What does little sister, Hailey, have to say about Ruby? Plenty.

Check out the Ruby Skye P.I. production blog for all the news.

Just for Laughs Comedy Conference announced a pitch competition for comedy web series. I've read the guidelines which are sort of on the confusing side. Even the title of the thing is confusing:

“PITCH ‘TIL YOUR SIDES SPLIT” JUST FOR LAUGHS COMEDY CONFERENCE PITCH PROGRAM and the COMEDY BOOTCAMP FOR FILM

This is how I understand the thing. There's going to be a web series pitching competition as part of Just for Laughs. The competitions will be held Saturday, July 17th, 2010 at 10:15 am – 11:30 am at the Hyatt Regency in Montreal. At the competition, you get five minutes to pitch your comedy web series idea before an audience and a panel of judges who will then give you feedback "regarding the strength of individual pitches, the appeal of the project and anything else the panelists feel appropriate to impart." There will also be a 15 minute Q&A with the audience.

To be part of the pitch competition, you have to apply and pay a $40 fee. It's open to anyone from anywhere around the world. The submission deadline is May 1th, 2010. The details on what you have to submit are below and verbatim from the site. It looks to me like you need a lot of material and maybe the submission guidelines were based on what you need for TV and not created with any particular understanding of web series.

Nonetheless this is another indication that web series are coming of age and considered a real part of the entertainment industry.

The following materials must be included at the time of submission for the Multi-Platform Web Series:

• Completed pilot episode (digital video up to five (5) minutes running time) to be screened as part of pitch;
• Budget top sheet
• Complete series ‘bible’ (includes project synopsis, character breakdown, first season episode descriptions);
• Bio’s of creative and producing team;
• Evidence that one (1) of creative and producing team has at least one (1) professional credit on a currently airing or recently aired webisode, music video, - TV commercial, on-line game or feature/short film (link to reel should also be included in submission);
• It is understood that submitted materials will not be returned.

In all categories, please ensure that all uploaded and submitted documents and materials are clearly labeled with the project title, applicants name, contact telephone and email. All applicants will be contacted via email so please ensure that you provide a working email address.

What do you think? Are you going to apply?

analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it. (E.B. White)

Not true in Omri Marcus' hands. His new post 10 Ways to Write One Liners is funny and informative:

When writing One-Liners there are 2 basic ground rules. The first is the length of the joke - the shorter the distance between the setup and the punch line, the funnier it is. The second is that the punch line will always be at the end.

He really does have 10 styles to choose from including:

2. Verbal Jokes: Bun (it's like a pun but not 100%): A Very tricky technique where the punch sounds a bit like the word expected from the setup, but not really. It's a very risky technique, as you may easily find yourself with a childish jest instead of a solid funny joke. The end result being a cough, instead of a laugh (that's a good example for a bad use of that technique).

For example:

Congratulations to Dolly Parton. She received an honorary degree from the University of Tennessee. It's a Ph.-Double-D. (Jay Leno)

Or:

In the year 3000 YouTube, Twitter & Facebook will merge into one super time wasting website called YouTwitFace. (Conan O'brien)

And

8. Humor based on extreme approach - Laughter can also deal with our deepest fears. If we can't control what scares us, the second best thing to do, is to laugh about it. The result is a great feeling of power - a small victory over fear. Come on - let's say the worst imaginable thing, and enjoy the one second our Id goes wild before our better judgment kicks in.

For example here is a one-liner about the most common fear - death:

I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather... Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car (Bob Monkhouse)

Or another one about pedophiles:

I met an amazing girl on the internet. Smart, sexy, uninhibited...of course it turned out to be a twelve-year-old paraplegic boy. I'll be honest - the sex was disappointing. (Jimmy Carr)

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday recaps.

Young Neal declared himself, but Gam3rgurl wasn't sure.

June and Julian reconnected.

Bootywatchman was close to scoring when Brad made a discovery.

Lily went into labour.

HollingPete hauled ass toward Toronto.

And made it just in time.

Tune in today at 1:30 and 6:00 for the final episodes of Crushing It!

Monday and Tuesday on Crushing it.

Dave's mom embarrassed him.

Then she embarrassed him some more.

Then it really got bad.

Barb and Laurence had another wedding disaster.

Bootywatchman finally got his groove on, but Neal didn't like it too much.

