No Shortcuts in Comedy

This article will appear on the Fine Cut Magazine website, which comes out later this spring. An abbreviated version will appear in the print copy.

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!”

So yells Graham Wagner at the end of the comedy short of the same name about a man who “doesn’t understand a word”. The video was created by Wagner and Nick Flanagan, along with several friends, and some random passer-bys.

The film is one of many shorts to emerge out of the Toronto alternative comedy scene centred around Laugh Sabbath, held every Sunday at the Rivoli. It’s the same night and the same stage Canadian comedy legends Kids in the Hall got their start at many years ago.

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

Stronger cars, potential dangers still no problem for Humber fire and emergency

Humber’s fire and emergency services program is always updating its vehicle crash rescue techniques and equipment to keep up with new technologies, said program manager Ian Sim.

Metals that are harder to cut through, air bags that can go off at any moment, and hollow drive-shafts that can explode are among the potentially dangerous components they encounter.

“There are many issues that come up in cars. There are a lot of new technologies that come along,” he said. “As they do, you adapt and change your training techniques.”

He added that rescue tool manufacturers are doing a good job producing new equipment to keep up with developments in vehicle technology.

“The new tools do a good job,” he said. “As far as technology, manufacturers are keeping up. As new things are required, manufacturers are using new equipment.”

Auto-extrication personnel use a variety of tools, including electric saws, impact guns and pneumatic spreaders, better known as “the jaws of life.”

Although it was reported in the Toronto Star on Monday that it took emergency crews an hour to free three trapped Brinks guards from their overturned truck, Captain Mark Bardgett of the special operations section of Toronto Fire Services said new vehicle materials are not an issue for them.

“We have a comprehensive extrication program that educates firefighters about various aspects of vehicle extrication,” he said. “Toronto Fire Services is very diligent at looking at tools capable of doing the job.”

Toronto Fire Services has committees that evaluate the performance of equipment and deal with manufacturers about the availability of new tools.

Sim said part of the challenge facing his program is getting cars from auto-wreckers built with the latest technology for training.

“Unfortunately it is hard to get those cars to train on because you get old cars at auto-wreckers to train on,” he said. “Although we can’t get those cars to actually cut up, when we are doing some of the older cars we’re pointing out the points where they would find those issues so at least they’re aware of it.”

Some new vehicles, like the Mercedes S-Class, have safe cutting zone marked on the car so emergency teams know where to cut. Bardgett said other manufacturers are starting to do this too.

Toronto Fire Services’ auto-extrication teams train on cars four times per year and get training on new equipment as they become available.

“Our department is very diligent in training and keeping up to date on new vehicle technology,” said Capt. Bardgett.

Bikers overtake lot

Popularity of scooter course on the rise

Humber’s motorcycle training centre is expecting to see an increase in the number of students enrolled in its scooter courses this season, said program manager Andy Hertel.

“It’s become really popular,” he said. “In two years we went from zero students to about 250 and I’m expecting that’s going to grow again this year.”

Program co-ordinator John Reed said people sign up for scooter training because they want to learn and do it safely.

According to its website, the motorcycle training centre is the largest of its kind in the world. It has 120 full and part-time instructors and trains about 3,000 students a year in courses ranging from basic to a pro-rider course.

The centre’s bread and butter is the basic rider course, which Hertel said gets about 2,000 students a year.

Students who complete the course learn the basics of riding, get a break on insurance and receive documents for their M2 license.

“Most people want to become safe out there,” said Marshall Richmond, an instructor at the centre. “I think that’s probably their prime goal – become a good rider and then secondary and tertiary goals are to get a licence out of it and a big insurance discount out of it.”

Hertel said rider training is key for all levels of riding.

“No matter what you end up doing with your riding knowledge and abilities, at some point you have to learn to ride properly, he said. “And if you go on to become a world-class GP racer or if you go on to become a moto-cross rider, or if you go on to just casually ride on the weekends with your friends, it all starts in the same place with rider training.”

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Jumping wages land in youths’ corner

Seasonal placements will now offer students more of an incentive

Hundreds of summer jobs will be impacted by the increase in Ontario’s minimum wage, said Karen Fast, manager of the Career Centre.

