A Beginners Guide To Comedy Writing & Performing

1. Tony Vino Comedy Course INTRO: Welcome to comedy and writing for beginners. My name's Tony Vino I am a stand-up comedian. I've been in the business for over 15 years. I've been doing standard that long, when I brought out my DVD, people actually owned DVD players. Throughout this course, we are going to be looking at what is comedy, how to write a joke, how to create a piece of material and deliver in a cutting edge style. So we're going to be kind of getting scientific about jokes. Essentially, it's a bit like dissecting a frog. It might kill the frog, but at least you know how the internals work. It's looking behind the curtain of the Wizard of Oz or the wizard of gags, I've essentially taken 15 years of my experience and understanding and research and also delivering company workshops to people. And I've distilled it all, into this series of tutorials. So, if I die, something would be left a legacy. Go take this Baton and make people laugh. It is a holy calling. 2. The Building Blocks of Joke Writing: Polls have been in English literature for centuries. Thinkers, Shakespeare, comedy, various. There's one bit where someone says, go Bahrami accrue and Hoover person thinks he talked about an actual Crow, not an iron crowbar. Not Shakespeare's best work. But still quite funny thing you've all, one line is Tim White, Black Beauty. Now there's a dark horse or watch Gary Delaney. Tiger Woods, a dangerous place to go for a picnic. Words are two different means. So when you're going through your set, look at what a word is and then how it applies. And that is essentially pulling you can play game. So really go game called The, I've got a job game play. We are friends, play with family, and it just gets that muscle working inside of you. The game goes like this. It goes, I've got a job. And then people say, what is it? And you say, what are the Java you might go, I'm a baker. They, So how's it going? And then you say, I'm just in it for the dough. You might say, I've got a job was what is it? I'm a lift attendant. How's it going? Split open down and just keep going. They don't have to be good. You just keep going like that. Got a job. What is it? I am a glass breaker. How's it going? Smashed it, that kind of thing. So essentially words that have two different meanings. Now, the other type of porn or gag, essentially we would sound like with a word, it's not, they have different meaning, but they sound like something else. So I have, for instance, in my set and a bit we're told about my dad who Spanish, who rents out houses. And he goes he goes in one of my house. I have living some aliens like Dad, it's pronounced Somalians. So some aliens sounds like Somalians. So there's loads and loads and loads of examples of that. If you look at myself, I've got another one where I go. And someone's given, a Greek lady is giving a comedian that with, in Greece at the airport a sandwich. She passes it to him. It's panini and the passage back and says, Oh, could you heat into it says, no, you heated. So now by the way, not all my gags are accent based, but essentially that is a, that's a different type of ones. So we've got ponds and gags. Let's move on. So the second building block of all jokes and standard routines is pullbacks. That is essentially where you change person or the place. So remember what I talked about, building an image in the mind of the audience, and then you change it and then there's a laughter This elicited. So for instance, let's think of changing the place. You might say. My sister said, I need to try and lose weight. And best way to do that is take off your clothes. Look at yourself in the mirror, and then say, do I really want to be this way now it's not stopped eating, but it's put people off or KFC. Boom, you've changed the place. You're thinking I'm in home getting naked, and then I'm in a public place. So I've done this many times through my comedy. And if you look at other community, they do it lots and lots. So when I first became a commune, but maybe 151617 years ago, I did a joke about Skype and saying, Have you tried Skype, it's free phone calls. The people can see you. You can see them, they can hear you and you can hit them but they're completely unaware. You have no trousers on, you know, so I mean, the people, the internet cafe, they know, but they don't. So you basically just change the place, you know, and it's the incongruity of what the places. So if you talk about something Nazi, think of maybe somewhere that's and that's not allowed. Or where someone says something inappropriate and you might say, come on, really. It's we're at my mom's house. It's Christmas dinner, that kind of thing. You might say, It's great, you know, when you get your friends drown it does, it gets a bit awkward when you try and start spin the bottle. And then the light. Tony were a bible study group, that kind of thing. So when you're looking at you set start to think about, can you play around with where the places where you create an image and then change it, do the same with people as well. People in authority scenario, if you've got someone saying to, you know, go in and I made Xuanzang drugs and, you know, officer, I'm fine. Suppose you change the person or, you know, someone into basically a gig in federal ones. And there were literally on his part from one guy at the back, just go YouTube rubbish, Gaddafi swearing up and I was like, look, archbishop, we've all had a drink. So he changed the person or the person who that you give it, you give it. Maybe someone who is an authority figure or someone who is seen as an inherently good or basically act incongruent to whatever the context is. So do that when you're looking at a set, look at your words and how they have different means. But also looked at the place and the person and see if you can go through that. And then we'll move on to how to actually generate ideas in the next session. 