BBC Comedy College Page 14

How many people who believe you can't be taught something actually enroll for classes? Surely the action contradicts what the mouth says?

Re: the idea that some comedians have a gift of timing. When we see them on TV we see the finished product that came about after countlessly getting it wrong, and of learning from their mistakes how to finally get it right. So to me, that's an ability to learn from mistakes not an enigmatic talent handed to them before they even spoke their first joke and screwed it up.

The idea of being a born-this or -that is a retrospective tag. It is a nonsense because it is only applied to those that succeed, not to the countless others who tried and failed. Few people here would dare apply that tag (born-writer) to themselves now but if they went on to greater things then they'll undoubtedly be described as born-writer. Nothing about that person has changed, but the success confers the title.

The point with a mystical god-given gift is that it can be seen to be elitist. For example, many famous writers say that they were persistent and worked hard and that anyone can achieve what they did but then slip in the sucker punch of the gift. Why? To seperate themselves from the masses of wannabes.

If anyone here seriously believes writing is primarily a gift and they persist in writing then they must believe they possess this quality. If I believed in such a notion and felt I didn't have the gift then I'd give up. There'd be no point fighting destiny.

Hard work, perseverance, an ability to self-edit, to analyse your mistakes, to meet deadlines, to write when the inspiration is thin, to be consistent, to write to someone else's brief, and to improve on past performance are all qualities that will push a writer forward. But no amount of 'natural talent' will allow a person to succeed if he doesn't combine it with other prerequisites.

Also commercial and critical success is no guideline to talent. We all know of many talentless and mediocre writers who succeeded. They probably constitute the bulk of success stories and a few are mega-successful. They certainly haven't got a gift, so it seems clear that talent is not only just one factor that makes a successful career but that it isn't even the most important factor.

This thread seems to have drifted a bit...great stuff.

One of the things which worries me about the New Comedy Writing scheme:-

Won't 'in-house' training develop generic comedy writing?

On one hand, I don't think the comedy college would provide generic comedy, because the mentors are all so different - Susan Nickson vs Armando Ianucci etc (hmm, who would YOU choose ?!!).

But on the other hand, there have been rumblings online about the equivalent drama scheme. How truthful they are, I have no idea.

From http://tvscriptwriter.blogspot.com/2007/11/swimming-lessons.html

In recent months, The Grid has become the new creed for anyone who wishes to write for the BBC. It’s a curious little artefact borrowed from various gurus and cobbled together from the producer’s point of view. It might seem harmless enough except that conformity is a mandatory requirement. However many episodes of however many shows a writer might have written over the years, including TV features for which they’ve won prizes, whether or not they have been key writers or core writers or even taught extensively (shared their art) in writing foundations and universities, if they don’t attend a ‘Retraining Course’ to learn all about The Grid, they are sacked. Or as the BBC puts it, “Some writers went on it [The Grid Course], adjusted well and have continued to write”. The others, presumably, didn’t go on the course, didn’t adjust therefore and no longer write. So they have only themselves to blame. According to the BBC, “Some writers grab the opportunity and some don’t.” (From the WGGB/BBC meeting in October).

Quote: Robin Kelly @ February 16, 2008, 12:31 PM

The idea that some people are born artists and some born musicians and some born writers is just bizarre to me and I've been trying to work out why.

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bizarre it might be but there is such a thing as natural talent and there are born artists / musicians etc. i have a friend who is a concert pianist. he was playing beethoven sonatas at 8 years old. he didn't need to be taught. he could just play. it's an instinctive inate gift which cannot be attained no matter how much practice. unless of course, you have a natural talent. whilst those who work hard can, after a time, produce reasonable scripts they will never reach the heights of greatness/ genius.

he didn't need to be taught. he could just play.

So nobody ever showed him what those funny little dots and lines on the sheet music meant ?

So he just happened to guess exactly the same series of 100,000 notes as Beethoven happened to write, without being able to read the score, or he managed to look at these funny lines and dots on a piece of paper one day and figured out "I guess that means I press these keys on the piano with these fingers in exactly this order. Let's see what happens. Ooh! Wait! Is that music ??"