The jobs affected are provided through government run programs such as Summer Experience and the Federal Student Work Experience Program. They provide students with work experience in a government ministry related to their field of study.

“Those jobs are amazing because a lot of them are programs related to the students and they only pay minimum wage,” Karen Fast said. “Those government positions will definitely be affected, and would offer at least a reasonable amount of money to the students.”

The minimum wage in Ontario will be raised to $8.75 per hour from $8 per hour on March 31.

Fast said the biggest impact will be felt by students who work minimum wage jobs in retail.

“A lot of our students have part-time jobs in the retail industry,” she said. “That’s where I see this really benefiting those students because they’re going to see those increases because the employers have to pay them.”

The increase on minimum wage will not have a major impact on Humber faculty and staff because those wages are negotiated and not indexed to minimum wage, said Joanne Maguire, manager of compensation and benefits at Humber College.

Work-study students that get jobs at Humber are already paid over the minimum wage, she said.

“It impacts us in that we stay above it,” Maguire said, “But we don’t have to go and do a whole pile of increases on March 31 because even with the increase, nobody’s under the minimum wage.”

Amy Terrill, a spokesperson for the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, said businesses are nervous about the consequences on labour cost.

“It may force some companies to reduce numbers,” she said.

The minimum wage will jump to $9.50 per hour in 2009 and to $10.25 per hour in 2010.

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Torontonians can track carbon footprint

Toronto Mayor David Miller said the city will reach out to institutions such as Humber to participate in its new initiative to reduce the city’s carbon footprint.

Zerofootprint Toronto is an Internet portal launched locally last week to allow residents, businesses, neighbourhoods and community groups to measure, track and reduce their contributions to greenhouse gas emissions.

“The calculator is designed in a way that institutions can use it as well,” Miller told students and faculty during an appearance at North Campus last week. “It’s intended to build partnerships so the outreach is happening. I’m sure Humber will become a partner in the near future.”

The portal (toronto.zerofootprint.net) is a collaboration between the city and Zerofootprint, a Toronto-based, non-profit organization that provides services to consumers and businesses who wish to reduce their carbon footprint.

The online calculator asks questions about individuals’ travel, food consumption, and household energy use to measure their greenhouse gas emissions. The average Torontonian’s footprint is 8.6 tonnes.

“This tool, because it’s web-based, will allow people to come together in groups of common interest, which could be as simple as carpooling, or it could be – we have two or three groups in Toronto – local neighbourhoods where people got together to buy solar panels,” said Miller.

While Humber has yet to commit to using Zerofootprint as a tool to measure and reduce its carbon emissions, Humber president John Davies said the school has invested in reducing its energy usage.

“The power plant is mostly new over the past four years,” he said. “We’ve spent $6 million or $7 million into changing boilers and chillers.”

He added that the school has also installed light sensors in classrooms to reduce electricity consumption.

So far more than 50 organizations in Toronto have committed to using Zerofootprint, including York University and the Ontario College of Art and Design.

Ron Dembo, founder and CEO of Zerofootprint, said in a press release carbon emissions are at the core of the climate change problem.

“This site gives Torontonians a real, tangible method to tackle climate change,” he said. “We provide not only a free measurement tool - but more importantly, a course of action that they can take to reduce their own carbon footprint.”

Robert Hellier, program coordinator of the new sustainable energy and building design program, said carbon calculators are a useful tool.

“It does allow for awareness for people that have not though about it,” he said. “It makes a connection between someone’s lifestyle and the capacity of the planet to sustain life.”

Miller said the website will further the city’s goal of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 over 1990 levels.

“It collects data. It allows us to look at the data and make changes in big picture policies,” he said. “That’s where getting institutions like Humber on board will help.”

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Mixed reactions to federal budget

There is “a ring of an opportunity missed” in this week’s federal budget, said Humber president John Davies.

He is disappointed in the lack of a national skills agenda and the lack of investment in infrastructure.

“Infrastructure would be great for business and that affects students too in terms of getting jobs,” he said. He added he was pleased there was an investment in student grants.

The budget commits $123 million over four years to streamline the Canada Student Loans Program and $350 million to a new Canada Student Grants Program that replaces the Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation, which expires next year. Funding for both takes effect in 2009.