3. Generating Material: So how do you generate comic ideas? Let's go from page to stage. There's going to be an audience there waiting to hear what brilliant jokes and routines you're gonna bring to him. So how do you get that filled? Donkey says, in Modern Family, he said success is 1% inspiration, 98% perspiration, and 2% attention to detail. So how do you get started from the think about what is unique to you. But any thoughts you have, write them down, doesn't matter how obscure left field on a piece of paper or on your phone right and down and come back to them and they're like the kindling that used to create a spark. So it can be something strange. Like I've got one routine where I just went and outreach do anything as long as it's far enough in the future, then it created a whole routine that came on that you might do something like, you know how to do it. Who was the first person that started a Mexican wave? And maybe then think, where would you not do a Mexican wave at a funeral or whatever? So think about what those ideas and try and make it as unique to you. What are you interested in? Mine, your own history. Did something embarrassing happens to you once? Are you into something that is unique to you d like snowboarding, particularly adenine in the Alps or something like that. Or you, have you got any sort of phobias scared of spiders? Are you scared of stationary, whatever it is. That's your piece material to work with. Start with that, and then go from there. A good place to begin with is looking at the idea of emotion, passion. So what wants to do is to write a list of ten things you love, ten things you hate, okay, and when it's pause the video when I say, god, basically ten things you might live, you might go, I love that bit where you have a coffee and a blueberry muffin in that point of perfection, I love the smell of graphs in the morning. I love lists here on three tenths the way in. And then you go to hate, I hate when people stand in a pavement, you can't get by. I, you know, I hate the smell of grass. I hate coffee, Anna hate lists, whatever it is, write those down. And those are kind of bits of, I don't know, kindling to actually begin that fire. So pause it now and write yourself a list of ten things you love tending to hate. Hey, I asked you to pose it. If you haven't paused, that you just can't get the quality of student nowadays. And we're back. Did you do your lists? Ten things you love, ten things he hates. Pick one of those things, and that is your base material. And we'll simply do a spider diagram, which is essentially a flowchart of ideas. I do this for every bit of material that I want to do, you start with something and then you build out. And again, like I said before, don't add it. It's a brain dump. I'll take one thing from my ten loved lists. Okay, I've put coffee, I love coffee. Let's just go with that word. Okay, think of any words associated to coffee. They'd give them water, a barista, a shot. What types of coffee? Latte, mocha, espresso, and chains of coffee places, Koster, Nero, Starbucks. There we go. And think of addiction, coffee, waste coffee from, let's put up Colombia and Egypt. Okay, so then you start to build out the ideas in the flowchart, you spider diagram. And then remember we looked at PMS, overlay it with poems. Where can you get jokes that you might be able to pull out latte and sounds a bit like lates does the lattice L1 or better lattes, EVA never mocha sounds to emit a mock, you know, put some chocolate in my gills. Espresso. Marker Law, Mock her, something like that. And you might think of the word barista. What does it sound? Remember, a poem sounds like something that sounds like barrister. So you might say, I wanted to earn a lot of money in law. 4. Stories : And now let's move on to the second major building block of any comedy routine. And that is stories. So we've looked at jokes, poems, gags, pullback, and reveals whose stories are longer narrative arc that any comedian can use. If you look at all sitcoms there based on conflict and resolve an all comic stories have that basic ingredient conflict. And then resolve. German me saying about comedy being about creating tension and then letting it be released. In a book called seven basic plots. It looks at all the different narrative structures you have. Apparently only seven. You've got voyage and return. You've got the hero's quest, et cetera, et cetera. One of them is the comedy, and that is the idea where things get tangled, then they get released, it gets resolved. Resolve is a major part of comedy and the comic story. So the best way to do that is to do the comedy archetype diagram. All you need is a piece of paper. And I want you to draw a line down the middle. And then across the line down the middle and a line across vertical. They put it into four parts and just label them a, B, C, D. Let's give this a go. So here we go. This is the a, B, C, and D of comedy story creation, okay, in the top left box, right, a character, okay, now this is the character of your story. It could be, you, could be someone you talk it about or someone that you create. Ok. Then look at B. You looking at desire, desire, this is what you want. Something you might be simple as a chocolate bar or a case. And oh, what your character wants them in. C, put frustration, that's so important. What gets in the way of what the character wants. And then D is the resolve. So remember we talked about conflict and resolve, okay, and all sitcoms follow this particular story arc. Think about The