Single Cam vs Multi Cam

Via Twitter, Jake asked "Single cam vs multi cam, what works best for each format?" There's a short trite answer to this: Multi-cam works best for your career and your bank balance. This is very much a personal view, but allow me to explain.

Critics are always sneery and sniffy about multi-camera/studio sitcoms but TV Commissioners love them and are always looking to commission them because they know the audiences at home like them. Critics continue to be baffled and enraged by this but there's a possible reason for that - the sound of laughter cuts them out of the loop. It's hard to say 'That's simply not funny' when there's the sound of the audience falling about laughing, which is, I presume, why they often perpetuate the myth of 'canned'/fake laughter. Once a studio sitcom is deemed to be a runaway hit, some critics will begrudgingly accept it, as happened with Miranda which opened to very mixed reviews, but ended up being a 'guilty pleasure' (which just means 'pleasure', surely?).

Know Your Audience
Now, the problem with being an aspiring writer or writer/performer is succumbing to the temptation of trying to write something that will impress your peers, that might win awards and get good critical reception. The safest way to do that is to write a non-audience, single-cam show. Then if it turns out to be not that funny, your show can be defended by saying it's more of a comedy-drama, and much more about the characters, stories, etc etc - which is, of course, hooey. But the fact is that you can't pull this trick with an audience/studio sitcom. When a multi-camera show doesn't really work, it hurts, and you can't pass if off as serious or experimental theatre.

The result of this is Comedy Commissioners desks are piled high with non-audience/single-camera scripts. Do you want to spend months writing a script that is going to add to that vast pile, competing with the likes of Paul Whitehouse or Alan Davies for a half-hour slot on BBC2? You stand a much better chance of progressing with your script if you write something that can be filmed in a studio in front of an audience. I know this for a fact. (You chances go from 1 in 100,000 to 1 in 30,000)

Hopelessly Biased Advice
Now, I am biased, obviously. I'm an studio audience guy. I started out writing revue sketches for the stage, did Edinburgh shows and then did lots of radio in front of audience. Virtually everything I've ever written has been recorded in front of an audience. Every single episode of Think The Unthinkable, Hut 33, Concrete Cow, Miranda, Another Case of Milton Jones, My Hero and My Family have all been studio TV/Radio sitcoms.

One has to put up with dunderheaded reviews, of course, but I'm always glad to write for a studio audience because you have to make them laugh. Out loud. So the microphones can pick up the noise. So you have to write jokes. Lots and lots of them. I'd aim for four per page, if not more. And if you're writing those jokes and getting those laughs, you're most of the way there.

This is hard work. Incredibly hard work. Once you've plotted, outlined, written and rewritten your script, you have to go through it again and again being absolutely brutal about every single line, beat and comma. Every line has to be in character, and if it's not moving the story along it has to be a set-up to a joke, or a joke (again, all in character) so you get that regular laugh. Listen to how often the audience laugh on an episode of Friends. It's terrifyingly metronomic. But that's what you're aiming for. And the prospect of 250+ total strangers filing in to watch your show on a cold November evening gets your mind working and your fingers tapping your keyboard.

A single-camera show bypasses this. You don't have that terror driving you on to put jokes all over the place. The millions watching at home are miles and months away. That's why I'm always so impressed by genuinely hilarious non-audience shows (like Peep Show, The Inbetweeners and The Thick of It in UK and Arrested Development and Modern Family in US). They managed to make their shows so funny without that discipline of a studio audience. That takes slavish commitment.

The Roots of The Formats
Conversely, I'm rarely surprised when a single-camera show isn't very funny at all. But here we delve into an area that I think many of us haven't really considered - which is how single camera and studio sitcoms come from such different places.

Studio sitcoms are totally contrived - and the audience are always very happy with this contrivance. They are mostly indoors with the same characters every week. Stories tend to take place within a 48-72 hours time frame. There are set-pieces, sometimes verging on pantomime - and the studio audience and often the viewers at home are fine with it (9.5 million watched Miranda on Boxing Day). These sorts of shows, though, are more like provincial/farce theatre than most other forms of television or media. There is nothing else like them (except, perhaps, for a badly made soap).

