Improv Thing

I'm Will Reese, a director / producer at UCB Comedy. I write about improv, and movies, and sometimes both at the same time.

[improvthing]

Putting Together a Good Reel

Many of these notes have to be applied way before you sit down to cut together a reel, because a reel only showcases the work you’ve done. It’s almost impossible to cut mediocre footage into a great reel. You have to be in it for the long haul. Use these notes as you continue to shoot sketches, in preparing for the reel you’ll cut together 6 months from now. These notes also mostly apply to comedic reels, but the basic principles are the same for any reel.

Most of this was written shortly after watching almost 400 reels in the span of a few weeks, so if some of these notes seem terse, it’s because watching that many reels is super draining, and often frustrating when you see so many people make the same mistakes over and over. After watching tons and tons of reels that feel the same, when you finally come across a solid reel it’s refreshing and rejuvenating! Take comfort knowing that when people are watching reels they want them to be good. Nobody goes to a movie hoping they won’t enjoy it.

Actors

The viewer wants to see that you can act. Your job is to figure out what your strengths are as an actor, and select clips that display your ability to emote, and your specific comedic voice.

- If you’ve only taken improv classes, take acting classes. - Just because you yell a line doesn’t make it a joke line. - If we can’t see your eyes, we can’t see your acting. - A montage does not show you can act; use a montage to show you’ve been in a few things that were high production-value, but keep it short. - Learn the basics of editing. Especially when you’re starting out, your performance will be stitched together in editing. If you understand editing, it will make the editor’s job much easier, and they’ll make you look great. - Silly voices, jumping around like a crazy person, and just generally being “weird” is almost never indicative of acting ability. - Seriously, invest in real acting classes. - Show some variety and range; don’t just include scenes where you’re “guy / girl on a date.” This doesn’t just relate to your reel, it relates to the kinds of parts you choose to accept. Obviously, when you’re starting out, you can’t be too picky about the parts you get, but be conscious of how you’re portraying yourself as an actor. - The viewer wants to care about what they’re watching, which means they want to see characters who care about something. Even if it’s a dumb sketch / scene, invest emotionally and find something to care about. If you’re not invested emotionally in the scene, the viewer will not emotionally invest in you. - Make sure to include footage where you aren’t just talking, but reacting / listening in an active way. - Bad writing can ruin a mediocre actor’s performance, but a great actor can make bad writing seem great. - Don’t blink so much. Every time you blink, it unconsciously distracts the viewer. Pick one eye line and stick to it. If you keep looking all over the place, your performance will suffer and your eye movements will distract the viewer. - Acting classes! The best actors never stop taking classes!

Editors

The viewer wants to see that you can make strong editing choices that emphasize the narrative and / or emphasize the comedy.

- If a scene just involves cutting back and forth between cross coverage, it probably won’t show the viewer that you’re able to make strong choices. - Editors are the only people that really benefit from montage-y reels, but even in an editing reel, don’t rely too heavily on montage. - Showcase bold editing choices that heighten comedic / unexpected moments. - Sound design is a subtle but powerful tool to hook a viewer. - Make conscious choices about how you’re marketing yourself as an editor. Are you trying to get jobs editing music videos? Editing comedy? Editing narrative? Editing sketch? Choose clips that clearly show a specific skill / genre. That doesn’t mean you have to limit your reel to one thing, but your goal is to communicate what your strengths / goals are, not just that you know how to use Premiere.

Directors

The viewer wants to watch a compelling story. Even a dumb little sketch has to have a narrative / emotional through line.

- Learn how to edit. You don’t need to edit all your own work, but understanding editing gives you a much greater ability to predict how footage will cut together. - Cross coverage is boring. - The viewer wants to see strong visual choices that compliment and heighten the content of the scene. - If your goal is to direct comedy, make sure your clips reflect your comedic voice. - Directing isn’t just telling the DP where to put the camera, it’s also directing the actors and telling a story. A lot of directors’ reels just have pretty footage. Do more than just show you have a friend who’s a good DP. - Take an acting class. You have to be able to think as an actor. - Take an improv class. Improv helps a director live in the moment and find interesting, organic ideas on set. This doesn’t mean just ad-libbing lines; it means being aware of the environment your characters live in, and how that environment, and the other characters, affect the scene. - Bad writing can ruin a mediocre director’s scene, but a great director can make bad writing seem great. - Find something to care about, even in the most inane sketch / video. The viewer wants to care, and wants to enjoy the scene. - Give your actors strong eye lines. - If we can’t see your actors eyes, we can’t follow the emotional through line of the story. - A well directed scene will be clear without relying on a bunch of dialogue / exposition. Many of the best scenes contain little or no dialogue. Challenge yourself to do more non-verbal work. - Most “dramatic” or “comedic” pauses are usually just empty space that say nothing. A strong director can turn those pauses into moments that feel real and compelling. A director who isn’t as strong should cut those empty moments out of a scene. Usually, those empty moments do NOT work in a reel.