Tyler Charlebois, director of advocacy for the College Student Alliance, the advocacy organization that represents HSF, said he is optimistic with the budget.

“It’s got money in it for post-secondary education. It’s got money around financial aid,” he said. “Now, that money doesn’t come until 2009-10 and there are a lot of sources of vagueness around the structure of many programs but there’s room in there for us to get in there and massage the fine details.”

Rob Savage, a spokesperson for Colleges Ontario, the advocacy organization for Ontario’s colleges, said the colleges are generally dissatisfied with the budget.

“The budget failed to address the issues around capacity and the need to really invest in the colleges themselves,” he said. “There’s support for students, which helps address the supply side, but in terms of meeting the demand for new students the budget hasn’t really made the investment into colleges for the infrastructure.”

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Skills shortage crisis looms

Humber has a large role to play in addressing the impending skills shortage in Ontario, said college president John Davies.

“I think it’s an agenda whose time has definitely come,” he said. “Colleges are essential to the training and re-training of people relative to the skills shortage in the province.”

Colleges Ontario, the advocacy organization for the province’s 24 public colleges, is working with provincial and federal governments to develop a skills training strategy to help avert a labour shortage crisis in the future.

The initiative is being led by the Ontario Workforce Shortage Coalition, a group that includes Colleges Ontario, the College Student Alliance, and 18 industry associations from every sector of the economy.

A report issued by the Conference Board of Canada last September says Ontario will face a shortage of more than 360,000 workers by 2025, despite current layoffs in sectors such as manufacturing.

Linda Franklin, president and CEO of Colleges Ontario, said the problem needs to be addressed now.

“We’re going to face a really serious challenge in Ontario if we don’t get started now in fixing it. The longer we go on, the more exponentially this challenge grows,” she said at a Queen’s Park meeting of the government’s standing committee on finance and economic affairs last week.

The coalition is recommending the creation of a skill council to help bring government, educators, employers, and labour together to address the issue.

Franklin said part of the problem is providing workers with skills that are transferable across sectors and can be obtained quickly.

“It’s not terribly helpful to train people quickly for a job only to find out that they’re laid off again with no core skills,” she said.

Tyler Charlebois, director of advocacy for the College Student Alliance, told the committee that increasing employment of under-represented groups such as women, aboriginals, the disabled, immigrants and adults without high school education would help the shortage by increasing their skills and getting them into the workforce.

He said that if adults aged 25 to 64 with high school or less education had the same employment rate as those with college credentials, 289,000 of them would have jobs.

“That’s a huge figure and a huge number of Ontarians who are not finding employment because they do not have the education that is needed. With 70 per cent of all jobs needing at least some form of post-secondary education, we need to start retraining and we need to start making sure the education and the accessibility of our institutions are there.”

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College gets $5.6 million boost

Funds part of $200-million pie for campus safety, green initiatives, building upgrades

Humber will receive $5.6 million in funds to invest in campus security, energy efficiency and building upgrades.

“We’re striving to maintain excellence in this field to make sure we do produce one of the most highly educated and highly skilled workforces,” said John Milloy, Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities at a press conference at George Brown College on Tuesday.

“Investments like these are true investments in the future of Ontario’s economy.”

The funding is part of $200-million plan announced a day after The Toronto Star reported Ontario’s universities are in dire need of infrastructure repairs.

Humber College President John Davies was pleased by the news.

“This is quite a reasonable share of the money which I’m very satisfied with. I’m not surprised with what we were given by the government,” said Davies.

Humber’s cut of the funding is based on the percentage of college students who attend the college. Currently, 9.1 per cent of Ontario’s college students are enrolled here.

“This money is no way factored into our current budget, so for us it’s additional funds,” said Davies, explaining Humber is not in a deficit. “So we now have $5.6 million to put into projects that we didn’t have before today.

“From a safety point of view, we will build new fire systems accompanied with PA systems,” said Davies.

The college is looking at whether or not to install a wireless PA system or to integrate it with a new fire system. Davies said because of the college’s size, a PA system would be beneficial in an emergency situation.