Single camera sitcoms, though, are filmed in a completely different way and ultimately have a totally different feel to them. They're more like TV drama - or movies - than studio sitcoms. They have a slightly different pace. Sometimes have a fresh style or idea, like Peep Show's point-of-view shooting or The Thick of It's shaky camera (which was very original when they started doing it). Other shows just feel like they should be out and about, like Rev, which works well as it is, and nicely avoids any kind of comparison to the Vicar of Dibley, which casts a long (and wide) shadow over any kind of subsequent ecclesiastical comedy.

And then are other shows from the last few years are undoubtedly classified as comedies, but would shy away from the term 'sitcom' because they don't feel very 'sitcommy'. And yet shows like Him and Her or Roger and Val Have Just Got In are are half-hour narrative comedies. They don't need to be single-camera because they are totally confined shows that could be shot easily on TV studio sets in front of an audience but they have their own pace which is, ironically, more like Pinter-esque theatre. It would actually work well in front of a particular studio audience but probably not the type who applied for tickets to Mrs Browns Boys and got Him and Her instead.

This latter sort isn't my kind of comedy (it will not be surprise, I'm sure given I've been involved in writing Miranda and My Family) but it's worth noting that shows like Him and Her can only exist because The Office and The Royle Family went before them and showed what is possible when you slow things down and move the camera in. Of course, this can still be achieved with a conventional studio sitcom - Porridge and Only Fools and Horses were able to create stunning moments of pathos and emotion but these moments were the exception rather than the rule.

This Really Hasn't Helped, Has it?
So where are we? In one sense, we're at a point in time where the opportunities for writing original comedy shot in interesting and imaginative ways have never been better. In the last year or two, a huge range of shows have been broadcast that are all trying to achieve slightly different things. On Sky we have Moone Boy, Hunderby, Jinsy and Trollied. On Channel 4, we have Peep Show and Fresh Meat. ITV, we have Downton Abbey (it's hilarious. Oh). And on BBC, we have Miranda, Him and Her, The Thick of It, Mrs Brown's Boys, Pram Face, Rev - all of the above competing against reruns of Dad's Army, Porridge and Blackadder. So, it's up to you. The only question is whether you've got an idea and a well-honed, elegantly plotted, beautifully crafted funny script that can cut through all that.

The Larbey - Christmas Edition

The latest edition of The Larbey is out now. Well, here, at least. If you right-click it, or something, you should/might be able to get it bigger. Previous editions here and here.

What To Do When You're Stuck

Plotting a half-hour sitcom episode is hard work. Really hard work. Writing a first episode of a new show is doubly hard work. And it's easy to get stuck. I mention this because a friend has just got in touch to say that they're stuck on the outline - and wondering if proceeding to script is the way to go and hopefully the plot problems will sort themselves out.

Everyone's different in their approach. Carla Lane (Bread, Liver Birds, Butterflies), apparently, doesn't even plot. She just writes. Others plots big scenes and join them up. Others plot and plan and plot. I'm veer towards the latter of these. Before I write a first draft script, I tend to have a 1500 word outline with two or three paragraphs on each scene. It might easily be a third or fourth draft of an outline. And this outline isn't the first thing I've written. I've normally planned out the plot and the subplot separately and them combined them. Normally, by the time I start writing the script, I'm desperate to do so, and have key jokes and moments for every scene, so it almost feels like joining the dots. I make it as easy as possible to grind out that first draft. That's how I do things, but I realise my way isn't the only way. All I can say about this is four things from my experience:

1. Whenever I've started writing the script before I'm a 100% clear on the plot, I've regretted it. Pretty much without exception. Sometimes I've ground my way to the end and spend a week producing something that is 6000 words and unusablel. Who's got time to waste writing a script when the plot isn't ready?

2. Sometimes I've written scripts for plots I thought were fine and discovered in writing them they weren't fine. And I've had to go back to the drawing board. This is annoying, but doesn't invalidate the plotting and planning process.

