I actually just attended a remote standup comedy show last Friday. Its tough for the comedian but it can work if: 1. The audience is encouraged to turn on video (so the comedian and others can see them) Unmuted if possible (but most wont its like giving everyone in the audience a live mic) 2. For those not willing, encourage them to use chat. Emoji, me-too, reactions 3. The comedian should keep bringing the audience…
Show HN: Live Stand-Up Comedy from Home
31–40 of 41 posts
Re: Show HN: Live Stand-Up Comedy from Home
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
No SHOW HN is complete without the comment with unconstructive criticism. You can feel officialy launched OP! In my opinion the project is nice and good on you for launching it!
I always refer people to the original show HN of Dropbox. Top comment was criticism of how it would never work.
Some dude in the thread was like "it would be a trivial task to stitch together storage from five Gmail accounts and outdo your so called product".
Re: Show HN: Live Stand-Up Comedy from Home
#33Do you provide clean content?
Re: Show HN: Live Stand-Up Comedy from Home
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Podcasts are not standup, they are ways to riff and show you are funny in a different way - akin to radio spots back in the day.
A podcast is a prerecorded album. These are common in standup. I have comedy tapes and comedy CDs; a podcast is not different in any way. If you ripped a CD and concatenated all the tracks, you'd have a "podcast".
Re: Show HN: Live Stand-Up Comedy from Home
#35Shared in a couple private Facebook groups with a few hundred comedians.
Re: Show HN: Live Stand-Up Comedy from Home
#36Let's be honest, this isn't even close to stand-up. If there isn't a live crowd, it's not stand-up. You need that feedback and the regular drilling to find your voice. Stand-up comedians find their "voice" by doing the same set, same jokes as often as they can get up on stage. If you're serious about this as a career, you're getting up on stage multiple times a day if you can figure out a way to do it. You're constan…
> you don't want to be putting videos of your earliest crap performances on the web. You also don't want to be putting video of your best jokes on the internet because you get more exposure for people stealing them with little return. > Stand-up comedians have already had an alternative for getting up on stage for a long time. It's called podcasting I'm not seeing the crucial distinction between putting up video of y…
Look at Bill Burr's podcasts for example, they are far different from his stand-up. Part of a stand-up career is to travel the country and perform the same jokes to every crowd. They aren't exactly the same because you iterate on them every time. Once you have told the same joke X times, then it becomes robust like a method in a program which have gone multiple rewrites and bug fixes. That's a process of not only battle testing jokes, but of finding your voice (finding your voice is more for starting comics.)
You're not going to tell the same jokes repeatedly on a podcast. The medium doesn't suit stand-up. Podcast's are more like improv than stand-up. Stand-up comics are more like solo musical acts where you write your material once and then tour with that same material. That act wouldn't work so well otherwise.
Yes, radio plays the same popular music over and over. Yes, I'll listen to the same song over and over. Movies? Not so much. After watching a movie, rarely do I want to watch it again right away. Somewhat more commonly I'll watch it again after months or years. Most of the time, I don't ever feel the desire to watch that movie. Music can be enjoyed like a movie or it can be background noise. Comedy for me is more like a movie.
Re: Show HN: Live Stand-Up Comedy from Home
#37Let's be honest, this isn't even close to stand-up. If there isn't a live crowd, it's not stand-up. You need that feedback and the regular drilling to find your voice. Stand-up comedians find their "voice" by doing the same set, same jokes as often as they can get up on stage. If you're serious about this as a career, you're getting up on stage multiple times a day if you can figure out a way to do it. You're constan…
While it might be a poor substitute for a live audience, live audiences aren't happening right now in most places, so what's wrong with trying to figure out the best possible substitute? Isn't it still better than nothing? A podcast is a completely different format where performers get zero live feedback by design--with this there's at least an attempt to approximate it.
Post this service in the stand-up subs in Reddit and to see the responses from actual comedians. IMO the person who built this service doesn't "get" stand-up and therefore the idea won't work.
