Standup Comedy from May 18, 2010
In case I haven’t made it obvious, I love the Dallas Comedy House, and I’m really grateful to my former improv instructor Landon Kirksey for encouraging me to check out what they have to offer. The staff and the audiences have been really cool so far.
I like it there so much that I feel like I should do more to encourage people to come to shows, so the current plan is to only shows excerpts from my standup routines. I know that’s not fair to those of you outside of Dallas, but I haven’t yet figured out how to reconcile those two warring factions in my brain.
21 May 2010
Avoid Rendering in Final Cut Express, even in HD
I recently went through some frustrating hours of trial-and-error trying to find the right settings for making video files that you could add to a Final Cut Express project (as far as I know this also works in Final Cut Studio), and which wouldn’t need to be rendered within FCE in order to preview edits or filters.
Googling around, and looking on YouTube, I found some tips about using MPEG Streamclip, a free utility on Apple’s website (look below if you need the beta). Unfortunately, the settings offered by the other helpful people didn’t work for me. Turns out the settings are different if you’re working with high-def video.
So! If you find yourself wanting to work within FCE without rendering, and your video is HD, here are the real steps you want to follow:
- Download MPEG Streamclip (if you are running Snow Leopard, you’ll probably want the beta version, which is 1.9.3b3 as of this writing).
- Drag the file into MPEG Streamclip
- There’s support for batch processing, too, but do at least one by itself, first. I’d pick a short one to practice on. You can run a batch of files through the List > Batch List command. You can’t drag and drop more than one file.
- File > Export to QuickTime
- Use these settings:
- Compression: Apple Intermediate Codec
- Quality: 100%
- Sound: Uncompressed, Stereo, 48 KHz
- Check the box for Deinterlaced video
- Everything else is up to you
- Save a preset for later.
I hope this helps.
20 May 2010
Improv Level 3 Showcase
Here’s ten minutes’ worth of excerpts from last night’s “Improv Level 3” showcase. I hope to edit together a multi-camera version of the whole show sometime soon.
I’m really glad I took these classes, and if they invite me to Level 4 (you have to be invited), I’ll definitely show up for that. It was probably about two classes into Level 3 that I finally broke out of the shell I’ve been in my entire adult life. I can safely act like a fool, where I hadn’t been able to do that before. Not sober, anyway. Did I mention I’m doing all of these improv and standup performances sober? I am.
In Level 3 we concentrated on editing ourselves (entering, sweeping, tag outs, cut-to, Canadian cross) and enhancing the story from the back line, like you see Jeff do above with the announcer voice at the strip club, while everybody else performs some generic techno music.
Just after the show, I felt like I had been speaking loudly enough, but in reviewing the video I can see that’s once again not the case. I’ll keep trying to be louder, I guess.
What I feel like I need now is more practice, especially in front of an audience. So I decided to start going to the Dallas Comedy House’s free-for-all Wednesday night improv jam sessions. I don’t really know what to expect. I’ll be different from rehearsing with people I already know quite well, though I hope they show up, too.
25 April 2010
Standup Comedy for April 20, 2010
This was really fun. It was the first time the Dallas Comedy House tried having an Open Mic Night, but they’ve already got a loyal audience so the room was nearly full. I was feeling very rushed because they said to prepare about three minutes, when I had been previously going for six or seven.
Even so, everybody else who went on stage went closer to six-to-eight minutes, so I asked the manager about next week and she said, “if you want to go over by three or five minutes, that’s totally cool.” She seemed genuinely interested in having me back for ensuing weeks.
The sound could be better, and I could be enunciating more, but still, the audience understood what was going on, and they laughed a lot, which is a great feeling. At the end there, you can see the host Landon getting on stage and doing a little impression of my delivery, which makes me think maybe I’m starting to find “my voice”.
I’m also surprised at how much I resemble one of the guys on The Big Bang Theory, especially toward the beginning. It’s like I’m going to say “bazinga” at any moment.
Comments [1]
21 April 2010
Our "Teenage Zombies" Commentary Track is Free to Watch
This has been available for offline viewing for quite a while, but I decided “what the hay?”, and uploaded the entire thing so anybody can watch it for free.
If you’ve never seen Mystery Science Theater 3000 or a Rifftrax movie before, think of it like a DVD commentary track, except that instead of being helpful and informative, we’re relentlessly mocking the movie.
Enjoy!
10 April 2010
Open Mic Standup Comedy, April 2010
If you like this, please please share it with your friends.
This is the “almost entirely nerdy” routine. At this point of the night, there were only three people in the audience, and the host Landon Kirksey. Given that, I’m still pretty proud of the reactions I got. With a sample size of four, it’s pretty difficult to tell if something is funny or not, but hey.
Self-critique
It’s clear that I need to be rehearsing and getting up in front of people much more if I want to be good at this, because even though I had the whole set memorized earlier in the day, I forgot big chunks as soon as I was up on stage. That’s why you see me checking my mobile (where the cheat sheet lives), and once again putting hands in pockets, and fiddling with my hair. I’m nervous.
I also made the mistake of switching the video microphone to “stereo” instead of shotgun, so a couple of lines are muddled with the sound of dishes being moved around, and the light rail train outside.
One thing I feel ironically good about is the joke about the laptop/outlet that clearly didn’t work, because I started doubting it a couple days previously. It’s the only joke I doubted, and it’s the only one that seems now to be totally unfunny. I need to hone those doubts.
I’m also glad that my enunciation and pausing is getting better. It’s still not good, but I think you can understand most everything.
I tried a risky thing for the first time in making “asides”, like the “chauvinist Russia” joke and breaking out into song about Twitter. Those worked better than I feared.
8 April 2010
New Theynow for February 2010
I put out a new episode of the show for fans of They Might Be Giants. This episode is total nerd-fest, featuring TMBG, John Hodgman, Jonathan Coulton, Craig Ferguson, Peter Segal, Paul and Storm, Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich. Hello.
12 February 2010
"Death at a Funeral" Trailer Mashup
My man Alex agreed with me that it’s pretty ridiculous to remake a movie only three years after the original, especially when you’re remaking it in the same language as the original.
Not only is the story exactly the same, but the trailers even have the same structure.
In this video, he mashed up the trailers for both versions of “Death at a Funeral” to highlight the similarities.
Comments [1]
5 February 2010
Standup Comedy for February 2010
In which I mostly make fun of modern movies, TV and music.
I have got to slow down. And what’s with the hand going in the pocket?
4 February 2010