Quote: Robin Kelly @ February 16, 2008, 12:31 PM

(And I'm still not entirely sure how a nice picture of a naked lady disproves my point. I couldn't paint that in a million years, not because I don't have the natural talent but because I couldn't be arsed to get that talent through hard work. Unless of course that was the first painting you have ever done and you have never drawn before or studied art or taken any lessons whatsoever, then that would be different)

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Sorry Robin, but you can't LEARN to paint like me. You have to have the ability in the first place, then you can learn about elasticity of paint film, drying times, brush effects etc. All of those things refine the talent that is there in the first place. Incidentally, you ought to know that they don't really teach you how to paint at art school (not even in the old days), because they can't, and often the many of the students are more gifted than than the tutors. Here's an example of what you can learn: The distance between the wrist and the elbow is longer than the distance between the elbow and the shoulder. Most people draw an arm bending in the middle. That's because they've thought of its function rather than having looked at it. A tutor can show you that and tell you to look, but they can't make your drawing marks expressive or interesting.

Schooling without talent produces mediocrity. You need both for a truly successful result, but talent's the more important one.

Quote: Nick Rivers @ February 16, 2008, 4:48 PM

i have a friend who is a concert pianist. he was playing beethoven sonatas at 8 years old. he didn't need to be taught.

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But he didn't sit down and play one straight off the very first time. He heard Beethoven, he wanted to imitate, he analysed the notes, and worked out where on the keyboard they were, then he strung it together ... surely. That's the method I used to self-teach myself the piano and all the other instruments I play.

There was no magic for me, I desperately wanted to copy so I worked out how to do it. I couldn't afford a guitar. I had a spanish acoustic with no strings so I painted the strings on and learned my fingering that way. When I borrowed a guitar people were surprised but there was no trick, I wanted to learn it so I did, despite the obstacles and lack of talent that still haunts me.

And I repeat there are many successful people in their fields who are mediocre. Success is a product of many variables which also includes more than a fair share of luck: being at the right place at the right time being an obvious chance element in a success story.

He heard Beethoven, he wanted to imitate, he analysed the notes, and worked out where on the keyboard they were, then he strung it together ... surely.

A lot of interested kids could sit at a piano and pick out a tune that sounds a bit like a Beethoven melody if they stuck at it long enough.

But as somebody who did all the music grades, and learned to play plenty of Beethoven piano sonatas (admittedly to a pretty pisspoor standard), I feel confident in saying that any eight-year-old who managed to exactly replicate Beethoven sonatas after listening to them, by ear, note for note, without being able to read music or ever having had any music tuition, would be a prodigy on a par with Mozart and would have been featured on TV documentaries around the world.

I don't know why I'm being picky about this point, I really don't.

I think the fact is that some people are more adept at writing than others. Yes, anyone can be taught how to write a script, and through pracitce improve and get good, but theyre never going to be producing work as good as those who just naturally have brains more able to come up with good stuff. Technical skills can be taught and refined, being able to come up with the ideas in the first place cant. Like with the pianist thing mentioned, of course everyone has to be taught how to play, but theres always going to be some who can play brilliantly and those who, with a lot of practice, can just play very well and nothing more.

Technical skills can be learned, creativity and the ability to generate unique and hilarious ideas cant. Thats what I think anyway, I just dont believe that everyone can do anything if to a high standard if they just put the effort in, its just not true; everyone has different brains and different bodies that are going to perform, well, differently.

Quote: SlagA @ February 16, 2008, 5:21 PM

And I repeat there are many successful people in their fields who are mediocre.

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Well exactly, they can do it, but they cant do it as well as those whos brains developed in such a way that its easy for them. Mediocre is not something to aspire to!

Technical skills can be learned, creativity and the ability to generate unique and hilarious ideas cant. Thats what I think anyway, I just dont believe that everyone can do anything if to a high standard if they just put the effort in, its just not true; everyone has different brains and different bodies that are going to perform, well, differently.

I think there's a few things going on here.

Firstly, some people are naturally funny and some aren't. It's the "funny bones" thing. It's your personality, the way it's evolved over your lifetime. You either have a comic way of looking at the world, or you don't. And of these funny people, some are naturally much funnier than others.

Can you learn to be "funnier" ? I don't know. I don't even know what that means. Better ideas, more frequent ideas, more original ideas perhaps.

What I do think can be learned (whether self-taught through diligent practice, or by attending classes, or working with others, or all three) is the ability to access that natural comic ability, and turn it into a script or a stand-up routine or a cartoon or an Internet animation or whatever. That's the writing part. We all know that our own writing gets better with practice. We learn how to make the most of a funny idea through sharp editing or by pushing the concept further or whatever.

Perhaps the very first thing Steve Coogan ever wrote was better than any draft I will ever write of anything, who knows. But none of us know how good we will get, whether we will just plateau at mediocrity, or eventually create something of real merit, until we've put the years of work in. This raises the further question "when do you realise you are shit and just give up", but that's not a nice subject for a Saturday.