What might work? A real substitute which isn't stand-up. I don't know what that is or I might build it myself. But there's a lot of ways to create with a comic mind.
Also, show me a stand-up comedian who is doing this? If it were a thing, then the majors would already be doing it. Even major comedy specials on HBO are done in front of a large audience. And they aren't repeated. It's like a movie, they work on these shows for months and then it's a one shot deal.
Re: Show HN: Live Stand-Up Comedy from Home
#38Let's be honest, this isn't even close to stand-up. If there isn't a live crowd, it's not stand-up. You need that feedback and the regular drilling to find your voice. Stand-up comedians find their "voice" by doing the same set, same jokes as often as they can get up on stage. If you're serious about this as a career, you're getting up on stage multiple times a day if you can figure out a way to do it. You're constan…
All this may be historically true. But entertainment has been evolving since the birth of the internet, and some entertainers will evolve with it. Yes, this is a poor substitute for conventional stage stand-up. But surely the core of a talented "funny person" can be adapted to this new format. There's an interesting phenomenon with late night hosts doing their monologues from home. They're really bad at it (at least…
Re: Show HN: Live Stand-Up Comedy from Home
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
While it might be a poor substitute for a live audience, live audiences aren't happening right now in most places, so what's wrong with trying to figure out the best possible substitute? Isn't it still better than nothing? A podcast is a completely different format where performers get zero live feedback by design--with this there's at least an attempt to approximate it.
A substitute to stand-up comedy isn't stand-up comedy. Call it something else. Don't do the same thing and expect that it will work. Post this service in the stand-up subs in Reddit and to see the responses from actual comedians. IMO the person who built this service doesn't "get" stand-up and therefore the idea won't work. What might work? A real substitute which isn't stand-up. I don't know what that is or I might…
"Post this service in the stand-up subs in Reddit and to see the responses from actual comedians. IMO the person who built this service doesn't "get" stand-up and therefore the idea won't work."
Posting it on Reddit for feedback is a great idea. But the important thing isn't whether the people there love it or pan it, it's what can be learned from their feedback.
"What might work? A real substitute which isn't stand-up. I don't know what that is or I might build it myself. But there's a lot of ways to create with a comic mind."
Getting something imperfect out there for people to use and give feedback on is a much better way to find out what does or doesn't work than guessing at it in your head.
"Also, show me a stand-up comedian who is doing this? If it were a thing, then the majors would already be doing it."
Come on, you can make this argument against anything new. New platforms don't get famous people on them right away; they have to first get traction with early adopters. The way to tell whether this could be a thing is to look at growth among early adopters, not big names.
Re: Show HN: Live Stand-Up Comedy from Home
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
A substitute to stand-up comedy isn't stand-up comedy. Call it something else. Don't do the same thing and expect that it will work. Post this service in the stand-up subs in Reddit and to see the responses from actual comedians. IMO the person who built this service doesn't "get" stand-up and therefore the idea won't work. What might work? A real substitute which isn't stand-up. I don't know what that is or I might…
Your feedback is valid and you may be right. In fact, you probably are right--most new things fail to get traction, and I don't dispute that live standup is going to be very tough to approximate virtually. But if you've ever tried to build a product for others before, you know that what users end up liking and using often seems inexplicable and is almost impossible to guess before you start putting iterations of an i…
What's the title? "Live Stand-Up Comedy from Home"
What's the domain name? comedyfromhome.com
If years ago you were to call this "TikTok" and the idea is that people would do funny videos from home, I would be all for it.
Come up with a name and a marketing angle which isn't trying to tell me that this is stand-up comedy, but from home. Make it a bit more open-ended. Give me some room to work within your platform. Don't box me in by telling everyone this is "stand up comedy, but from home." IMO, the service would be crippling me. People don't understand how much effort is involved in coming up with even a 5 minute solid set. That's the launching point of a career.
If you're going to put the effort into writing a book, you're going to put in the effort to find the right publishing path. Anything else would be a major risk to the success of that effort.
This is not the platform you're looking for.