I've been working on a traditional style of skit and thought I'd add a laugh track. It's an interesting experiment...
Laugh track
It was beautifully shot and produced. (very professional) The female actress was nice to look at and you yourself have a good presence.
However, the acting and timing was off. The laughter track covered some of the timing gaps but not the poor gags.
As the laughter track was an experiment; it was ok for the first minute, then grated when there was laughter at each slight innuendo or gag.
Thanks for your comments Stephen. Would a tighter edit help with timing? If so, any specific scene/s?
Hi, Rob, welcome to the forum. I've a few comments to offer but recognise that I'm probably not your audience demographic (I'm more Mr Show than Benny Hill), so for that reason I'll keep my feedback technical.
Okay, first off the timing. Stephen's right, it plays very slack. Cutting in and out of shots quicker will help with that, as will not being such a slave to always showing the speaker for the full duration of their dialogue. Try having it so we stay on the person who just finished their line a few words into the next character's reply. That will help pick up the pace and give the sketch a more organic, less stagey feel.
Lose the laugh track. It's obviously stock and really hurts your sketch. Any time I see an amateur production using canned laughter for no good reason I fight to not switch off right away.
At 00:19 you have a cropping problem to the right side of the frame.
Some of the grean screen is very distracting, particularly during those shots where you have static people frozen in the background. Either find shots without figures, erase them from the shots you have, or shoot/find some mall video rather than using stills.
The ambience audio is a little loud - particulary when a kid screams from time to time and treads on a joke.
The artificial zoom looks naff. Did you shoot any close ups you could use?
Yep, what david said. He knows his shizzle!
Thanks for the feedback. I'll work on it!
I don't normally comment on items like this, as I have no technical experience to draw on unlike lots of other s round here, but I'm wasting time today so...
The laugh track doesn't work for me. To be honest, they rarely ever work for me, but definitely not in a clearly amateur sketch. The artificiality of it screams out at me, and spoils the experience. Same with the complex green screen stuff - perhaps I'm in a minority, but the fact that something so ornate looks glaringly false makes it much more difficult to immerse myself in the sketch than it would if you just had a desk and a till in front of a white wall.
Finally, I would lose the husband. He doesn't do anything, except clutter up the frame, and it would be a funnier, more awkward situation if the young woman were alone with the seedy salesman.
As for the writing, the concept of sexually intrusive bed salesman works for me, in theory, but the sketch is not my sort of style, really. My only specific advice would be to limit the "Yes - no!" line to a single instance.