The Winner of the Other Network Comedy Contest for 2009 is...
Richard Lucas
("Jim Hill's Double-Breasted Suit" Standup Performance)*
We are awarding honorable mentions to...
Mark Staufenberg ("Black Hitler" 30 Rock Spec)
Howie Kaplan ("Prince Barry" original pilot)
Abby Cohen ("Bad Habits" pilot for "Dr. & Mr." original pilot)
Austin Hice ("Sweet Dee Blows a Dog" It's Always Sunny... spec)
Matt Moskovciak & Ben Stadler ("Hope You Have a Dump Truck" video sketches)
We wish we had time to give individual notes because some of the submitted material was not bad. There were some good premises, but for a tv script to make any impact on us, a showrunner, agent or producer, especially in the chaotic state of the industry/economy/galaxy right now, the execution also has to be really really strong. The biggest general note we have: not funny enough. Not enough actual laughs. And structurally too many scripts petered out and didn't deliver any last act twists or a really satisfying finish.
Here, for your rewriting pleasure are 8 rewrite notes for any comedy script. Do yourself a favor and spend the extra time to make your writing really shine, even - especially - if you're going to go ahead and just greenlight it for production yourself.
If you're serious about comedy, you should really put your ears on at least a couple of episodes of The Other Network Writers Room, a series of in-depth interviews with top showrunners about the craft and business of comedy.
Please use our free advice and resources for writers, performers and other creatives at the Un-Cabaret blog and in the free downloads. And if you're in LA, come visit our Un-Cab Lab Writing & Performance Workshop for a mind-expanding demonstration of the power of the spoken word to supercharge any writing.
We really want your scripts to be good. Give us something to get excited about. Enter the Other Network Comedy Contest - next deadline: December 15.
Previous winners have had their work seen by agents at UTA and Metropolitan, managers at Brillstein-Grey, executives at Fox and Comedy Central, producers and award-winning TV creators. More info about the Other Network Comedy Contest.
* 2009 contest winner Richard Lucas has studied with us at the Un-Cab Lab Writing & Performance Workshop. We didn't give him any special treatment, but we also didn't feel it was right to penalize him for it in the face of such good work.
Every visually perceptible
Submitted by sohail on Fri, 02/05/2010 - 06:57.Every visually perceptible place has potential for advertising. Especially urban areas with their structures but also landscapes in sight of through fares are more and more turning into media for advertisements. Signs, posters, billboards, flags have become decisive factors in the urban appearance and their numbers are still on the increase. “Outdoor advertising has become unavoidable. Traditional billboards and transit shelters have cleared the way for more pervasive methods such as backup software wrapped vehicles, sides of buildings, electronic signs, kiosks, taxis, posters, sides of buses, and more. Digital technologies are used on buildings to sport ‘urban file recovery wall displays’. In urban areas commercial content is placed in our sight and into our consciousness every moment we are in public space. The German Newspaper ‘Zeit’ called it a new kind of ‘dictatorship that one cannot escape’.[21] Over time, this domination of the surroundings has become the “natural” state. Through long-term web designer commercial saturation, it has become implicitly understood by the public that advertising has the right to own, occupy and control every inch of available space. The steady normalization of invasive advertising dulls the public’s perception of their surroundings, re-enforcing a general attitude of powerlessness toward search engine optimization creativity and change, thus a cycle develops enabling advertisers to slowly and consistently increase the saturation of advertising with little or no public outcry.”