", or "Mildred", both make it sound like you're older than you are, bonus joke between the lines.) BUT, your act out blows, and that screws up your tags. At this point, this is where rookie comes in, you're mugging all over the place until it is appropriate to do so, then you get shy. The act out isn't believable, or well acted, so even though those tags are good, they don't get laughs. That's why scot told you to take them out (I think you should keep them, and get a bigger laugh with them). When you deliver those, you should be honestly indignant, and defensive, not goofy. And also, the kids don't know who the care bears are, if you named something comparable that is contemporary, everyone would get it, and it would be funnier to the parents, because they're sick of having to watch that crap.
Here's my crappy 5 minute rewrite.
"Sometimes you come up with an idea that sounds great on paper...
[Like going hunting with Dick Cheney]
[Like invading Iraq]
[Like wearing white socks with sandals (point at the guy in the front row)]
[Like giving your kids the remote control]
[Like letting your teenager pick your NetFlix]
[Like feeding asians whole milk]
[Like putting spinners on a mini-van]
[Like eating chili before church]
[Like taking your toddler to the zoo in spring]
[Like switching to Geico]
[Like ''3 V-Dubs' for under 17,000!"]
"[Or] like that time my parents decided to take us school shopping at the thrift store.
["Thank YOU trickle down economics!"]
"I walked into Junior High and this kid pipes up 'Marcus, that used to be MY shirt!' (you could just say "blouse" here to, to get to it quicker)
"'Shut up, Beatrice! [This used to be your training bra, too, at least I make it feel needed!(man-boobs+crossdressing = two bonus laughs]
"It's not a blouse, it's a shirt.
"And I happen to like the Power Puff girls.
It ain't brilliant, but there are thousands of options out there.
Hopefully it's coherent, I'm jacked on coffee, and my comedy shorthand is my own, it's not like there's a standardized form out there...
Now that the "Oh, it's good enough, !@#? it" contingent has had their say, let's get back to the questions at hand.
1. Titling-
The hat is atrocious, it looks like MSOffice clip-art circa 1996, lose it, it's unnecessary.
The colors are glaring and childish, and so are the italics. It's a commonly held misconception that marketing towards a family-friendly and/or children's audience requires childish design. It's not true. The italics you are using to express motion, that's unnecessary, moving pictures convey motion pretty well on their own. I think you'd be a lot better off using white, or light grey text in a nice sans-serif font (Franklin Gothic is a classic, you might have it, Tahoma is nice and you definitely have it, there are a few other nice ones that are free, delicious is one, but it might have too much character of it's own for this). Bring in "MARCUS" as big as possible, right at the beginning, use 18-21pt for everything else, no italics.
2. File Format-
Pinnacle will make mpeg's, avi's and all sorts of other stuff, if you have flash, exporting flv is very easy, and flash delivers video better than anything else on the web. There are free converter's for flash video as well, RIVA is one. However, if you are doing it without the flash software, you need someone to make you a player. This website has all the information that you need about free file converters.
3. Gen. Comedy Stuff-
I'm writing an article for the library about this right now, so I don't want to spend too much time here, but..
First off, those last three posts are just bad advice. This forum is rife with it, and it's one of the reason's I'm so !@#?ing angry all the time. There is no excuse for using other people's material, it's lazy, plain and simple. Read that last line like 9 or 10 times. It's just lazy. Street acts justify it all day long, and if they'd spend half of the time that they do so writing or sharpening original material, they wouldn't feel the need to justify anything.
"If anyone has any suggestions on how to deliver the go ahead and text it that will be faster line without the 911 set up I'm listening."
NO.
Do it yourself. What is the premise there? That teenagers can text faster than they can talk. And you need a minute and a half to set that up? It's just a collection of words conveying an idea, it can be rearranged, sliced up, and !@#?ed with endlessly. It's not written in stone, it's a joke for chrissake. Screw with it, shorten it, throw it out randomly, have FUN with it. Then, write something new and throw it out.
"The Rules of Stand-Up" are the rules of comedy. I've been performing on the streets for 7 years. My authority on the subject is based on the frequency that my jokes are stolen.