Peter had a plan that Lily didn't like too much.

But why was Barb so high on the idea?

Carm started drinking and tweeting.

MJ Reid thought it was time for an intervention.

What's all this about?

Tune in Thursday for a very special all day episode of Crushing It!

Omri Marcus has quite a brilliant piece in the Huffington Post about comedy in the digital age:

Some things have not changed so far, so it's safe to assume that they will remain unchanged. The laws of the classic joke, a setup that brings you into the world of the joke and preps you in a certain direction ("I bought some batteries...") and a punch which surprises the listener and in fact lets him understand that the assumption he had made upon hearing the setup was incorrect ("...but they weren't included so I had to buy them again" -- Steven Wright). It worked for Shakespeare, it worked for Chaplin, it worked for Seinfeld--and it will probably continue to work in the future. The fact that it used to be clowns who told "jokes" or "stories," whereas now they're called stand-up comedians and make "observations," hasn't actually changed the basic technique. In the world of new media too, for all the developments it has brought about, there are no new techniques for humor, only a refinement of the old ones.

The topics too are likely to remain unchanged: interpersonal relationships, identity, romantic relations, parents, children, work environment. Obviously, the physical expression of these issues will change according to time and location, but then, too, the new images will pass through the filters of humor as soon as we start developing an emotional relationship with them. If we add the issue of new media into the equation, it becomes clear that in a society that is becoming ever more technologically oriented, humor will also increasingly deal with the mediums themselves. This is especially true when the medium itself becomes much more than a channel of information and turns into a status symbol. When Apple made the platform as meaningful as the content that was being transmitted over it, humor too turned more to the platform. (Link)

From a psychological standpoint, laughter is a social experience. Canned laughter is a testament to this fact. The concept of attaching audience laughter to a joke is as daft as it is effective. For years, the convention that reigned supreme was that in order for an audience to laugh, it had to be told where to laugh, and to be made to feel that it was OK to do so. Humor, as has been stated on the American networks, is like that tree falling in the woods: If no one heard the joke, is it really funny? On the other hand, in recent years, in the transition from classic sitcoms to comedy series such as "30 Rock" and "The Office," there is less and less use of canned laughter. In Generation Y, the consumer implements the social element by forwarding the sketch through his social network, and by doing so, he effectively creates a community of sorts, who are all in on the joke.

Monty Python and Woody Allen base a substantial part of the comedy in their sketches on knowledge shared by both the creators and the audience. Quotes by Freud, Bergman and Plato are a layer of humor that goes by completely unnoticed for people who are not familiar with their writings. As society puts less of an emphasis on the importance of such a single cultural core, we will able to see these influences in comic writing that will be less intellectual. It is important to emphasize that this writing will not be less cultural. The vacuum will be filled by other content, largely commercial or processed. This, by the way, is not necessarily a bad thing. Here is an excellent example from the guys at College Humor who made a parody of Disney's "The Little Mermaid". I'm not sure Hans Christian Anderson would recognize his creation, but hey--it's funny.

The cultural reference is simply different. Here's another example, a parody of the "2 Girls 1 Cup" video, in which Kermit the Frog and Rowlf watch the clip together. The cultural knowledge required here comes from the field of hardcore porn, no less.

You should go read the whole thing because it's an amazing analysis and valuable information for writers, creators and comedians. And there are jokes.

I scare myself sometimes. I come up with crazy impossible ideas like a Social Networking Week Story Project with a different writer bringing each character to life and live scenes on Twitter.

Actually, if all I did was come up with the idea, it would be fine. This idea itself isn’t crazy. It’s kind of cool. It calls for performance writing and writing is a performance art done in private.

But I wasn’t content to come up with the idea. I had to try to make it happen.

That’s the crazy part.

That’s how I scare myself.

I’m trying to do it.

I started with the open call for collaborators. I had some people in mind and was hoping they’d volunteer, but I wasn’t above making a call or two. Some great people volunteered including a few unexpected people, some I know and some from beyond my immediate circle who saw something in a blog post or on someone’s Facebook wall.

Writers aren’t enough. You need characters and story for them to inhabit.