3. Usually, once you've written the script and re-written it etc and then heard the whole thing read out loud, you hear screaming problems with the story or great long scenes that are flapping around and are no use to anyone. It always seems astonishing that this wasn't spotted in the planning, but that's just the way it works out. The plotting was not a waste of time.

4. Normally, as you write the first draft, you think of a better ending as you write - something that's clearer, simpler, sweeter and funnier. Again, that doesn't invalidate the planning process. Starting to write the script where you don't have an ending at all tends not to work. It's really hard to improve on nothing. You need to start with something.

Headbanging
So. What to do you do when you're banging your head against the storyline that isn't working? Rather than start writing and hoping for the best, here are some suggestions that might get the wheels turning and eventually pull your story out of a ditch.

1. Go for a swim. This is what I do. I swim a few times a week and while I'm in the pool, I normally have a plot problem churning in my head. It often becomes unknotted in the process. Maybe for you it could be running, walking, dog-walking, dogging, whatever it is. Do it.

2. If it's a brand new show, there may be a character problem. Your character isn't giving you the answer. You don't know how they would move a story along because they don't. Maybe your character  is too passive. What does your character want out of life in general? How does the quest in this episode fit into that? What do they really want? What do they actually need? Who's stopping them from getting it? What do they actually get? How is this thing they get better for them in the long run? Summarise their quest in a sentence or two. If you can't, they don't have a quest. You don't have a show. Your story may be stuck in a ditch because there's no engine in the car so nothing happens when you turn the key. Your character needs an engine, or motor to push them along.

3. What goes wrong? Have you injected enough calamity and catastrophe? My character is trying to get fit, impress a guy, buy a present for their mother, win an award, whatever - what goes wrong? How does their attempt to fix it make it worse? What do they need to let go of in order to succeed? What do they least want to do? And why do they actually need to do that thing?

4. Try starting your story earlier. Or later. Maybe what you thought was your climax is just the end of Act 1 or 2? We tried that plotting Miranda. We tried to hit a really funny climax/calamity half way through the show that lots of other shows might be happy to end on.

5. Does your story rely to heavily on coincidence? And therefore not character? You can have one convenient thing at the start of an episode - a mistaken identity or a piece of luck - but not half way through and certainly not at the end.

6. Try dropping your subplot and thinking of a new one that works better with your plot. This is probably a hopeless idea, but it's worth a go. Or try making your subplot the main plot.

7. Start by thinking of the best ending you can imagine that would be perfect for your show and your main characters - and work out how to get there.

8. Put the whole thing to one side and write something else - a short story, another script, plot out a movie. And then come back to it.

9. Start filling in your tax return. That normally sparks something.

So there it is. Hope that helps. Feel free to leave comments about what you do that helps you solve plot problems (other than simply sitting there til you've figured it out, which is still top of the list, really).

Throwing Out Really Funny Stuff

A long time ago, Mitchell and Webb did an Edinburgh show in which Rob Webb played a playwright who sat at a typewriter. But he wasn't typing. He ended up saying to David Mitchell 'I'm trying to write a play, but I don't know what to put.' That is how most people imagine being a sitcom writer is - trying (and often to failing) to think of something funny to write.

Certainly, when you're starting out, the idea of writing a 40 page, half-hour script is daunting. A decent sitcom script needs at least three good laugh-out-loud jokes per page. I'd say you need four, really. That's 160 laugh-out-loud jokes per script. (This, incidentally is why comedy writers have no respect for people who work in advertising, who work for six months and spend £500k shooting a thirty-second commercial that is essentially one joke). Times that 160 by six if you're writing a series. That's nearly 1000 jokes.

Character is King, but Story is God
The temptation, then, is to think of funny things people can say and funny situations - and cling on to them. Pile them up! Ideally, you need to work out a way to get from one funny bit to the next in a way that's plausible. Some writers (eg the venerable Graham Linehan) do take this approach, but even they would not recommend this as a way to go about things. It's a good starting point, but a sitcom script is not built brick by brick as if the jokes are little pieces of lego - and you stop building once your tower is high enough. A sitcom script is designed, planned and then written. And then redesigned and rewritten.

