[The hip new way to keep tabs on Rob, without all that time-consuming conversation.]
I did a great show called Pizza Day a couple weeks ago. Every comedian who was on that show books another show in Los Angeles except for me, and one of them was nice enough to invite me to come on his show, which I did last night.
Here’s me at Magic Bag, run by DC Pierson, who wasn’t there, and Eliza Skinner, whom I’ve never even met.. So if you see them, just tell them it went great!
Some places you can see me sometime soon, mostly doing standup:
-Matt Mira’s Day Off: Open mic at Meltdown Comics most Sunday nights, but I’m guaranteed to be on and bringing democracy to the people, 5:30pm, 10/9
-Pigs’ Meat: A Science-Fiction Tragicomedy for the Swinish Multitude: A play by Lewis Sequeira (there’s time travel in it). Dangerfield’s II, 9pm, 10/10
-FLOODLAMP 8: Havana Nights. Outdoor open mic comedy performed with megaphones, hosting, 3201 Verdugo Ave in Burbank, 7pm, 10/14
-Dangerfield’s II, Showcasing, I’ll be opening boxes. 6pm, 10/15
-Pizza Day 3, Lamppost Pizza in Simi Valley. I’ll be opening boxes again. 7pm, 10/21
-Dangerfield’s II Open Mic, hosting, 6pm 10/22
-Better Radio LIVE! The first ever live production of my podcast Better Radio, an almost entirely scripted sketch comedy show, featuring favorite transmissions from our previous episodes and all new material. Starring G. Maximilian Zarou, Diana Wright, Asterios Kokkinos, and TIM GREER, along with Russell August Anderson on the wall of sound. Dangerfield’s II, 9pm, 10/24
-Better Radio presents: Friends of Better Radio! – Our October 24th show has been postponed until November. Many of the very same performers will be putting on a different show instead. Still at Dangerfield’s II, still at 9pm, still on 10/24.
-FLOODLAMP 9: Another round of open megaphone comedy and frankly, one of the best open shows in town. Solid performers that stay to watch the show, but not so many you’re there all night, which is convenient since the last time we overstayed our welcome the Burbank PD sent a helicopter. 3201 Verdugo Ave in Burbank, hosting, 7pm, 10/28
Coming up in November: Better Radio Live (for real this time), an encore presentation of Pigs’ Meat, hopefully some more cool booked shows!
I’ve been getting up and performing a lot this month. I think I’ve had 16 sets in the past 15 days, and I’m just starting to book some longer shows and things that aren’t open mics, which feels great.
I’ve been reluctant to post some of the stuff from just a couple weeks ago that would be new to you, because I’m still in the very early levels of the stand-up class* and gaining XP all the time** so that set from a week ago where something went well is already eclipsed by rewrites and better performances.
So even though I would say I’ve already got half a dozen ways to make this set better, this was a pretty successful show. Have a look, IF YOU DARE!
*’class’ like a D&D*** reference****. I am not enrolled in a stand-up comedy course.
**In addition to living life by the rules of an adventure game (take everything that’s not nailed down, save before trying something dangerous, talk to everyone you meet) I think that RPGs’ system of gathering experience is a remarkably good simulation. Also, I sometimes think of jokes in terms of modifiers and bonuses. For instance, I successfully pull off a ‘closing parentheses’ at 8:20, and then fail my roll to do it again at 8:30
***Dungeons & Dragons
****I’ve never actually played D&D***, I just think it’s kind of neat.
I happened to notice, when I should be working, that I’m getting some traffic from people googling for the Floodlamp Open Megaphone show.
I think it might get its own tumblr or something soon, but until then, brave searchers and surfers, know that Floodlamp 5: Jason Takes Manhattan will be happening on Friday, September 9th, 2011.
The picnic and pre-show party begins around 7pm. Bring some food to share, or just mooch off everybody else. Bring a blanket or a lawn chair if you want one. And bring your jokes to tell. We’ll give you 3-5 minutes (depending on attendance) to tell your jokes to fellow comics and disaffected suburban youths through one of our decidedly classy megaphones. The show, hosted by Rob Schultz and Jason Van Glass, won’t start until it’s dark enough outside to activate the Floodlamp, and even then probably not until close to 8pm.
The show is done in front of Burbank’s abandoned public swimming pool. There’s a parking lot for parking your automobile at or about 3201 Verdugo Ave, also useful for the googular mapping.