Writers

The viewer wants to see writing that serves the story and characters—even in sketch. The funniest lines in a script will come from characters who are invested in their surroundings. Detached, jokey characters rarely work in a reel.

- Learn the basics of video production: editing, directing, acting. If you’re just writing for yourself, and you’re just writing verbal jokes, your reel is going to feel flat and talky. - Write strong visuals. - With a basic understanding of editing you’ll be able to write much tighter, more interesting action. - Work with actors to develop strong characters. Write for an actor’s voice. Find the Will Ferrell to your Adam McKay. - Witty banter usually feels self-indulgent in a reel. - If you can show, in a short reel, that you can write characters and situations that are compelling and relatable, you’ll really stand out as a writer. - Unless you’re applying for a job writing monologue jokes, just having a reel full of jokes or silly lines will not impress. - Getting across a strong character / premise in a few lines is the most impressive achievement in a writer’s reel. The viewer wants to see compelling characters that make strong choices.

[improvthing]

She never did the same show twice. She never altered a word. She never altered a beat of business. She never altered a step of blocking. But she was different every night. She was improvising. She wasn’t improvising dialogue. But she was improvising. And that’s what improvisation is for me. Being present in the moment.

[improvthing]

Now there are very few rules to improvisation, but one of the things I was taught early on is that you are not the most important person in the scene. Everybody else is. And if they are the most important people in the scene, you will naturally pay attention to them and serve them. But the good news is you’re in the scene too. So hopefully to them you’re the most important person, and they will serve you. No one is leading, you’re all following the follower, serving the servant. You cannot win improv. And life is an improvisation. You have no idea what’s going to happen next and you are mostly just making things up as you go along.

Stephen Colbert Northwestern Commencement Speech, 2011 (Thanks John Roiniotis

[improvthing]

"I almost feel like a fraud for taking credit for writing dialogue, because it’s the characters that are doing it. To me it’s very connected to actors’ improv with me playing all the characters. One of the reasons I like to write with pen and paper is it helps that process, for me anyway."

Tarantino ( http://creativescreenwriting.com/method-writing-interview-with-quentin-tarantino/ )

[ucbsneakthief]

In Sneak Thief’s first video, everybody’s coming to the table for this year’s Thanksgiving in the new movie, Turkey Day! And we mean everyone, at one table!

[improvthing]

Harold Auditions: Looking Ahead

I didn't audition for Harolds this year, but when I look at my friends who got callbacks, and especially those who did make the final cut, they all have one thing in common: when you see them on stage you're not conscious of the fact that they're performing. They're all funny people, but even more so, every one of those improvisors who made it looks totally natural on stage, as if they're living their lives up there. You never feel like they're inventing or playing a wacky character, you feel as though they're just being themselves, even when they're being a wacky version of themselves.

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We spend a lot of time worrying about the mechanics of improv, and rightfully so. But those who made the cut (and everyone I know who got a callback) manage to make the mechanics seem like second nature, so that their personalities are able to shine through. They play with a level of comfort that makes improv look easy and natural, the way a professional baseball player can make hitting a home run look easy and natural. Thousands of hours of practice are involved in that one swing, but in the moment, confidence trumps skill, and that home run (or that "weird farting grandma" character you're playing) fails or succeeds based on your level of commitment, your level of comfort in the zone.

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So as I grow the balls to audition next year, every time I practice or perform, my focus will be on improvising without seeming like I'm improvising, on feeling comfortable on stage, on committing to the scene completely. And really, all the mechanics we're taught, from "yes and" to "react in an honest emotional way," are there to help us look comfortable and natural on stage, instead of looking like performers doing a job. If the improvisors who made it this year are any indication, the key is to improvise without looking like you're improvising at all.