Over lunch last week, with Scott, Karen and I talked about the kind of stories that might play out over a week. We thought there should be some kind of a ticking clock in our story to give it momentum. We told each other stories. Stories about Twitter or Facebook and people’s lives. Themes come up. Reconnecting with old friends and old flames. Forgetting that it’s a public space and showing your underwear (metaphorically and figuratively). Connecting with total strangers regularly – casually and but also forming close relationships. Becoming part of a virtual community. After the meal, Karen spilled her coffee on Scott’s smart phone (a Nokia E71 if you must know, which he happens to love). And all over Scott, so he was soaked in coffee and his beloved phone was wet. Karen was horrified and kept apologizing. I recognized an inciting incident when I saw one. (Sorry Karen, your life continues to generate all the best stories.)

I took some of the stories Karen, Scott and I discussed – along with the spilled coffee incident -- and wrote a bible with half a dozen characters and some simple stories for each laid out over 5 days.

I sent that to the people who’d expressed interest in the project and offered them a choice: adopt a character from the bible or come up with your own that plugs into the ones already there in some ways.

Last night, I spent a couple of hours with Adam Higgs, Brent Delaney, Illia Svirsky, Jennifer Laio and Scott Albert. By the time we were done, there was a character for each writer and some broad strokes story for each character.

This is a strange way to write. In television, film, novels, one person writes all the characters. This is more like improv. Actually a combination between puppetry and improv. We’ll all be working from a blueprint which will tell what is going to happen, but it will be up to each writer to manipulate his or her character in the moment. Exciting and scary.

And there’s another thing to remember. All of us at the table last night are screenwriters which means that our stories are built for film. We think visually in scenes. But we’re not going to have the luxury of video (or at least much video) in this telling. The story will be told almost entirely in the first person (although there will be a half dozen or more first persons) and the characters will be telling their stories in the public space that is the web. No objective camera catching secret moments or listening in on private conversations.

But we had a lot of fun and many laughs in the couple of hours we spent together. They had great ideas and I felt like, maybe together, we’re going to pull it off.

Then they left.

And I started thinking about what’s left to do. Everything has to get written up. There are several other writers with other characters who have to be integrated in and brought up to speed. There needs to be branding and more story meetings and schedules. And a website!

The website’s a big one; a central hub to find everything about the story. This is what I wrote about the website in the Crushing It bible:

We’ll put up a site at Crushingitstory.com. It will aggregate the story itself and any mentions of it on blogs, tweets etc. It will also host the schedule of live Twitter scenes.

Website features:

For each character:

• Links to all social networks with profiles, twitter, blogs etc

• A FriendFeed widget that aggregates all that activity

• A writing credit and link to the bio of the writer

• An acting credit (who the profile picture really is)

For each scene on Twitter:

The scene laid out as a conversation including tweets from all the members of the cast and any other people who chimed in, in chronological order so that it can be read like a script or conversation.

A blog:

In which I do a daily recap of the story events of the day with links to everything for those who want to follow the narrative that way.

A credit page:

With info on everyone involved and links to their presence’s on the web

An About page:

With info on the project

A press page:

With links to any blog or conventional press about the project

A Twitter feed:

Capturing any mentions of the project on Twitter

Now I just have to find someone to help me build it. Hello? Anyone out there want to help with that?

The Social Media Week Story Project has a title: Crushing It!

Crushing It! is the comic tale of a group of people whose lives and social networks become intertwined over the course of a week. The story will be collectively told by a group of professional screenwriters and others through social networking tools.

The title, Crushing It! is an homage to Gary Vaynerchuk and his book Crush It! which motivates entrepreneurs to use the social web.

An incredible team of writers are assembling to make this thing a reality along with a group of non-writers who are also contributing. Sophie Sampson, in the UK who penned Mrs Hudson’s twitter feed for 221B, is on board along with Scott Albert of Tights and Fights fame and the soon-to-be-released Job Review With a Vampire. Also Lorin Wertheimer of Speedie Date, Illia Svirsky, Brent Delaney and more. I should have a fuller list of names up soon.

After a lunch with Karen Hill and Scott Albert, I put together a quick bible which outlined a few characters and story lines. That went to everyone who’d volunteered to participate and a few people who hadn’t quite volunteered yet.

Some of them have come back with their own characters and storylines, others have laid claim to characters in the bible and still others will have characters thrust upon them. Tonight a bunch of writers are getting together to do our first Crushing It story meeting.