Davies said he would like to spend the money on new weight room facilities, changes in the labs, a new crime scene lab for the Justice Studies program at Lakeshore Campus, a new moot court for the para-legal program and a new bio science lab.

“It doesn’t end the list. In a college this big you can always put money into all of those facilities, so having another $5.6 million to do that is great,” said Davies.

Davies’ thoughts on new facilities and campus safety were echoed by Milloy at the press conference.

“For faculty and students to have an excellent learning experience they need to work in facilities that are up to date, that are energy efficient, and that are safe and secure,” said Milloy.

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Worker shortage in IT industry means good news for grads

Graduates in the information technology sector have more job opportunities available today than five years ago, said Karen Fast, manager of the career centre.

“We really saw a flattening of that industry for a good five years,” she said. “It was really discouraging for a lot of people, so a lot of students didn’t go into the programs because they were afraid that the jobs weren’t there at the end. We’re certainly seeing a huge number of jobs coming through now.”

A report issued by the Conference Board of Canada last week said as many as 58,000 new jobs will open in the next year, while new graduates are down about 50 per cent from 2002.

Canada’s IT sector is facing a shortage of workers that will cost the economy $120,000 per year for each vacant position, says the report.

Nancy Rodrigues, associate dean of school of media studies and information technology, said the number of new students in IT programs has increased over the past two years.

“The publicity is changing from jobs going off-shore to there being jobs available,” she said.

“As parents and students are seeing more jobs available, more people are interested.”

Joe Tomona, associate dean of the school of applied technology, said the burst of the tech bubble and the fall of Nortel scared people away from IT fields.

“Coupled with that we have a booming economy where skilled trades and the government’s efforts to increase the skilled work force kind of gave people an idea and the government was great at marketing it,” he said. “So I’ve seen a decline in high tech and an increase in skilled trades in terms of enrolment.”

Despite the shortage of graduates, Tomona said they have not been pushing the school’s technology programs more.

“We have not been aggressively marketing. It hasn’t traditionally been in our style. But maybe a little bit wouldn’t hurt.”

Patrick O’Gorman, a spokesperson for the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities, said the government has not focused on one area at the expense of any others.

“The ministry has had increased funding over the last year,” he said. “We are not taking away from one area to give to another.”

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Vendor hopes for peace in homeland

Many students grab a quick bite to eat at the hotdog vendor’s stand outside Humber’s lecture hall without a thought about the man serving them lunch.

Jabbar Raufi, 36, left his home in Kabul in 1989 after growing up there during the Soviet occupation.

“I didn’t want to be enlisted as a soldier, war is not a happy time, so I left my home to come to Canada.”

He hopes to visit his native Afghanistan some day.

“I pray for Afghanistan to be peaceful,” he said at his stand outside the E-wing on North Campus. “For over 24 years I have never seen it like that.”

He appreciates the tolerance and friendliness of Canadian society.

“You do your job, that’s it,” he said. “Where you’re from, what culture you are, what village you’re from – it doesn’t matter here.”

Raufi dropped out of school at the age of nine to work as a tailor.

He started working as a hotdog vendor five years ago so he could earn more money to support his wife Farida and three children.

He sells up to 200 hotdogs a day.

“I like it a lot. People are really friendly and they don’t bother me.”

Every day he travels daily from his home in Toronto.

In all types of weather he works at his hotdog stand to serve hungry students.

“The only bad part of my job is when it is really cold outside and the students don’t come.”

He enjoys summer most, when there aren’t as many students around and he works shorter days.

“I just come in for lunch, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. I make money then I go home, relax, and play volleyball.”

He likes to spend free time with his family and dreams of owning a restaurant at Humber one day.

With hotdogs for $2.50 and sausages for $3.50, taxes included, students keep coming back for the food and the service.

“I like the hotdog guy,” said accounting Amarbir Bal. “His prices fit my pocket and he is a nice, friendly guy.”

“The food is quality street meat,” said Brian Cole, a 3D model and visual effects student who eats there once a week. “He’s a friendly dude.”

To help draw people outside Raufi offers a money-back guarantee.

“I make delicious hot dogs and delicious sausages,” he said. “If they don’t like it, they get their money back.”

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