[improvmovieparty]

One thing that really struck me while watching The Girlfriend Experience is just how “real” the movie feels. It doesn’t feel like actors on a sound stage delivering lines. It sounds like real people having real conversations about their own lives. There’s an authenticity to it that makes it more...

[improvthing]

Actor/Environment/Impulses

Among the pleasures of reading or watching fiction are the odd details and evanescent moments of everyday life that we often forget until we see them in a book or on a screen. Actors and directors store up these impressions through constant observation, and this is one of the things you hope to uncover while collaborating. Often the pressure of the shooting process gets in the way of tapping these small bits of behavior, which the actor must incorporate intuitively. When this happens, actors and directors tend to fall back on the obvious in their creative choices. It is the director's job to create an environment in which the actor can connect with his adventurous impulses and find the unexpected and unpredictable in their work together. It is this, more than anything else, that contributes to creative staging (and all other aspects of performance). Once the actor locates within himself the quirkiness of everyday and makes it his own through action, the director has only to compose it within the frame.

-- Film Directing: Shot By Shot, p116

This quotation speaks to so many improv concepts: finding the unusual thing; object work; playing from a true, emotional place; honest reactions; incorporating specifics into scenes; avoiding cliches; avoiding "jokes." It also highlights the notion that through creative visual endeavors we can shed light on the strange realities of our lives. I've always felt that the best improv is that which isn't just a funny yet forgettable ha-ha. The best scenes are the ones that are specific, gut-wrenchingly emotional, and feel real.

[improvthing]

Spontaneity On Set

In the process of developing a script I used always to try to have an exact picture of the film in my mind, even down to the sets. Now, however, I am more inclined to work out a scene or shot only in a very general way, so that it will emerge spontaneously during shooting. For the life on location, the atmosphere of the set, the actor's moods, can prompt one to new, startling and unexpected strategies. Imagination is less rich than life. And these days I feel more and more strongly that ideas and moods should not be all predetermined in advance. One should be able to depend on the feeling of the scene, and approach the set with one's mind open. There was a time when I could not start shooting without having devised a complete plan of the episode, but now I find that such a plan is abstract, that it restricts the imagination. Perhaps there is something to be said for dismissing it from one's mind for the time being.

-- Andrey Tarkovsky, from his treatise on filmmaking, Sculpting In Time

I've adopted this method while shooting sketches, and it's the best way to find what's really funny about an idea. It keeps the process collaborative and alive, instead of myopic and scripted. Yeah, Tarkovsky's language is dry, but it's not fault Russian comes across that way after translation!

[improvthing]

Improv Cliches: "I'm having a stroke."

I hear this just about every time I go to an improv show, whether it's 101 level students or pros. It's such a tired phrase, and is probably one of the most common button lines used in improv right now.

Obviously there's a formulaic element to improv, but the equation:

"crazy thing" + "strange wording" = "I'm having a stroke"

needs to go the way of alchemy.

A stroke quip is a symptom of ironic detachment. If a character were really having a stroke, he or she should exhibit major physical side effects. But improvisors regularly rattle off, "I just had a stroke!" to justify a game (or merely a verbal misstep), then continue on with their lives as usual. The audience laughs, not because there's any truth or reality to the scene, but because it's obviously NOT true. It's a form of irony: a statement that contradicts reality, since the improvisor is saying, "I'm having a stroke," but the character isn't really having a stroke. It's detached because it's the improvisor casually calling out his or her own lack of justification, not a character calling out the behavior within the scene. If you really saw someone act out a stroke on stage, it'd be unsettling. They wouldn't calmly announce, "Oh, I'm having a stroke."

I'm sure I've laughed at stroke lines before. And I've seen improvisors I look up to use that justification over and over. But it's really a crutch. It's an easy out, a line you can use any time you're in a pinch. If developing a unique comedic voice means trying to find your own truth in every scene, we all need to delete cliches like this one from our collective improv vocabulary.

[improvmovieparty]

Find a Smart Way to Play Stupid

Maybe it’s because I’m dumb, but when I was starting out at improv, I had a serious problem dealing with dumb characters, whether it was a character I decided to play, a character that someone else decided to play, or a character that someone else decided to make me play.

