Indisputable Geniuses of Comedy
CLIENT: The Portland MercuryPROJECT: Do you like to laugh? We certainly do! And that is exactly what we did during the Undisputable Geniuses of Comedy showcase put on by the Portland Mercury whom we teamed up with to produce a night of comedy at Revolution Hall. They recognized that Portland is home to some amazing and talented comedians, and felt they needed to all gather on one stage for a night of hilarious comedy! In order to provide an outlet for these quirky and outlandish comedians, we thought what better way than to record the event and put it on the air as well as online? Who needs Comedy Central anyway?
APPROACH: Since we were producing a comedy show of the best and brightest comedic talent, our then CEO, Marty Jones asked his long time friend and Emmy nominated producer J. Kevin Swain to direct the show. Kevin has been a fixture in Hollywood for over two decades, and his resumé reads like a who’s-who of Tinseltown! In order to ensure we captured all the funny-business, we pulled out all the stops and set up one of the most elaborate multi-camera rigs we have ever used! All totaled, we had nine(!) cameras. Two were stationed under the balcony, with another high up in the balcony itself for a nice looking wide shot of the entire theater, two handheld cameras were on either side of the stage, another camera was down low which gave a nice audience perspective, another was on a jib for a sweeping look across the audience towards the stage, one was on the back of the stage looking at out the audience, and finally, we brought along our new motion control rig with a DSL set on a constant loop back and forth which was situated on the right side of the venue. All camera feeds were recorded separately, and later re-edited in post production, and the final product was impressive to say the least. It looked exactly like something straight off Comedy Central! RESULTS: The results were fantastic! When we were shooting the show, the first thing we noticed was it had that super funny look, feel and vibe that you get while watching Comedy Central. We had a neutral black background in order to put the focus on the comedians as they performed their bits which ranged from sketch comedy to stand-up to improv. We even had one comedian, Phil Schallberger, incorporate a Powerpoint presentation into his bit, which was hilarious. During post-production the acts were divided into their respective sets, as well as compiled into a best of which was submitted to a regional awards program. They also saw airtime on our channels as well as online via YouTube. In the end we produced a side-splittingly funny comedy show worthy of anything you are likely to see anywhere, Comedy Central included!