Simpsons. There's one famous episode called Lord of the Dance. You had Homer Simpson. He wanted to get rich. So that was his desire. So then what he did, he wanted to create a large selling company who told him you can sell a lot of Greece of free. And then the frustration was there was a company in Springfield that sold Greece and and also groundskeeper Willie, wanted to do as well. So he kept trying to get large, couldn't get home because he he basically cook lots of bacon and he found that he got like 50 P worth lard. And then it will cost about 28 pounds worth of bacon. So you went to that crispy donor place and then trying to get their lard and tried to steal it from the school, canteen, all that kind of stuff. So that was ABCD and the result was groundskeeper Willie hose around his neck because Homer was siphoned off the lot and then burst. And then it went into the school hall where there was a dance and the story, thank you, Seinfeld. There was a quite famous Seinfeld where called the parking lot. Kramer Seinfeld. They wanted to go on a shopping trip. They bought a lock-in air conditioning unit that was portable, and then they were in a parking lot, the confined the car. So the desire was to go home, get this air conditioning unit home. And they also had a goldfish to get this fish home quicker. And that was their desire. The frustration was the confine the car. And then the rest of the episode was the frustrating trying to find the car, they couldn't do it. There was a point where a couple of the characters needed toilet, so they urinated longer. Arrested, Wonka charged. So the, that, that was basically their frustration. And then the D Eventually they found the car. And then there was another bit where it wasn't resolved because Kramer had gone and he lost his conditioning unit because it's hidden behind another car. So they went looking for that, eventually got in the car, and that was the resolution and put the fisher died and then they tried to stop the car and the engine stalled. So that was the end of the episode. And comedy routines follow this arc as well. There's quite a very famous one by great wealth comedian called ROD Gilbert, where he basically loses his luggage. So he sees the airport, Dublin airport sees the luggage going around on the luggage carousel. And then oh, he's he's luggage is left is the handle. And then he basically wants to get his luggage About Us is he's the character. He desires to get his luggage back. And then he goes to the lost luggage place with the handle is a good visual gag. And then lady there says, well, in ask lots of questions of frustration was she has all the classic questions you'd ask about luggage, but are obvious, you know, there any distinguishing features? Well, it doesn't have a handle. You think someone Miao tampered with it? Possibly. All that kinds of. And then there was the resolve. She said, I'll write you a report is like good. You write report. And the report was written. And then he got into a taxi and the result was as well that the taxi driver and carried the piece of Louis the handle and put it in the boot of the car is always a big, heavy piece of luggage. So that was the story out there. So want you to do is to follow that comic arc of the storyteller. A good character B, look at the design loop, see, look at the frustration and then go to resolve. And that can be you, that can be someone that you talk about, that can be a character you've created. Go ahead, write that and look at how you can then create stories from that. And if you look all standard routines, they follow that narrative art. This is commonly writing for stories 101. 5. Taking Things to the Extreme : This is just a short video talk about extremity and brevity to layer that over whatever piece of material you, right? And we've looked at jokes, puns, pullback and reveals. We've looked at the story form of comedy. The character, the desire, the frustration, and the resolution. Well, within limits, try and be as extreme as you can. That's the great thing about comedy. It's all nato, you can lie. It can be based in truth, but exaggerate. Now when it comes to exaggeration, You've got to stay within some limits of reality of the constructs of whatever you've spoken about. So perhaps beginning of a routine. I might say it's great to be here. And I think you're gonna find the next four hours of entertainment is going to fly by. And even if I'm only doing a 20-minute routine, then that's funny because LA High is going to go on for four hours. That's a bit too long. But if I was to say, it's great to be here, you're going to find the next two years of entertainment. It's outside the realms of possibility within that context. Whatever you talking about, try and stretch the extremities, remember talked about it. You create tension. The more you stretch. It's like an elastic band. The more it pings back, the bigger the balloon you can make without it boosting, the better. So take something if it's your reaction. Oh my goodness. I've I've got Sony library fines have had to move house. And it's, the idea is that it's an extreme reaction to trifling thing. There's a committee Nassau who did a wonderful retain and he hates unloading the dishwasher. So what he's done, he's put two dishwashers in his house. So basically unloads won and then puts it back in the other. It's an extreme response to something that people don't like book usually stand in ordinary life. There's another comedian, gaffe riches is a great joke about where on trains there's Plug sockets is his laptop or mobile phone only. And I wanted to do ironing. So, you know, it's an extreme response. You don't want why would you ion on a train and she's just seeing congruency is the extremity of it. There's another