Although the actual story itself is normally the least amusing part of a sitcom (compared to the characters and their reactions to the story/situation/other character), it can easily be neglected. But it is incredibly important. It's the spine that hold the body up. It's the solid chassis on which the car is built. It's the foundations on which the house is built.

What's more, the audience are subconsciously expecting everything in a show to be significant. A funny set-piece scene is great, but if it doesn't lead anywhere or advance the story, the audience will be genuinely confused, or expecting a development that never happens. And, as I say regularly on this blog, confusion is the enemy of comedy.

Over on Chortle, there's a really good interview with Mitchell and Webb, who pay tribute to Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, the writers of Peep Show in saying this:

Mitchell: The key thing with Sam and Jesse’s approach is to get story right. 

Webb: They spend a lot of time on the structure of the story, then it’s almost as if they treat themselves to dialogue at the end, which is the opposite way around to whenever we’ve done stuff, when we’ve done it one joke at a time. 

Mitchell: They’ll throw anything out, however funny it seems, if it doesn’t fit what they see as the right arc for that story, episode or series, they will throw it out without a qualm. 

Webb: They are amazing rewriters. That’s the trick, to be really unprecious about really funny stuff. 

Mitchell: It’s also the difference with us being writer-performers. We got into this to go on stage and make people laugh then and there. If you’ve got something in your hand that you’re 99 per cent sure will go over well and get a laugh, you’re very reluctant to throw it out. Sam and Jessie have never been on stage getting laughs, so they can be a lot more ruthless with what they throw it. It’s such hard work getting the structure of a sitcom right. You have to think how are we going to get him from A to C and they just sit there and think hard...

David Mitchell's point is a good one at the end, there. It's not that good writers are natural geniuses for coming up with suitable jokes and scenes that form a story. Clearly talent and experience are very useful and can save time on occasions. The reality is that good writers realise they need to sit there and think hard and churn through dozens of ideas until they come up with the right jokes for the right story that get from A to C (and back to A again) in the right way - even if it means junking really funny stuff.

Don't Mention Fawlty Towers
John Cleese and Connie Booth famously spent half of the writing time for Fawlty Towers plotting, planning and getting the story right. I'm puzzled that this is seen to be exceptional. Getting the story right, getting the character arcs consistently moving forward so that the jokes will fire on all cylinders is a huge amount of work. I wonder if some writers shy away from it because they assume that if it takes that long they must be doing it wrong. Nope. It just takes ages. That's why it's a full-time job and very difficult to fit in around other things.

The moral of the story is the same as it usually is. You probably need to rewrite your script. Sorry. But as you do, ask yourself what each scene is achieving and what each line is achieving - and how it relates to the central story or your sub plot. When rewriting, a line my colleague and I often say to each other is 'I'm not sure this line is working hard enough for us' - which means the line is woolly and doesn't move things along. If you're script is really good, there's no room for lines like that.

So. Print your script out, and go through it with a red pen and cross out stuff that isn't part of the story. (If it's really painful, paste it into another document and base a new story around that bit you really like and can't live without.) Then go back to your script and trust yourself to fill in the gaps or make up the time with new lines and scenes that are relevant, characterful - and therefore much funnier. But be warned. It'll take ages. If you're doing it right. And you'll discover that 40 pages and half and hour really isn't quite long enough.

Easy Listening

I spend hours and hours alone with a laptop. I like it, but even I get a bit fed up with the solitude. So during my lunch hour I often wander around listening to a podcast. And at the moment, there's tons of stuff out there to enjoy and learn from.

I've been devouring the Nerdist Writers Panel podcast, which is lengthy, detailed, funny and here. There's also KCRW's The Business, which often has an interesting take on Hollywood more generally and regularly features stories of how people made films the hard way. Both of these podcasts are obviously American where the norm is to be a jobbing writer on someone else's show. In Britain, we always tend to think the grass is greener, but frequently I listen to the Nerdist Podcast and realise that the American table-writing system has serious drawbacks (mainly personal ones) as well as plus points (and more money).