Your material can always be better, and no matter what other people might tell you, you should be constantly striving for that. You owe it to your audience, as well as yourself. People lift lines all the time, but no matter how "well" you think you deliver your plagiarism, it's still a knee jerk reaction based on fear. When you get that fear to go away based on your own effort, an entire world opens up before you. The "easy way out" is nowhere near as rewarding.
I'm ranting, and I should be saving that for the article.
I'll break down one of your jokes as an example. In my opinion, this one is the worst offender, and is filled with mistakes. There's a good joke underneath it, you just haven't excavated it properly. The Garage Sale thing
First off, it's a stalling joke. You stall a trick to tell a joke, it's inherently a cruel thing to do, like offering a kid a lollipop and yanking out of his grasp. At that moment, you're being an asshole on purpose, and you'd better make them love you for it. Trust me on this one, my entire show is stalling, and when I'm not funny, people want to beat my ass for making them wait all that time.
Why count to five? They're ready on three, you're already dragging this thing out.
Stop mugging so much, it's amateurish.
"You ever thought something that was a good idea before you tried it?..."
There are two sentences here, you only need one. "And Then you tried it and it was a bad idea"(or whatever you say) is implied by the first sentence. The first sentence is also a question, which lacks confidence. You know damn well we've all had that bad idea, you don't need to ask, it sounds more like what you're asking for is acceptance, but you already have that. Also, here you're trying to do the right thing: talk about them first. That's important, people only inherently care about themselves, talk about them first, before you start on some story about yourself. You're trying to make it relate able, and that's good. The problem is that you don't really make it all that funny. And you mug all the way through it. You're telegraphing in big letters, "HERE COMES A BIG CHEESY JOKE!" It rings false. You could also throw a punch line in here, there are a million examples of this, many of which can be expressed in six syllables or less.
"It's kinda like that time I went to Junior High, and I decided to wear a shirt that I got at a garage sale."
Really? You were buying your own clothes in Junior High? And you went Garage Saling? What, did you graduate at 40? That's what I would have to infer after hearing "It's kinda like that time.." You only went once? It's grammatically poor, and it sounds fake as all hell. You need a laugh here, not a bad setup.
Now you're into the joke, "shut up Tiffany" gets a good laugh" (I'd play with different girls names, that are funnier, and have harder consonants, like maybe "Beatrice", or "Mildred", both make it sound like you're older than you are, bonus joke between the lines.) BUT, your act out blows, and that screws up your tags. At this point, this is where rookie comes in, you're mugging all over the place until it is appropriate to do so, then you get shy. The act out isn't believable, or well acted, so even though those tags are good, they don't get laughs. That's why scot told you to take them out (I think you should keep them, and get a bigger laugh with them). When you deliver those, you should be honestly indignant, and defensive, not goofy. And also, the kids don't know who the care bears are, if you named something comparable that is contemporary, everyone would get it, and it would be funnier to the parents, because they're sick of having to watch that crap.
Here's my crappy 5 minute rewrite.
"Sometimes you come up with an idea that sounds great on paper...
[Like going hunting with Dick Cheney]
[Like invading Iraq]
[Like wearing white socks with sandals (point at the guy in the front row)]
[Like giving your kids the remote control]
[Like letting your teenager pick your NetFlix]
[Like feeding asians whole milk]
[Like putting spinners on a mini-van]
[Like eating chili before church]
[Like taking your toddler to the zoo in spring]
[Like switching to Geico]
[Like ''3 V-Dubs' for under 17,000!"]
"[Or] like that time my parents decided to take us school shopping at the thrift store.
["Thank YOU trickle down economics!"]
"I walked into Junior High and this kid pipes up 'Marcus, that used to be MY shirt!' (you could just say "blouse" here to, to get to it quicker)
"'Shut up, Beatrice! [This used to be your training bra, too, at least I make it feel needed!(man-boobs+crossdressing = two bonus laughs]
"It's not a blouse, it's a shirt.
"And I happen to like the Power Puff girls.
It ain't brilliant, but there are thousands of options out there.
Hopefully it's coherent, I'm jacked on coffee, and my comedy shorthand is my own, it's not like there's a standardized form out there...
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