convenience or who did a wonderful routine about being a bit OCD. And he saw someone eats in a peach on a train. And he's like, peaches should never be eaten in public. They should be eating over a sink with a napkin. Yeah, this idea that he had an extreme reaction to something that is perfectly ordinary, you know? So try and think of that and actually practice that extremity muscle. There's a couple of games you can play that I recommend. There's one called the, it's worse than that game. Try with a friend where you've got one of his lord of the manor. The other one is the Butler. The bullet has a problem. And then you basically the problem might be something like the Gates broken the bottom field. Oh, is it? And then low and the bullet says, just put it's worse than that. Really? Yes. And the reason is broken. That it been smashed up by some very angry local peasants who were hits kill you. Oh no, that's terrible. It's worse than that. And then you'd keep going on and on and on. So it gets as extreme as possible. And it's quite a funny thing. You can have an expert panel for problem where you might say have normal response than have a ridiculous response sooner. So it might be most the problem, my laptop's broken and then the normal ones will take it to a shop to get fixed. And the other one will be maybe go to shot where it needs to get fixed and then see if you can steely and zooming. And basically you look at the problem and then you go as extreme as you go or kill the person who basically did this to your laptop. In the improv world, he talks about the idea of any scene you want to end with death row gas and some Phoenix stream. Ok, so it goes extremes, you can't, so that's great. So look at extremity Now. The other thing I would say is brevity as well. Have an economy of words. What you want to say, say as quickly gets your angle, communists lack flat round us. You've got the full basis. You run and you want to get to as many bases as you can with as few steps in as few stops as possible. So edit whatever you saying. If you look at the economy's words with one line is, you think about it was great. One line that goes, my girlfriend said, we're at a crossroads wherever I go this way to marriage or the other way, which is when we separate because we've got to take this relationship seriously. And then he responds, often you find that's a t-junction. So it's really, really concise piece of material and that's what you want to do. So the more words you have, the bigger you punch line has to be. You basically build a building built now there are times that's appropriate and anyone can meeting called the sharpest. And he had this big where he basically created more and more and more tension for a payoff, but it needed die was this idea goes, I read in the newspapers of the day and red. Then it carries on for ages going. What did our read? And then he builds the tension. And then the payoff is o. If you take drugs, you get short-term memory loss. So that's the payoff. So sometimes you want to build it, but most of the time you want to get as quickly to the punchline as possible. So edit, edit down and also when you're editing as well, remember, and wonderful thing is that you don't repeat the same word in you setup, see punchline, whatever, whatever is central to punchline, don't put it any setup. So, so one would be something like, I've dreamed of an ocean of lemonade, but that was just fantasy. So you wouldn't say, I've dreamed of a sea of lemonade, and that was a fantasy because you've repeated the same word. So remember extremity, brevity. Go for it. 6. Finding Your Comic Voice : Okay, let's talk about finding your comic voice. This is something that comes with experience. I remember a friend asking Milton Jones, is you got any advice for new comedian? And Milton said, unless you've done 30 hours on stage, you haven't really found your voice yet. So the idea of take every opportunity to get on stage, experiment walking different styles, speaking different styles, and it will come to you. But there are a few things to think about. And here's one exercise you can do is to write down how people see you. Write ten things down how people see you. And it's those incident things. You might be, you know, tall, fat, Smiley. You might be strange hair. You might have a big nose like me, whatever those things, write those things down and then think about ten things or the things that people don't know about you, who you really are, okay? And between those two, that is your comedy material, that's OK. You've taken people from that instant impression, those things that taken instantly, and then you take in them to those things that you know about yourself. So for me, one of the things is that people don't know about me. I'm half Spanish and I'm half Scottish. So I'll look just knowable and English. I'm a white guy. I've got northern accent, but talk about the fact that I'm broke with the Spanish father. And so, but I've also got a Scottish mothers, half Spanish, half Scottish. As a child, I was trained as a matador when it comes to killing double, our head butted it, that kind of thing. But essentially I want you to do that now is just pause this video right down ten things, the instantaneous for you, and then put ten things that people wouldn't know about you by just looking at you. Now, you can play with some of those instant impressions that you make, okay, so I've seen many committees do things like talk about what, who you look like or, you know, some similarities with the will of the people said, I was a diversity awards one cells hosting it. And I said, Well, this is absolutely great steps forward for the world of diversity by booking a middle-class white guy to present it in a year. It depends