How technology is changing the comedy short, and the way people get noticed
We tend to get weirder and weirder with our ideas and shorts as time progresses but I don’t really mind that.” - Nathan Fielder
By Alex Cooper
Section Editor
“DOUCHE!”
The film is one of many shorts to emerge out of the
Laugh Sabbath came together over two years ago when several comedy nights were given the opportunity to unite under the same umbrella. Levi MacDougall, one of the core members of Laugh Sabbath, says the formation of the collective was very organic. “We just realized we were doing a lot of shows together and just connected with different sensibilities.” The show has garnered significant attention and, for the past two years, has been part of the official Just for Laughs showcase circuit.
Laugh Sabbath is characterized by its non-traditional comedy. Performers are encouraged to break away from the usual stand-up and go off-the-board for laughs. Shows feature a mix of acts ranging from sketch troupes to bizarre improvisational bits. Occasionally comedians use the show as an opportunity to try out new material and it is common to see them reading off a sheet of paper. Some, such as Flanagan, have gone so far as to turn their notebook a part of their act. And then there are the videos. They are becoming more common and it is rare for a night to not feature any.
Flanagan started making shorts to promote his comedy night, Joke Club. He made several with his friend Rebecca Addelman, such as the bizarre Bath Goth and the crude Afghanistandup, in which Addelman entertains Canadian soldiers in Kandahar with jokes such as: “I don’t have a gun shot wound, but I do have a cum shot womb.”
These videos, and more, have been posted on websites such as Super Deluxe, Channel 101, and YouTube. On Super Deluxe, Douche is the most watched community video, with over 365,000 views. Despite its popularity, Flanagan, who hopes to make his living from comedy, hasn’t made any inroads into mainstream success. “Hopefully The Comedy Network will upload them one day,” says Flanagan.
Douche: By Nick Flanagan, Graham Wagner and Nathan Fielder
It’s not easy to make it on the Comedy Network. Michelle Daly, director of content, says the network receives 15 to 20 pitches every week. Out of those, very few turn into an actual series, and about 50 shorts get used for the show Canadian Comedy Shorts.
Several comedians now have TV shows based on their shorts. Greg Lawrence’s cartoon series Kevin Spencer began that way before being picked up by the Comedy Network. Likewise, Peter Oldring and Pat Kelly’s breakfast show parody Good Morning World was also picked up.
But they are the exceptions.
MacDougall came close to making it to the small screen when he produced a pilot for the network with his sketch-comedy group, The Distractions. He got their attention when he won the 2001 Cream of Comedy competition. Scouts from the network began coming out to The Distractions’ shows and were impressed by not only the quality of the material, but the amount of new sketches they came up with each week.
Eventually they went into production. The group, which also includes Tim Polley and Paul Schuck, set out to produce a sketch show with a cinematic look to it. For reasons beyond their control, it never aired. On the bright side MacDougall says the experience opened up a lot of doors for them.
Bacon: By The Distractions, from their Comedy Network Pilot
One person from Laugh Sabbath who has had success is Nathan Fielder, the director of Douche and winner of the 2006 Cream of Comedy competition. He managed to parlay his shorts into a gig as a field correspondent for the hit CBC show This Hour has 22 Minutes when a producer at the show saw his videos.
Fielder began making films while at comedy school. One of them, Job Hunt, was a finalist in the 2006 CBC Comedy Shorts Contest and another he made with MacDougall called In Your House was picked up for Canadian Comedy Shorts.
Eventually he collaborated with Laugh Sabbath host Chris Locke on These Moments Too – a series of nine short films where the humour was “less conceptual and more dialogue driven.” Fielder was unsure of them at first. It wasn’t until he witnessed the crowd response at shows that he realized what he was onto.
“I liked it, but I didn’t know what was funny about it,” he said. “We started showing them to crowds and they were laughing really hard. People were asking when we were going to make more. People wanted to be in them and were sending us scripts for ideas they had.”
These Moments Too - Nice Move: By Nathan Fielder and Chris Locke
Attempts to turn These Moments Too into a television series have been unsuccessful so far. Fielder and Locke pitched the show to several networks but were told it wasn’t mainstream enough. Despite that, Fielder says that out of all the shorts he’s made, he’s most proud of them. “I feel like they were doing something new that I hadn’t seen in comedy,” he says.
The comedy short is nothing new and can be dated back to the dawn of film, with the Lumiere Brothers’ 1895 Watering the Gardener. However, Fielder notes an increased prominence of the short due to the advance of technology. “It’s making people into self-producers,” he explains. “If you do that well, then it’s easier for people to see how they can turn what you do into something on TV.”
Michelle Daly agrees: “It gives you a sense of writing, of aesthetic, and of the tone that they’re looking for. It’s a very low risk calling card.”
The advent of YouTube and the ease with which people can make their own videos has changed the way people approach her. Seven out of ten pitches she receives include a link to a YouTube video.
For MacDougall, there are several benefits to posting his films online. He says the films he’s made with The Distractions helps them reach out to people that would not have heard about them normally. “It means the films we screen at the shows don’t end there,” he says.
It also allows him to bypass mainstream media. “It’s an encouraging part of it,” he says. “To just shoot something and put it up in front of a crowd and let them decide, without it being filtered through ten executives.” And when a video gets lots of views, he adds, executives know there’s an audience out there.
Now that Fielder has his gig on 22 Minutes, he’s using his exposure to give These Moments Too another go and firmly believes it could be a hit if given the chance. Meanwhile, he has continued to make short films with his Laugh Sabbath colleagues whenever he has time off from his day job.
“We tend to get weirder and weirder with our ideas and shorts as time progresses but I don’t really mind that.”
Even the Best: With Nathan Fielder and Katie Crown
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