How to Add Humor to Your Content

1. Introduction to How to Add Humor to Your Content: This course is all about how to add humor to your content. First of all, what do I mean by content? I mean anything written or spoken. Novels, books, podcasts, videos, articles, newsletters, tweets, fleets, heck, maybe you are a Venmo comment section content creator trying to become a Venmo influencer. So if you write or say anything, you can add humor to your content. Now that's not to say you should add humor to your content. If you're trying to sell, I don't know, caskets on Amazon, humor might not be the key to reaching your grieving audience. You've got to figure out if humor makes sense for you. Having said that, humor is a powerful tool in media advertising, the creator, economy, publishing, news, entertainment, politics, and business. And so in this course, I want to share everything I've learned about how comedy works to help you develop a comedy toolkit. And so the project for this course is to take a piece of content, could be a video you've produced, an article you've written and add humor to it. 2. Understanding the DNA of Comedy, or Joke Structure: The DNA of comedy. This is the first video in this course, and it's all about the DNA of comedy or joke structure. Jerry quarterly who teaches comedy on YouTube, calls it comedies DNA. Greg Dean of comedian who's been teaching comedy classes for decades in Los Angeles, calls it joke structure. Curtis Matthews, who's been teaching comedy classes in San Francisco for decades, borrowed deans concepts and also calls it joke structure. Okay, so let's get into the structure. A joke consists of a setup and a punchline. The setup sets up the punchline. The setup should be a true statement. It should be a succinct statement. It should not be a funny statement. Of course, if our premise is true and succinct and also incidentally a little bit funny. That's okay. It can be incidentally funny. For example, I love big budget pornographic films. Great, perfectly fine premise, a little bit weird, but fine. In fact, let's run with that premise. I love big budget porn. This setup should also help our audience construct a narrative in their head that goes beyond this true and succinct statement. Ideally, the audience is invited to fill in some of the gaps. And that's because we want to paint a archetypical picture and play into stereotypes. So in our example, I love big budget or porn. I also want to look a bit sloppy. My hair's disheveled. I'm wearing sweatpants. I, and I love porn. It's like I got it. This story checks out. Now step two, I'm going to continue telling my story as if I'm just diving deeper into my passion for high production quality porn. But what the audience doesn't realize is that I've already pivoted to my punchline without them even knowing they have no idea. So to recap, Step 1, state your premise, a true and succinct statement. Step to tell us more about your true in succinct statement that can be interpreted in more than one way. And then of course, step 3, you've got land the plane, touchdown impact. Upon arrival, you need a punchline, punch a moment that suddenly things change. You went from being in the air to being on the ground, cannot identify the moment of touchdown of impact. You probably don't have a very good punchline. So I'm gonna do the whole bit. Yo, what's up San Francisco? How is everybody doing? I love big budget, high production value porn. That's right. I love porn. I especially love the close-up shots. You know, those 10 millimeters sigma fisheye lens jots, sexy. They swoop under the sheets with the z and S, we will gimbal seductive. What are they shooting on an 8 K read DSMC to that sort of sticky a00. How about sperm is in that aperture? In carrot, image stabilization is causing me to dribble. So as you can tell, I pivoted you think I watched porn all day. Reasonable assumption to make. But I've already pivoted in the second sentence when I said, I love close-up shots because that sentence can be interpreted in more than one way as you discover it. The thing I actually love is wide angle camera lenses, not nipples. And then on top of that basic joke structure, I threw in a second comedic tool, a callback. A callback refers back to some earlier point in the conversation. In this case, I'm calling back to my own love for sex in describing camera gear. Meanwhile, my lack of concern for my appearance lends credibility to this premise that I am a Shelby kid who lives in my parent's basement and watches porn all day. And I did all that to misdirect you with the wide angle shot line. And so hopefully, like I misdirected you a second time after convincing you I loved camera gear. I tried to make it pretty clear again that after all, I'm a porn addict living in my parents basement. So state a fact, then, find a sentence, phrase or word that's ambiguous as you continue expound upon your facts. And after having primed us in one direction, go in the other direction to rephrase cytosine buildup on shared assumptions with the audience, then say something ambiguous without the audience realizing. And men of course, misdirect which traders the laughter. This is the most mechanical way to get a laugh. It's what's taught in a stand-up comedy schools. And so your project is to take anything you've written or said and apply this formula, this setup, and the punch formula, and then of course get some feedback on your joke. Feedback is