on the context as well. But I've seen communities like Tom Regan's with these very tall comedian. And I've seen him just start shows going OK. Let's just take a moment alone. Frequently told just, let's just take a moment here. And other comedians like him, social ponder is a very good mates and he's braise, Malawi and comedian. And when, if it's a majority white audience, you might say, wow, you know, things have moved forward. You know, if this was 500 years ago, this would be an auction, one by black guy and all those white guys. So it's taken part the contexts. It's those instantaneous things that you might take in. And you might want to think about how to amplify those instant differences about yourself. He might be the way you dress. So, you know, if you want to come across as smart, you might want to wear a suit. Both wacky. You might want to wear it like a loud shirts or something like that. Remember, Milton joins one saying, because if he spikes it up just to show the audience, this is a kind of character and he's a bit zany, but luckily Kramer type character. And he says the most stupid the audience, the higher the hair. So you want to think about that and then basically amplify your character. So take those die exercise, how people see and then who you are. Take those aspects about yourself and think about how can you amplify them through your address, through your voice, through your characterization? Ukip comedians like Jack Whitehall, he might take us off very posh character in his voice and really amplify that. Or someone who is very northern, I will might become more northern OR working class or whatever. Put Take that an amplifier. Really what you're doing here is playing around the whole idea of comedy character. So take a moment, think about what is your comedy character. Remember, talks about comedy Bain about amplification and extremity. Take that thing about yourself, that it's a bit different, a quirk and mannerism, and then stretch it out and amplify it. Think about your comic character. The most comedians might be the sort of every man, every woman, child commonly the, the friendly smiley comedian, that's most commonly characters within standard. But you might take a different approach to you. There's the, there's loads of them books and there's like VD is someone who basically makes up. They don't understand the situation, so the audience stanza, and they don't, so, they might say, so what I want you to think about is watch your comedy character, that mannerism that you have that quirk and extend that out. You remember talks about amplification. What about you? That's different or unique or just the obvious that you want to then basically put a megaphone Sue. Most comedians have a kind of every man, every woman appeal. But you might also have a different type of commonly carrots. And you want to play with like an idiot where the audience is a joke and you're not really so they have one over u. So jimmy Cricket, brilliant comedian. And he does a great job where he talks about, he says, and I stood in the middle of my garden with space and they say why you do not? Jimmy said, well, I heard you get awards for being an outstanding in your field. Something he doesn't understand or, you know, you can basically get it where the oldest gets the joke. Sorry. I was talking about the energetic about I'm really into honesty in a relationship, which is why I think it's wonderful. My wife has been telling lots of men that were in a open relationship in the oldest gets the real context and I don't. So misunderstanding is that part of the idea or the, you know, in our joke, sorry. A classic comedy troupe would be, you know, why, why on planes made out of the black box record a material because that's the only thing that seems to exist after a plane crash. So you can do that or you can look at the types of colon cancer like the superior comic. Where you look in days almost the opposite. You're looking down on the audience. And so, you know more than they do. So companies like Stuart Lee and people who work with this idea. So I'm like a classic response. If you're comparing in a superior than would be, it's a sorry to patch Niger. That means talking down to someone, that kind of thing, you know. So that's your taking a superior stance or the, the Messiah, the comic Messiah, yoga, right the wrongs and you might be super angry things. So you think about committees like Bill Hicks was big on that, knew how to solve the world. Our headlines like in after watching five minutes of TV, You know, I was praying for a nuclear holocaust and I hate when humanity go on about how great we are, just remember where a virus in shoes, that kind of thing. Where you can basically you know, how things should be. And there's other ones you can play with like the comedy geek, you know, talks about the idea of finding niche, find that thing that you're into, really play with that you know, this m an Asian comedian who young Chow and he talks about love in the Marvel superheroes. And he was like, what would it be like to have a sort of Chinese Captain America instead of a shield. He just be like throwing out bootleg DVDs people. So essentially, look this in this things about the geek and the niche. The what is your passion and go? Or if you're not looking at your own comedy character, actually go with an alter ego, whether you create those new standards I owe you actually perform one. And there's loads of examples of commonly characters like the company world you've got. Tompkins Does Ivan brac and breeds a hospital radio DJ and isn't, he doesn't really understand how inappropriate things are. So he's playing songs to people that have got illnesses. Someone who's had a am, heme and Stokoe, please bomb, I'll