For British podcasts, I've been loving Stuart Goldsmith's podcast, The Comedian's Comedian. Although it is primarily about stand-up comedy, it's ultimately about British funny people, the process of writing, breaking in, getting confidence and lots of anecdotes that reassure you that we're all making this up as we go along. What writers can learn from the craft of stand-up comedians is the skill of controlling an audience and being meticulous about how to take them on a journey. There's a brilliant back catalogue of names intereviewed in detail, including Alan Davies and Sarah Millican - but I especially enjoyed the ones with Adam Bloom, Alun Cochrane and Liam Mullone.

There's also the wonderfully infectious UK Scriptwriters podcast with Tim Clague and Danny Stack, who are full of down-to-earth practical advice. They don't always agree on everything, but it's always interesting and realistic - and they're full of information on writing competitions and what's coming up in the screenwriting calendar. All power to their microphone.

BAFTA have got some good content too. Here's a nice one on Comedy Writing with the lovely Kevin Cecil. One reflection on this podcast, though, having just listened to it:

There's lots of talk about 'breaking in to the industry' and how difficult it is. They talk about making youtube videos and all that. That's all fine and probably worth doing if you have the time and expertise. But the thing is, you already have the tools to break in. There's no special secret hammer and chisel or  key to a side-door where it's easier to find a way in. The tools you have are a computer and a word-processor. And with those tools you can write a script like any other screenwriter in the world. You can tell stories about anything in any time and any place. You can produce a script that looks the same as one written by William Goldman, Richard Curtis or Steven Moffat. They're both just pages of text - Scene. Setting. Action. Character. Dialogue. Character. Dialogue. Action. etc. What's yours going to say?

If you want to break into the industry, write a really good script. Send it to people who make things you like. Then start writing another script. There's no secret. Other than getting better.

Tell Tale Signs

A lovely story has just broken on Chortle about a man who claims he has a sitcom on BBC but, on balance, probably doesn't. But it's very difficult to tell whether the man is telling the truth or not since he seems no more deluded or confused than many people I've met who actually work in television and comedy. Whether he's Walter Mitty or the next Walter Matthau (okay, that joke doesn't really work but, I think the wordplay carries it) there are some tell tale signs that lead me to smell a rat.

The Chortle article says:

Higgins, 23, told the Bellshill Speaker that his show Skoolies, based three lads who live in the same tower block and attended the same school, was due to air next July.

There isn't really a 'situation' here. It's three lads who know each other. But it could still be a real show. Loads of shows on TV in the last few years are just 'based around people who live near each other'. Which is normally a shame. But so far, there's no whiff here. It could be a true story. The article goes on:

My script came up and comedy producer Jon Aird asked me if he could read it and I sent him it in an email. ‘He got back to me two days later telling me that he thought it was great and asked me to come in for a chat about it.

"He got back to me two later". Ha ha ha ha. Sorry. *wipes tear from eye* It takes ages people to get back to you in television - even if you have a track record and know the person you're dealing with quite well. Not because they're lazy but because they're busy, normally producing comedy shows which takes ages. (Ok, some are lazy I'm sure, but not in my experience). Ha ha. 'two days'. *cough* Anyway, the article also says:

‘When I got there they told me they wanted to buy it and I accepted. They also gave me a job as a comedy writer.’ He later told Chortle the contract, signed after meeting Aird twice in Glasgow, was for three years, and would also involve him working on other comedy shows.

A few things here. 'They wanted to buy it'. No, no. Even if they like the idea and knew this new writer, they would express mild interest and offer a modest fee (say £500) as an option in the hope that the writer would go off and write the script for free. (To be fair, productions companies are far worse for this doing this that the BBC)

Either way, I know what would not happen: the offer of a 'three-year contract'. The BBC wouldn't offer Simon Nye or Andy Hamilton a three year contract. It just doesn't happen. These contracts don't exist. I think Higgins is mistaking being a comedy writer for being a premiership footballer, in which are there fixed term, lucrative contracts. There are no actual jobs in writing comedy. Every job is freelance - either script-based, or on a day-rate - except for a few unusual situations, which are often script editing and development related.

