British Comedy Guide

Practicing Stand Up - Attempt No.3

For some reason my mic failed to work, so audio is direct from the camera. The cat wanted to come in, some guy rang me from work,etc, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCvgDhQRcqE

Hi park bench, I thought that was your best yet! I really enjoyed it! Muchore than the last one, there were loads of laughs in it for me. I'll have another watch through later and give you more constructive feedback if that's ok but for now good job!!!

I was under pressure to come off the computer, and when I had already done about 15 takes, I found my mic hadn't recorded the audio. I must admit, the more I played with it and moved away from a fixed script, the better it felt for me. My trouble is, I never practice enough to have it all in my head, but that won't be an issue when THE day arrives. Whenever that may be.
Even after 15 takes, I still thought a couple of the jokes were good. My personal faves being the 'filling up' one, the 'clairvoyant' and the 'mourner'.

But hey, what do I know. I'm less than 3 months in.

(special thanks to SB for advice)

Hi Park Bench,

As promised some more feed back!! I've watched it through a couple of times now and I thought:

The adopt and elephant joke was good.
I really liked the girl friend 'ring' joke.
The medium joke was also good.
the diabetes joke was really funny (still laughing the third time round!!).

I thought your delivery was excellent not many erms or ahhs, it was also very confident much more so than your previous attempts on here and it was also more polished.

The only real critism I had was that you could have used one of your stronger jokes to finish but, then I'm only an amatuer myself.

Anyway excellent work, that brought a bit of sunshine to my day keep it up!!

Cheers,

Jason.

Some really nice material and pretty well delivered but a few (fairly pedantic) pointers, 1) take your hand out of your pocket, it looks a bit unnatural and makes you look nervous, 2) don't move the mic down away from your mouth after you've delivered a punchline as it makes it look as if you are arrogantly expecting a laugh (audiences will subconsciously pick up this visual clue), 3) try to cut out some of the "errs" (very hard, but will come with rehearsal and knowing your material inside out).

Otherwise all good though, I can see this going down very well at most comedy nights, one thing to remember when you do it in front of a live audience though is, slow down once you've finished a joke, allow the audience time to laugh, the temptation is to rattle off the next joke before you forget it or lose your place but you need to take a moment to enjoy the laugh and let the audience enjoy the joke.

Get yourself some gigs booked in and let us know how they go, good luck.

:)

Thanks for the feedback. It's all appreciated. I really struggled to get it taped last night. I think I must have had about 15 takes. Some of the outtakes are probably funnier than my material. The sticky tape holding the background coming off, the cat trying to get in through a window, someone ringing me from work mid-flow, etc. What I was finding, that as I got used to the material, I did tend to become more relaxed and ad lib a bit more. Also my beard looks a bit mexican, due to the grey bits, so it will have to come off, or I need to buy some mascara to thicken it out. Do they do 'manscara' ?

As you say, I now need to get out there and try it out 'live'. I'll have to find somewhere and go for it.

Thanks again.

Just to qualify my last comments. The video I posted wasn't the last one I took , but it was the one with the least cock-ups.

Also my beard looks a bit mexican, due to the grey bits, so it will have to come off

Leave the tache alone, it makes you look like Magnum.

Haha, that Diabetes line could make you famous.

I doubt you're looking for notes/suggestions but I think the idea behind that joke deserves/earns a weightier payoff, ie; "Tell that to my mother who's currently laying in a diabetic coma"

Good stuff about the elephant and "No smiley"

Quote: Jack Daniels @ June 10 2011, 8:53 PM BST

Haha, that Diabetes line could make you famous.

Unfortunately it's been done plenty of times before.

http://yorkshirecomedy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1842

Always worth googling one-liners when you write them (google the phrase or crucial words in the punchline and set up) to make sure Jimmy Carr, Milton Jones, Tim Vine, Steven Wright, Emo Phillips, Mitch Hedburg etc haven't got their first.

It's a pretty obvious one. I just used it to link the chocolate gag with being in hospital.

I'll never do standup so can't really comment on that part. However, I would say some of your jokes were excellent and made me laugh out loud. My favourite being the complications one and the joke about being round at your bosses for a bite to eat :)

Quote: Tony Cowards @ June 11 2011, 10:25 AM BST

Unfortunately it's been done plenty of times before.

http://yorkshirecomedy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1842

Always worth googling one-liners when you write them (google the phrase or crucial words in the punchline and set up) to make sure Jimmy Carr, Milton Jones, Tim Vine, Steven Wright, Emo Phillips, Mitch Hedburg etc haven't got their first.

That should be there not their.

Anyway, there are no new jokes, all jokes are a variation on jokes previously told, As long as you come up with them independently and aren't just copy/pasting into your act then that's fine.

you've got some decent oneliners,butthat's all

without a story or some sort of hook for the audience you hit diminising returns by joke 3

also try and combine gags into an engaging story

Quote: 404 Not Found @ June 11 2011, 12:00 PM BST

That should be there not their.

Anyway, there are no new jokes, all jokes are a variation on jokes previously told, As long as you come up with them independently and aren't just copy/pasting into your act then that's fine.

Sorry but that's just not true when it comes to the stand up circuit and, of course there are new jokes, in the same way that there is new music, yes the songs nowadays use the same notes as music down the ages but they are rearranged differently and are completely unique arrangements.

Yes, there may be a limited number of "forms" of joke but there are only a limited number of genres for novels but it doesn't mean that all crime novels are a variation on the same format.

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