play this song. You gotta search for the hero in side yourself and other alter egos and communicate why, for instance, has a commonly carrots are called Jerry from barry. It's a low working class mom that talks about world issues and what's the soul of the world out. So she's like, and my boyfriend, we call him on 3k is actual real name is Muhammad, was tougher where he would just call him Enrique because my mom said she'd kill me if I went out with a foreigner, that kind of thing. And then I've got another friend, Jeff downstairs, it calmly carrots cold rod Shepard, and he's a conspiracy theorist. So he's, and he's absolutely, you know, super focused on it. So it's like what time do I get up? 911 and all that kind of subseries. Brilliant. So look at your comedy character and then basically amplify all evening news stories, create characters and go with them and so on. It is think about, remember, start with what you look like or what is the first impression you give to people. And then really think about who you really are and bridge that gap and then stretched that out. 7. Performance Technique: In this video, we're going to be talking about performance techniques. I think standup is one of the most concentrated art forms and has the most transferable skills with any area of public speaking. If you think about it, there's so many areas where you can be speaking to a group that's can be at work or school or college. And interesting a group at a party delivering a speech at a wedding will stand ups, are masters at capturing an audience and using their entire body voice and intonation. Body language, everything to actually express what they want to say. The main thing to think about is look confident, even if you don't feel it. And one sense it's fake it till you make it. If you have an open body language and that's the first thing to remember is you have your arms open your palms out and a wide stance. And that essentially says to the audience, you can trust me and I'm totally 0s. And this is the way humans work. You think about a baby. There's a mirror neuron, isn't you smile at baby? The baby smiles back if you say to an audience, I'm here and I'm happy to be here, so you're smiling and you're ready. Then they go, well, this guy's happy to be here and he's confident, great is clearly got something good to say. I'm relaxed, whereas There's a negative feedback loop where you start to close in on yourself and the audience doesn't have seen many times we many comedians where the audience feel awkward. The comedian then feels awkward and then they basically lose each other. So member open body language, palms open and this base says, I have nothing to fear, but also, you can trust me. All public speakers are taught to speak with open body language. Politicians, american presidency especially think about Bill Clinton. He was doing this in his big speech after molecule Lewinsky is basically saying, You can trust me how honest even if it was like he was like, I did not sleep with that woman. So remember kidney, body language open. If you look at Michael McIntyre, he bounds on stage, it's open. Yeah, I'm happy to be here. And then think about your eyes as well. Don't just look at one place. Look across the audience. And with your eyes. Don't look at the actual eyes. Look at the foreheads. That's the technique. So it makes the audience think that you're looking at them. But actually you not getting drawn into any one person. You're speaking to everybody. So as you're talking, keep scanning the room, keep talking around, and use your eyes to basically make an engagement with the entire audience. The main thing I'd say is be deliberate in all you movements, use your movements comma. In fact, sometimes it's good to go to the venue beforehand and see different parts of the stage, see where you might want to and punctuation in your actual delivery, use your body is part of the punctuation. She might say. I'm a fellow in my, I fell out with my yoga teacher the other day. It's put me in a difficult position. You know, each point stemmed and look, but don't just sort of drift with the movements. Because when you do that, then the audience drift as well. You want to be punchy and deliberate. You might say, my read on a bottle of And Viagra, it said, if symptoms persist beyond four hours, call you doctor, which is great because my dogs is really beautiful. Oh hi, Miss genetics, that kind of thing. Yeah. And then also think about the actual programming of it, you know, so you've heard of net NLP neuro linguistic programming, where you can use your body movements to actually direct the audience. You might have a killer punchline and you have a particular movement that go with that. You say, I can't believe baba, baba. And then big laugh from the audience. Well, if you wanna do a call back, if you want them to, almost like that's your, that's your thing about delivering a punchline where it might be a point, you might say, and naturally punchline. Then later on you might have a slightly weaker gag, but you'll still point and actually do that. And then the audience are programmed. That's what he wants to laugh. That's what he wants his life. That's when he's in shock. You know, that's what he's defensive and that's when he's delivering something to us. So play around with that planet. So it's not just planning your words, Plan your movements as well. You essentially are your entire orchestra, your entire band. So use your voice as an instrument. What are the things to remember is warp, just like you would if you're going to do a 100 meter dash, you wouldn't just start and then go warm or so before you go on stage, Use your voice. Go low, middle, high, r 00. Actually warm you muscles up, but also using the