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
So, in the past week, I’ve gotten to sample what it’s like to have a crowd and lose ‘em, and to start at a loss and win ‘em over, I’ve done surprisingly well at some very small shows, and I’ve continued to appear in a venue where I have never done well. My theory is that if there were more than 15 people in the room which seats 100, or if they were near each other, this would be different, but then again I’ve almost never seen an act at that show I enjoy, so who knows….the real lesson may just be to stop going there.
But tonight was, maybe, the first time I was dismissive of another would-be comic to their face. There are some I don’t like, some I don’t want to watch, some who do the same 3 minutes so often I could do it for them, and some that make me want to start a booked show just so I can not book them, but many of us are trying and learning and experimenting with this new toy and why not be friends and share any good tricks we happen to find? Tonight I got off and a guy came over and mumbled something to me that I missed, and then asked if I’d be around after the show. I would be, since there were only a couple acts left.
Turns out, he wanted to go over the information I imparted in my set, because he didn’t quite get it all. Now, I do present some info you can take home, and I’m thinking of and looking for ways to do more, but an important note on these “facts” is that I feel the need to put the word “facts” in quotes. Because many of them are lies. Probably, the correct thing to do in the future may be to refuse to do an encore for 1, but we went over the ways to say goodbye, and I tried to point out that it’s not worth committing them to memory since most of the things I say about them on stage are either outright jokes or subtle lies to build up my argument.
This guy, who smelled strongly of something, or maybe a few things, told me he didn’t do well with his improvised set because he couldn’t see the faces of the handful of people left in the crowd.
“That’s because of the lights. We need the lights so that we can see the performers,” I told him.
“But then how do I know if the audience thinks what I’m saying is funny?”
“You’ll hear laughter.”
“That’s not going to work,” he said.
“Well, then maybe you need the courage of your conviction that what you have to say is worth hearing. One way to get that might be through writing,” I said. That felt pretty condescending, but it seemed fair. He had just wasted nearly a man-hour with his five minutes of rambling and answering his phone on stage.
“I can’t do that. It’s like talking on the phone. I don’t have the courage of conviction when I talk to someone on the phone.”
“That’s probably because the person on the phone is talking to you. You’re not having a conversation with the audience.”
“Yeah I am.”
“You might be speaking conversationally, but you’re not interacting with the crowd. That’s a monologue.”
“Yeah I am, they answer with laughter.”
“So you can listen to that to see how it’s going.”
“What part of what I just did up there did you like the best?” he asked.
That’s dangerous territory, because he’d tied for last place in my mind with the set filled with tired racial epithets, which someone had at least taken the time to commit to paper. ”Something in the middle, I think,” I hedged, “I don’t remember the whole thing.”
He questioned me on specific lines, which I’d have to admit I didn’t like. Eventually he asked if he was holding me up.
“Maybe a little,” I said. I often make that kind of jokey comment. I rarely mean it.
I’ve only been at this a couple months, been on stage a couple dozen times, I wouldn’t say I’ve really earned the right to feel particularly higher-status than any fellow open mic’ers. But then, with each mic, one notices the time that will never be regained during the truly horrible sets, the painfully unfunny, the obviously ill-prepared, and so many genuinely hateful racists who fail to mask their feelings in anything comedic (or, those that are so inept at the craft that they give this impression through a misapplication of irony. Or something.)
A different, better way to give that context may be with something improvisers talk about from time to time, which says you go through 4 stages of competence. (Briefly, from unskilled and unaware, to unskilled and aware, skilled while aware, and unconsciously able.) I think most open mic’ers are solid level 2s, flickering their way into the shallow end of 3. (And for that matter, many or most professional comedians are strong, high-end level 3s. Truly honestly effortless brilliance is rare and hard-won.) They have taste but not skill, and if they’re lucky they’re discovering the tools and skills. When those of us struggling to get good see the unskilled and unaware, who it would seem have never seen a comedy show, who can’t distinguish between themselves and a successful comedian, who get angry at crowds they’ve just stunned into silence, we get angry at them for wasting our time and taking up limited, valuable slots on stage. And yet, it’s not legal to kill them.
~
I’ve been listening to a lot of comedy albums lately, to remind me what can be great about this. I’m actually liking stand-up more and more, the deeper into it I get.
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.
Start a standup comedy show with and for new friends.
Jason Van Glass and I started a new show. We wanted more cool shows at which to perform, and I noticed that there’s a park in Burbank that has a great big flood lamp pointed at nothing. Something had to be shot there, or performed there, or both.
Look at this. How could you not want to perform there?
So we did it. Didn’t have to build a thing, and they came! About 30 of ‘em, which is great for a first show upwards of 2 miles north of comics’ comfort zone, and just about every one of ‘em stayed for the whole show, which is even more impressive.
I said some things. I didn’t record it, and I don’t remember all of it. Or, I do, but I don’t think it’d make good reading. The jokes turned into laughs. Plenty of people had great sets. Plenty of people need to learn to speak into a megaphone. Yes, a megaphone. Your regular comedy show has some wimpy microphone. This is way bigger.
Your hosts.
Anyhow, it was such a success we’re doing it again. Really, how do you look at this and not want to put on a show?
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:
I played around a little with filters to make me sound like a Robot, or a Monster, or both! (but turned them off before making the file, thank you)
I tried making this in the same timeline as the last clip, and it doesn’t seem to allow exporting a selection, only whole timelines. But that sounds like one of those things people post angrily about and then the answer is right in the manual, so I probably just didn’t figure it out.
I did a nice job curbing the excessive UM and AH from my speech, mostly. And then I started saying LIKE. Weird. But errant syllables are no match for the power of editing!
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.
Continuing to experiment with FCP-X. Oddly enough, I’m using it most for audio editing so far. The latest was a demo of how I could ensmarten myself by just removing 2 minutes of um-ing and ah-ing and pausing for thought from a segment of my appearance on The Projection Room podcast with Marco & Rebecka Duran.
The actual editing was fast and easy, and in all my previous time with FCP, I don’t think I understood why I’d use the Range Select tool, and now I do. But exporting was a problem. It failed repeatedly and then told me:
Except, it didn’t. I could click okay and continue using FCPX. It was like it couldn’t handle the request I was making and just tried to distract me with a different problem. A reboot solved this, for whatever reason.
“Excuse me, this isn’t the sandwich I ordered.”
“I’m very sorry sir, but our restaurant is on fire.”
In case you missed out on my guest shot, here’s an excerpt from the show discussing one of my favorite movies you’ve never heard of, The Wizard of Speed and Time.
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.
So I’m getting ready this morning for MaxFunCon (3D!) and what happens? The delivery truck shows up with my Apple Design Award! They brought it on a flatbed, so all the neighbors knew what it was pretty much immediately.
Once the movers left, I had to go grab my camera to show you guys:
Giving my award a hug:
Unfortunately, because there’s a step to enter the house, the movers had to leave it outside. Something about their contract. It’s bloody heavy.
Actually, I’m not really sure how I’m supposed to get it into the house.
I’m in a hurry this morning, to do airport runs and then get everyone out to the ‘Con, so I’ll just have to figure it out when I get back, I guess. I hope my roommates aren’t going to be mad. I had to just put it on a cinder block so it doesn’t kill as much of the lawn.