By “dumb” I mean someone whose is unable to comprehend something obvious, or lacks knowledge of everyday life. Someone who is so stupid, the audience loses its suspension of disbelief.

For example, if someone starts a scene by asking me, “Why’d you throw all that chlorine in the pool while there were still people in it?” novice improvisors have a tendency to justify the act by giving some kind of, “I didn’t understand what I was doing” line. Something along the lines of, “I didn’t know the chlorine would hurt them,” or, “Why were they in the pool in the first place?” or, “What is pain?”

I’ve seen scenes where improvisors play characters who are so clueless, they literally don’t know what everyday objects are (wheels, bread, whatever), or worse, where one improvisor paints another improvisor’s character as the stupid one, forcing the latter into an impossibly obtuse corner. That corner is dull and lonely, almost always unfunny, and most novice improvisors aren’t equipped to claw their way out of it. (When I was forced into that corner as a beginner, I always felt frustrated and the worst kind of helpless.) It makes the character so stupid, so incapable of basic human understanding, it’s hard to believe he would even be able to figure out how to get out of bed each morning. Someone that dumb could not exist.

Read More

[fuckyeahmst3k]

[improvmovieparty]

Also, this film “The Doll Squad” has a theme song that is obviously styled to sound like a Bond theme, sort of like “Thunderball” or “Goldfinger,” so it’s just natural to “call it out” and sing “Goldfinger!” or “Thunderball.” It’s one of the secrets of movie riffing I guess. We’re sharing the same experience by watching the movie together, then if you can “call out” a reference that is similar to yours, you’ve got yourself a riff.

-Joel Hodgson

Basically the same lesson we learn from improv. That unspoken weird thing is just a weird thing until it’s called out and becomes funny, becomes the joke, becomes the game.

Read this awesome article!

[speakeasyimprovnyc]

25 Great Unscripted Movie Scenes.

[improvmovieparty]

Interesting compilation, but it’s dangerous to assume that improv for film is the same as improv on stage. When you’re improvising in a movie, you know who your character is way before your performance begins. You know who you are, where you are, who else is in the room, and you know how the scene will end. It’s just a matter of living as that character in an honest way. On stage we have to find those things, while living as a character we didn’t know two minutes ago.

Improv for film and stage are close cousins, but not the same entity.

One of the best explanations of improv for film is given by Albert Brooks in the Taxi Driver DVD extra features. Couldn’t find that on YouTube, but here’s an interview from Coming Soon with Albert Brooks discussing Drive and Taxi Driver…

CS: I want to get further into the process of working with Nic. Had you ever done anything like this before where you met with the cast at someone’s house? He mentioned to me that this was part of developing the movie.

Brooks: This process was a similar process in “Taxi Driver.” It wasn’t Marty Scorsese’s house, but the character that I played in “Taxi Driver” was not then fleshed out, so what we would do… because the idea of improvising while the film is being made is silly. It never works out. You know, when cameras are rolling, improvisation doesn’t feel natural. The pressure is too great. You’re on a time schedule. You’ve got 60 crewmen. I’ve done it in my own movies that I’ve written; I would myself, maybe carry on a speech a little longer and say all the things I have, but I would never ask another actor to do that. The place to do it is before. I’m thinking of “Taxi Driver,” we spent weeks in a hotel and Marty recorded everything and the best of what we did became the script, so when we shot it, we stuck to that. It was funny because at the wrap party, (screenwriter) Paul Schrader said to me, “I want to thank you. That was the only character I didn’t know.” I said, “It’s the only character that didn’t kill 15 people.” (laughs) That’s sort of scary.

[improvmovieparty]

“‘Yes, and’ is about agreement. Agreement doesn’t necessarily mean you literally say the word yes all the time… In fact you more often probably do say no. Agreement means I’m agreeing with the improviser, not that I’m agreeing with the character… Agreement is I’m agreeing to your premise.”

Matt Besser, Improv for Humans (via improvmovieparty)

[improvmovieparty]

Don’t know how I never saw this before.

Jeff Bridges claimed there was no script for Iron Man, that Jon Favreau and Robert Downey, Jr. improvised scenes shortly before shooting.

Bridges, director Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. would literally act out sequences during primitive rehearsals,...