As is this TINYURL.com/wheresfloodlamp
By now, I have some new sets and things standup related to post, but I’m going to go out of order. Here’s my set from last Sunday – since I had a guaranteed spot on the show, I dipped into the world of Prop Comedy! (I’d never bring all this stuff with me on a night when I had to rely on the lottery for a spot.)
Production notes:
Thanks to August Anderson for being the audience plant (and almost getting clobbered for having his phone go off during the show) and for the lending of some props – part of the bit was inspired by the stuff we threw together for a short film we shot last month that isn’t edited yet. Also, my thanks to Josh Eanes and Jason Van Glass for shooting the videos.
On the Final Cut Pro X side of things, this was at times very smooth, but more often very frustrating to put together. The ‘synchronize clips’ command lined up the two shots by audio very quickly indeed, which was great, but I would have preferred to do that manually if it meant not having to do color adjustments on all the b-camera shots one by one. For some reason, the ‘match color’ command does not pick up the color correction from another clip, it makes a series of judgment calls that didn’t even match each other from shot to shot. The manual for the software describes a method for applying a color correction to many clips at once, but as best I can reckon, the method described is a flat out lie. Unlike old versions, where a color correction could be moved from one shot to another, or stored for later use, this seems to require saving it as a preset, then manually applying that preset from a drop down menu to each shot. It appears to be necessary to close and re-open the properties inspector each time a new clip is selected. I suppose color correcting prior to editing would have smoothed that out a bit, but that’s crazy.
From what I can tell, there is no text tool. I feel like an idiot even typing that, but I’ve been consulting the manual with each project and it seems to be true. There are a number of text presets, and probably I could theoretically edit one of them down into not animating in any way. However, I wouldn’t do that by clicking one of the buttons for adjusting the title clip that’s built into the title clip, because that makes the program crash, 4 out of 4 times. In a lot of ways, it feels like using a Chryon studio system from ten years ago – If you don’t want one of their 5 presets, you’re going to be making your graphics in advance in photoshop. Prepare yourselves for a deluge of Gill Sans over the next year or two, is what I’m saying.
The timeline defaulted to 640×480, the frame size of the wide shot, which is fine since the closeup was out of focus anyway, but I don’t understand how or why the 1280×720 frame of the closeup is also said to be at 100% size in the smaller timeline. So, that’s weird.
Tonight’s all-new episode: Dial B for Charity!
This was a new standup experience for me. I kind of disassociated, just thinking about what my hands were doing, and looking around to see what different people thought about the bit, while the rest of me told some jokes.
FCP-X Production Notes:
Here’s a the bit from the first meltdown set I posted, having mainly to do with the subjects of Batman and Trains, but performed for people who thought they were going to a dance party in a warehouse, not people who were planning to see comedy in a comic book shop.
(In fact, it’s a cool warehouse full of weird percussion instruments!)
Photos taken by the quantifiably delightful Lucia Fasano.
FCP-X Production Note: The very combination of characters “Jason Van Glass” is apparently a secret Apple test code that was not removed before release, chiefly useful for testing the crash report dialogue. The save-as-you-go feature very helpfully kept me from losing data on the four attempts before successfully adding this name to the video.
Here’s another standup set. I was less prepared, but I did okay. It was a mix of jokes I like to tell and things that I think could be good jokes later.
On a content note, I can’t believe the Camp Manatoc classic worked. Now I’m going to be hauling that out all over the place.
On a production note, I trimmed the head and tail of my recording in FCPX again, so the only part you hear is about me, and then I thought I’d edit the set – since I kind of set up the desert thing twice, I was going to get rid of one of those, and then it sounded weird and didn’t work so I put it back, but I couldn’t figure out how to accomplish a common technique in my editing arsenal: Determining the time code of a point in one clip, and then finding that same time in a second clip. It would easily produce a seamless edit, if it were possible. Also, I found avid frustrating recently because it didn’t have a working ‘match frame’ command that did what I expected from FCP, and now FCP doesn’t either. So that’s kind of disappointing.
My second set at this particular show.
It’s the first time I’ve done this bit on stage in over a year. Felt pretty good. So I’m sharing:
PS: This audio clip is my first production made in FCPX. A rousing success! How will it stand up to additional experiments, with picture? Stay tuned!