voice, play around with it as well. One thing you want to avoid is monotony. So go high and go low. If you look at emotion, actually accentuate that emotion with your voice, you might go really high if you're thinking about like I'm shocked. We like what you said, what you really wanna sort of punch and deliver your punchline with your voice. And there's different things you want to think about with usually voices. We all remember that the secret to comedy is timing. So make sure that you get your timing right. Don't worry about slowing it down. There's nothing like a good pose to deliver the punchline. And actually when you're on stage, you feel like you want to go faster, whereas actually slow it down a little bit and actually rest into yourself. And you don't actually have to speak high pitch because remember you've got a microphone and that will amplify what you say. So even if you speak slowly and split quietly, you still going to be heard because the audience are concentrating on you. Remember to use the whole stage. Don't walk around aimlessly. Book, think about what's their ground yourself in the moment. So the amount of things I've seen comedians do with stools that is on the stage. Stone can be stew. You can rest your hand on it. That's one position. I've seen a comedian actually use it as a prop to kind of illustrate story where he flips it over and it becomes a table as like someone was like arguing about getting fired is like you'd find me. And it became a table. Wonderful movement. But also use that hole, age and anything within it. And that's part of the idea as well, of ground yourself in the moment, in the context. Because the beauty of comedy is that it's live and the more live you make their experience better. So one thing I always say is to ground yourself right at the beginning. If you said reference where you are safe, it's a really run-down working men's Columbia. You might want to say something along the lines of, well, you know, the reason I got into comedies, I just, I'm addicted to the glamor, whatever that is. Or you might want to just point out some that I've seen. Times when onus is completely living. There was one time that there was a clock on the wall and it was an hour hours, an hour behind. And I always kind of I said to the original CE, when I'm doing a show, I always make sure that someone puts, you know, the clock in our back so the audience don't want this to end that kind of thing. And they're like, oh my goodness, it isn't how carry bloody, but so make sure you ground yourself in the moment. One thing is just use the line. I always say you're doing a show. And there's something like a big bouquet of flowers at the side of the stage. Say, I always insist for it to show that there's a big bouquet of flowers or the sign of this. And then you ground yourself in a moment. So use the whole stage ground, you save that. And I've seen comedians big and small to that. Robin Williams in his special, there's some big chandelier and there was one of his early life, etc. Use Thank you to Imelda Marcos for the use of her earrings. So use everything you've got is all tools you've been given. The micron flap moment uses stage, use voice, use your eyes, use your body. 8. Dealing With Nerves: I wanted to do a video about dealing with nerves. Everybody feels nervous to one degree or another when it comes to public presentation. So don't worry about Filipinos in fact, maybe approach it in a different way. Accept that you're gonna feel nervous. And why I like to use this term just enough. What you want is just enough nerves to keep you on your toes, but not too much that it detracts from your performance. So basically, get to know your nerves, gets no your fear, but don't reject it or be consumed by. That's when it's a Jekyll and Hyde situation. You kind of put it away in your subconscious. You put it, tries to lock it down and it will come back to buy it. So, you know, one way to do it is to actually anthropomorphize your fear. You know, actually talk to it. Something like a is before a show. And if I am feeling nervous, I'll let it pass through. As you now feel it in parts of our body are sternum in my stomach. And I'll just go, how unfair could see everything is fine. Thank you for everything you've done in life to keep me safe. But it's now time to pass through and let it pass through so anthropomorphize it, but also breathe. Breathing is really important. This is a great saying which, which is the difference between anxiety and excitement is breathing. So brief. Find your technique. There's different things people can do. I've heard one game you can do is basically you get a pen before and just distract yourself, Sima Qian Gua pen. And I'm going to think of 20 things you commander, he might be a sugar. It might be trying to get it behind the ear or whatever, but find something that will distract you from that moment. One way is just to go through your material, concentrate on what you're doing and block out the fear. And there's a great book called The Chimp paradox. It talks about the different parts of the brain. You've got a sort of human part which you, where you make decisions. You've got your computes partly brain, which is where you put the programming and you've got the chimp and that's obviously built towards fight or flight. And they start part of this stronger than the human, but the human can rationalize within, so top teeth there and say it's okay. There's 30 people here in the back room of a probe will go into b. Okay? Alright, thank you very much and give you a banana and just let it know. You can worry about something else tomorrow, but just in this moment, I'm gonna be absolutely fine. And the main thing is, is, well, remember talks about being