Well I agree Griff, those who naturally have it in them can be taught to acces it better and to write it up to a higher standard, but I dont think you can teach someone to write funny if they dont have that sort of a creative brain in the first place.

Maybe all a "creative brain" amounts to is the constant subconscious need to be creative. Some people naturally can't help thinking "oh that would make a good sketch/play/poem" when they overhear something on the bus. The same thing would never occur to others in a million years.

Quote: Robin Kelly @ February 16, 2008, 12:31 PM

Rather than natural innate ability isn't it that comedy writers have actually learnt from years of watching and listening to comedy and making their friends laugh? Is it really a co-incidence that people who work hard move through the Writersroom from getting 'no feedback' letters to feedback letters to encouragement letters to finally getting invited in?

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Think we'll have to agree to disagree there Robin. You appear to be saying that anyone can be taught creativity as long as they put the work in. What about the people who've been sending in scripts to the Writer's Room for years, and despite feedback / advice etc, never seem to get any better?

I had a quick look on the web about creative writing and found this - an author who expresses the point more eloquently than me. http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewArticle.asp?id=26688

Quote: Matthew Stott @ February 16, 2008, 6:37 PM

Well I agree Griff, those who naturally have it in them can be taught to acces it better and to write it up to a higher standard, but I dont think you can teach someone to write funny if they dont have that sort of a creative brain in the first place.

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This is an extract from an article about a bloke who is researching the creativity gene. So bear in mind this is from someone who believes that there may be something genetic about creativity, in the brain from birth:

He also researches why humans developed creativity - especially language - just in the past 100,000 years or so, when we've been around for thousands of years.

He also suspects there is a strong link between creativity and humour. Humour should even be formally taught, he said.

"You wouldn't think you'd normally have jokes and humour as part of a school syllabus, but I think they're very important because they teach people how to be creative," he said.

"Jokes involve juxtaposing seemingly unrelated ideas, seeing something from a novel vantage point, and that's the basis of all creativity."

It's not that being born creative enables you to do comedy but by doing comedy you become creative.

It's like a muscle that needs regular exercise. The type of person who just sets a target of writing three sketches a week is going to progress more than someone who only bothers writing when a sketch show makes an open call.

Someone who works on the sitcom idea for a while and thinks about the characters and relationships and starts writing it and rewriting it is going to progress quicker than someone who starts and quickly finishes an unedited first draft and sends it off whenever a competition is announced.

This is not rocket science. As SlagA said, we learn by learning from our mistakes. The more you write, the more you learn.

SlagA's other point is also crucial in that there are so many more important factors that will progress you in the business than a 'god given talent '- even if such a thing exists. It's not that you have to aspire to be one of the mediocre writers that have made it but be one of the better writers that can take their place.

Oh and as for the genius thing:

“For 37 years I've practiced 14 hours a day, and now they call me a genius” Pablo de Sarasate

Quote: Perry Nium @ February 16, 2008, 6:59 PM

Think we'll have to agree to disagree there Robin. You appear to be saying that anyone can be taught creativity as long as they put the work in. What about the people who've been sending in scripts to the Writer's Room for years, and despite feedback / advice etc, never seem to get any better?

I had a quick look on the web about creative writing and found this - an author who expresses the point more eloquently than me. http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewArticle.asp?id=26688

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But there's nothing in that article I disagree with so maybe this is all a misunderstanding which someone will use for a sitcom plot one day.

What the author is saying is that not everyone can access the gift of talent unless certain pre-conditions are met like "unusual access to the subconscious". Which is all I'm saying. I've always said self-reflection and self-knowledge is crucial to being a good writer, everyone can learn to "access that mother lode" and just because most people don't, it doesn't prove it must be innate - it just proves most people don't.

The problem is I have read loads of scripts sent into the writersroom over the years where the writers were mystified as to why they were rejected. When I pointed out why and what they would need to do to get a better response, they usually rejected the advice because it was too much hard work.

My point about plenty of successful people are mediocre wasn't saying that's what we should aim at but that there must be more factors at work than pure talent or aptitude to make someone so obviously mediocre so successful.

But point taken Matt,

And yes, the reason I got involved in writing was because I was fed up with the mediocre fare on offer and wanted to produce better. I guess whatever we believe (rightly or wrongly - but I'm not saying which camp is which ) if we end up improving comedy then all the better.

Enjoyed this debate so far.