critical, like if you don't get feedback on your material, to know if it's working or not. It's probably not working. In fact, that bit that I just did wasn't really tested that annual and I just sort of like wrote it out very structurally. This is my setup, this my punch. This might be misdirection, but I haven't tested it out, so I would love your feedback. Okay, So now that we've talked through some of the mechanics, the nuts and bolts in the next few videos, I want to look at case studies of how you can use comedy in entertainment, business, and politics. All right, let's do it. 3. How to Add Humor to a Act Out or Sketch: In this lesson, we are going to learn how to create short, funny video clips. Let's call it sketches or means, or really anything involving moving pictures that can go viral on social media. I want to actually break down some funny clips that I think do a good job of setup and punch. And I want to review those videos together. And I think a key starting point for most of these funny videos that we're going to look at is that there are critical of something. Remember, Comedy starts with having a negative opinion about something about anything really. Fortunately for all of us living on planet Earth, there are plenty of things to have negative opinions about. And so for this lesson, I want to look at COVID-19 as a theme. I think it's relatively universal. I think we can all relate to it. And so I want to look at some funny clips that deal with the pandemic in one way or another could be that toilet paper became precious at the very beginning of the pandemic, could be that government's imposed lockdowns. People weren't able to leave their homes. Distancing made it hard to see family and friends. So these things sock like we all have negative opinions about all of these things. Okay, So let, let's start with toilet paper. Toilet paper became scarce. And the key here is run with that idea. And remember what we learned in the last video, when you're transitioning from your setup to your punchline, you want to essentially double down on the premise. Keep going. In that vein of thought, toilet paper became rare, it became scarce, it became valuable. It became so precious, it became like blank, fill in the blank there, just finished that sentence however you like. And ideally, you're filling in the blank with something that's very relatable TO paper, became so scarce and precious, it became almost like money. Now since with that idea, okay, toilet paper became as precious as money. So in your act out, in your scenario, you want to run with that idea. Like comedy is just really all about running with ideas. It's, it's extrapolating things. It's taking ideas to their logical conclusion. So obviously like, if toilet paper is now like money, I'm going to add anything I do with money, I want to do with toilet paper. I'm going to count all of my toilet paper that I have a square by square. If if toilet paper was free, I would be going into public restaurants and grabbing that toilet paper as quickly as I could. Next, premise, can't leave the house. That's socks because like, I want to leave my house to do lots of things. I I need to leave my house because I need to do all of these critical things just as part of my day-to-day life. Ask yourself, what are those critical things that everyone has to do to leave the house? Let's start with walking my dog. But, but remember, I'm going to run with this idea. It's a lockdown. I literally cannot leave my home, but I need to walk my dog. Just take that idea and run with it. How can I walk my dog without leaving my house? Or alternatively, let's take another example. I need to take out the trash. How can I take out the trash without losing leaving the house? Maybe I'm argue with my roommate or my partner, tooth and nail over who's taking trash, come hell or high water. It's me. I'm taking them address you can get I got here. Next premise, distancing it keeps us safe, but I also want to hang out with my friends and family like I'm a social animal, I need to hang out with other people. So just run with that idea. I'm, I need to see people, but I need to be safe. So like just run with it. How can you see people? How can you mix with other people but still take necessary precautions to prevent COVID from circulating. So hopefully, you've been inspired with some of these COVID 19 clips. And so your project for this video is to try and make a funny video. It develop a negative opinion about something. Take that idea to its logical conclusion and just run with it. 4. 3 Techniques for Getting a Laugh, with Scott Galloway: In the first video, we talked about the nuts and bolts of joke structure. In the second video, we talked about how to get a laugh in a sketch, or an act out, or a meme, or a real life scenario. In this next video, we're going to zoom in on comedy in public speaking. And to do this, we're going to break down the work of one public speaker, Scott Galloway. He's a Professor of Business at NYU. Galloway uses at least three specific techniques for getting a laugh, self-deprecation, analogical reasoning, and distillation. What do I embed these concepts? Self-deprecation, It's straight up the number one rule in comedy. If you're going to try and get people to laugh, you've gotta be likable. And what better way to make your audience feel better about themselves then by deprecating herself. So let's just look at a few examples that Galloway uses. I'd