confident. Who flat 20 minutes. You've been given a microphone, you've been given the stage, taking, it's incumbent upon you to take hold of that time and really go for it. And another thing when it comes to dealing with fear is there's nothing like preparation. Go to the venue early, check it out. Get yourself prepared, have a moment, and also record every shows that you do. Because you might find that you've got various different tics that give off nervousness. Only if you look back at yourself and listen to yourself. She might be a vocal tic. I used to have one where I used to laugh nervously in between gangs. Or I used to fill sentences with words that a filler words, remember it won't show what about 12 years ago, the venue manager manages to Call Me mister fantastic because whilst I was thinking that the next thing say statistical fantastic. So basically record yourself and ground yourself and be confident. One thing that causes anxiety for a lot of people is the idea of getting hackles. Well, don't be defensive and don't worry about it comes and it comes very rarely. Okay? But the main thing is think about the character we talked about before. What's your comedy character and stay in character, don't get angry and don't get defensive. In fact, take control. Remember, you've got the microphone. And invariably Heckler is a bit of an idiot. Usually. So repeat what they say and control the pace. So they've said something so that everyone else is like repeat it back. You might even repeat it back, slightly different to what they've said so that you can control the narrative. But the essential thing is, when it comes to heckler, give them enough rope that they hang themselves. Don't worry about them. Don't break character and be composed. Of course, prepare yourself a few lines that might deal with a heckler. I remember my first drink or do something like, you're, you're meant to be the one that makes me look stupid, not yourself, that kind of thing. But essentially don't be too prescriptive with it because usually the audience or on your side and they rooting for you. And you can even use the audience to actually look around and get their response to a say. You might even use the audience to just tell them to shut up. But at that time, just stay calm and stay grounded. 9. Going Pro: I wanted to do this final video on the industry and thinking about going pro. Hopefully you've learnt lots through this tutorial. And however you speak where the professionally or just as part of wedding speeches or part of your work. I wanted to just say there is an industry out there and there are ways to get in, but don't be worried about going pro too early is a comedian called Craig, or it has a great line, he says. And before our professional, my hobby was comedy. Then I went pro, and now I don't have a hobby. So enjoy the time. As you get into commonly there's things called open spots, do as many of them as you can. And essentially that's the same with all public speaking. Take every opportunity to get in front of a crowd, get the microphone, get's speaking, and you'll get better and better. And at the right time, the professional opportunity will come to you and actually the paid gigs will come to you. So don't rush it. Enjoy it. So here are my top seven tips of breaking into full-time professional standup. One, do as many open spots as you can. There's loads of them around, and that's a great way to get started, to get a website, even if you just started out, get yourself your own commonly website with a few pictures of yourself, a biogas and an email address that's personalized to you. Really get yourself a promo of it. So unconscious film you just on their phone, you know, get something with a nice little clip. Doesn't have to belong to 34 minutes with the audience laughing. And that gives promoters of video, video kind of profile of yourself. Number four, okay, get yourself a comparing slot. That's really important. You know, residency somewhere means you can breaking new material. And if you want to basically bail on a piece of new material, you can bring on the next acts of get residency. And part of that is actually start your own comedy club if every community that we commonly see would be great. But that means you are then the resident compare for your own shop. And you get to basically practice, interacts with the audience and breaking new material. Number five, don't take anyone see first gig or second or third weight to later on. There's a lot of communities that's the mistake that they make. Essentially what they do is they get the friends and family turn up to the first show. It's a complete disaster. They give up at that point, bringing to the 20th or 30th cake. Okay, number six, try a competition. There's loads of comedy competition out there. The given level of prestige can go in your CV. And also the gate you profound get u, c. And finally number seven is be nice. You're selling yourself, you are the product. So when you go bring the best of yourself to every situation, be polite to everyone, and be interested in people's well, ask them questions. So I hope you have a great time. This is a great industry is full of wonderful people, go for it. 10. And Finally..... : And finally, Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for engineering. I mean, completing this commonly tutorial, I hope you found some great tips and techniques. And now it's your turn to get out there and bring your own comic voice to the world. Remember to enjoy it. Don't get too serious about it. That's the whole point. There's an old saying, isn't there? We don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing. And remember with every show, whenever you completing, remember to go out with a bang, smoking.