So there we have it. What's the real story here? One thing's for sure. Some producers will not read this idea and something might happen because of this story. And what this comedy game is about more than anything is confidence - and that is something that our friend, Mr Higgins, does not seem to be lacking.

6 Rules For Writers in Production: Part 2

So, continued from the last post here, four more rules for the writer in production on his/her own show.

Rule Three: Don’t Assume that No-one Else Knows What They’re Doing

You’re the writer. It’s your show. We get it. I put it like this because some writers can get into a siege mentality – the ‘they’re-ruining-my-amazing-show’ way of thinking you see in Episodes or countless tales of production woe told by writers in West End Sam Smith’s pubs.

Undoubtedly, shows can be ruined by conflicting agendas. The channel feels its paid one type of show, the casting agent feels she’s casting a different type of show and/or the director likes to think he’s shooting a movie – and none of these overlap with the show in your head. But normally the warning signs are there early on with such clashes and conflicts. They need to be sorted out early. If you’re convinced the show the channel wants and the show your producer is making and the show you want to write are not the same show, address this before shooting. And bear in mind that plenty of shows have all these problem of conflicting agendas and still turn out okay – or prove to be hits for reasons that were not predicted by anyone. And plenty of shows are lots of fun to work and turn out to be dreadful.

Usually, grounds for paranoia is unfounded. Maybe you’re a good writer, but it’s quite likely that everyone else on the set is equally good at what they do. Maybe even better. They are probably more experienced. You’ll discover your art department worked on the original series of Yes, Prime Minister - stuff you grew up watching. They’ve done this before. And they’re making the most of what’s on the page. Are you 100% confident in what you’ve put on that page? (See Rules One & Two).

Rule Four: Don’t Assume that Everyone Else Knows What They’re Doing

A TV Production is a well-oiled machine. As long as you feed it with decent scripts. But there are always problems. Your three hours of broadcast television probably has about a hundred scenes, which is going to involve a lot sets, props, costumes and lights. There’ll probably be some location filming which will involve trying to find affordable venues at the right time of day – with the right cast. And it can't happen as you'd like. Or your pencilled-in guest star might get a better offer to be in a movie or, even better, their own detective series on ITV.

Given all of the above, stuff will go wrong. You will spot some problems on the horizon. You will be asked to approved a specially made prop that is technically correct but still hopelessly wrong. (see also Spinal Tap/Stonehenge incident). Maybe the props buyer or make was being overly literal, but the odds are that they had to guess because the script doesn’t specify every last detail (because you cut out loads of description because your producer told you to make the script shorter and you couldn’t beat to cut any of the jokes).

If someone on the crew is being difficult or stupid, bear in mind that one of their kids might be in hospital and they’ve got more important things on their mind. Or, more likely, this might be the fourth show they’ve worked on that year. They’ve just done a sitcom set on a Nuclear Submarine, a comedy drama set in a Caribbean Hotel (but filmed near Penzance) and a Sunday Night TV period cop show in Bath. They’ve been busy. You’ve thought about nothing else but your show for the last year. Give them a break. Or at least help them help you.

Rule Five: There is Never Enough Money

This rule needs no explanation. There isn't enough money. No matter what you're making and no matter how big the budget. Everyone feels they should be paid more. Everyone feels they should have a bigger budget. Everyone would like to take longer over the shot. Everyone one like one more take. It’s television. It’s not going to happen.

Rule Six: Remember, Everyone Wants the Show to Be Good

No-one actively wants the show to be bad. I'm sure there are notable exceptions of sabotage but they're rare. Everyone's doing their best to make the best show they can with the time they have, and money they have - and they script they've been given. That's the only bit you ultimately control. So give each scene a few more minutes. Clarify that direction. Do your homework. And above all, be grateful that your job is infinitely easier, more interesting and better paid that most jobs in the world.

Oh, and Rule Seven. Be nice to the runner. Why? Because it's good to be nice. But also because she'll probably be Head of Comedy in 15-20 years.

To spend the day with Sitcomgeek talking about all things sitcom - along with the splendidly knowledgeable Dave Cohen, have a look here.