like to thank my dozens and dozens of fans for I am so jealous and envious of Adam Grant. I teach US fantastic. He's sort of sky coward plus a lot more substance credibility. And he's won best teacher about five times at war. And then I, let me see. At NYU I wanted I have not wanted 0 times. Anyways, my first marriage ended over religious differences. I thought I was God and my axe was a non-believer. Second example, analogical humor. The operative word in analogical jokes is the word like, don't be afraid to make an analogy that illustrates or exaggerates a point. It's kind of like Facebook is, doesn't seem as diversified and has a 33 year-old who my mind makes an African dictator looks thoughtful. Broadcast television is cursed with being a swimmer. And every 11 minutes someone takes a dump in the pool, you literally get interrupted when IP now it's like a baby bottle dribbling my seven-year-old. There's like a fire hose. I mean, he could seriously break down along number 3, distillation. Great comics distill a point down to its essence. Usually the distillation involves a cynical interpretation. And the simplest distillation could just be something like you think you're doing X. But what you're actually doing is why distill a point down to its essence. Because advertising has become a tax that only the poor, the technologically illiterate have to pad it. How do you know your life hasn't turned out the way you'd want, you know too much about the new South Korean car company light beer, or how to address opioid induced constipation with the latest pharmaceutical. So when you hear a university president make a declarative statement that we're welcoming people back in the fall. That is Latin for parents, send in your money now. So when a university president says, We look forward to seeing you in the fall, they have entered into consensual hallucination with their CFO who said get those deposits in, just as waiving an Android phone Pang with the Discover card or having ad-supported Pandora is like a prophylactic saying, Don't have sex with me. Well, we saw how Galloway frequently identifies his own weaknesses and insecurities. Small audience reference for other experts we saw as analogical reasoning. Ads are like swimming where when someone is shooting in the pool every eight minutes. And we saw distillation, listening to Pandora with ads. Kinda like saying don't mate with me. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Mr. Galilee probably does not work in the PR department of an advertising agency. But let's be clear here. These techniques, self-deprecation, analogical reasoning, and distillation. They can be used by anyone in almost any context. And so for your project, your task is to combine the joke structure with the mechanics that you learned in video one with one or more of these strategies that you learn in this video. And try and add some humor to your content. 5. How to Develop a Comedy Formula in Political Satire, with Stephen Colbert: Our last case study is going to be about Stephen Colbert. Stephen Colbert is doing five to ten, sometimes 15 minute monologues, five nights a week to a 100 nights a year, which is insane. Stephen Colbert is running a comedy factory. His team is crank and out original jokes every night. So what better way to understand the mechanics of comedy meant to look under the hood of one of the world's greatest comedy factories. I'd like to analyze a particular type of late night joke and then talk about how you can do this in your own work. It's the, it's kind of like joke. It's a classic joke structure that we already saw both with Scott Galloway in the analogical reasoning category. The basic joke structure here is that you observe something, you state a fact that's the premise. In the case of the late night shows this fact is usually the president of the United States said something. The key is finding something we're unconventional or odd something. And presidential, as you can imagine, this Joe wrote itself literally every night for four straight years during the Trump presidency. Then your next sentence is, that reminds me of Lincoln's famous words at Gettysburg. Reminds me of the first draft of that address. It reminds me of Lincoln's first draft of the Gettysburg Address. Miserly of Lincoln stirring words at Gettysburg, or that reminds me of FDR's famous words, does remind me of FDR is famous speech. We all remember FDR's inaugural, reminds me of FDR's inaugural address. After all, it was FDR who said, just like when FDR addressed his worried nation. And then you just see something ridiculous. You just insert some ridiculous sentence that George Washington or true mean or are Churchill might have said, the only thing we have to fear, you're going to die. The only thing we have to fear is that Jira bunch of wars, the beta males. So to recap, state effect, you want to be critical of that fat. The president said something on presidential, your critical event. And then you transition to your punchline. That reminds me of Lincoln said this ridiculous thing at Gettysburg. Fdr said this ridiculous thing. We'll have nothing to fear but cat poop. So your project for this video is to try and create that kind of like jokes. I hope you found this course somewhat useful that you got some value out of it, that you have some tools to add humor to your content. Thanks again for watching this course, and best of luck, adding humor to your Venmo comments.