One of the things I’m grappling with is how much to open source this. Should I make the writers bible available? That’s a spoiler if ever there was one. On the other hand, open source creative is a cool idea. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

The Social Media Week Story Project is starting to take shape. A team is forming. Stories and characters are developing. And a plan for pulling the whole thing off is starting to fall into place.

Yesterday, Karen Hill and Scott Albert sat down with me and we had a first go at wrestling this sucker to the ground. I’ve worked with both Karen and Scott before and they are both funny, experienced, reliable writers. The kind of writers I want at my side when I’m biting off more than I can chew. The kind of writers who can save my ass.

We tossed around idea for story and character and talked about our own and our friends’ relationship-in-the-social-web-stories. We also figured out some process.

The plan is for me to begin writing a bible that sketches out the beginning of story and character. We’ll meet again next week with a broader collection of writer and contributors and keep figuring it out step by step.

We’re still looking for people to join the team especially in the following categories:

• Web savvy people to help with technical elements like setting up web sites, RSS feeds and all the aggregation we’ll need to make this easy on the audience
• Designers to create a logo and design the web site
• Community manager/public relations/cheerleaders to help us get the word out
• Actors to lend their faces to characters

There are probably lots of things I haven’t anticipated yet, so if you want to participate, let me know. (email to story2oh (at) gmail etc)

P.S. If you come across anything on the web that looks like it could have relevance to what we're doing -- in terms of story, character, strategy, etc -- please add a link to the Social Media Week Story Project FriendFeed.

Social Media Week is February 1-5, 2010. It’s an international five day event being held simultaneously in New York City, Berlin, London, San Francisco, Toronto and São Paulo to “explore the profound impact that social media has on culture, business communications and society at large.”

I think it’s a great opportunity to use the social media to tell some stories about how social media are affecting relationships. Do you want to help me do it?

The Idea

The Social Media Week Story Project

an original comedy about relationships and social media

told entirely in the social media

and presented live February 1-5 2010.

If the girl you’ve been crushing on changes her relationship status to single, do you have to wait more than an hour before asking her out?

Is it okay to check your JDate profile for new matches during a first date?

Is it wrong to set up a Twitter account under a fake name to stalk your own child?

After your first love reconnects on Facebook, do you have to tell your husband?

Is it wrong for a married woman to flirt with total strangers on Twitter? What if they live on another continent?

Social networks are changing the nature of human relationships. The aim of the SMW Story Project is to tell some these of stories.

Empathy is the theme of the story project. Empathy is the fuel that drives social media and the building block of community. It’s our hope that our funny little story will allow us to understand our fellow human beings a little better.

The Process

1. Blog the experiment from beginning to end, starting with a call for writers, actors, designers and anyone else who might want to collaborate in the project and continuing through every stage.

2. Mine the web to find out how social media is affecting human relationships. Using a variety of tags, we’ll check out what people are talking about when it comes to dating, friendships, family and social web. Mothers stalking their kids on Twitter, boyfriends who won’t update the Facebook relationship status, long lost friends who find you through your blog.

(Make all this data publicly available in a FriendFeed group so that anyone interested in the project can add, comment on or favourite the material or use it to create their own characters to interact with the characters and storylines we create.)

3. Put together a story room of five or six smart, funny writers to turn the data into story arcs.

4. Have each writer create a character on the web using social media tools like blogs, social bookmarking, FriendFeed and Twitter.

They can cast actors to “play” their character in profile pictures, photo albums and other media they may develop

5. Set up a central website with links to each character’s social media footprint, RSS feeds, widgets and the schedule of performances.

6. During Social Media Week play out the stories of our characters through their social networking activities. In addition to blogs, podcasts, photo albums and social bookmarks, our characters will meet on Twitter at specified performance times to enact scenes in the dramatic narrative. These will be improvised by the writers based on scene outlines (think Curb Your Enthusiasm). Audience members may tune into “watch”. They can chat with the characters. Or they may even create their own characters and participate in the drama.

7. In the final days of Social Media Week, host a free panel discussion to talk about the project and tell stories from the trenches.

The Call to Action

If you want to be part of the writing team, drop me an email to let me know. If we haven’t worked together before attach a short writing sample please.

There are lots of other ways to participate besides writing. We’ll need someone to help set up websites and manage RSS feeds. We could definitely use some design elements. There are probably tons of things I haven’t anticipated yet. If you want to participate in other ways, let me know how you can help.

Send email to Story2oh (at) gmail (etcetera).