Leaning into digital comedy content more

After reading a post from Andy quirk it got me thinking about how production is increasing in the post covid-19 world. I think that comedy is adapting to the restrictions of moving to a digital realm. Although I don’t know how much it is being leant into.

I think in order to be effective comedy has to lean into whatever genre it finds itself inhabiting and at the minute I think it needs to take a cue from vloggers. I have many vloggers that I admire the work of including Brian Zane, Scott the Woz and Caddicarus to name a few.  For my comedy special (Which may potentially never see the light of day now) I played with  expectations in a skype call. I am surprised to see none of this kind of content currently online from so many comedians that are now calling the world of online content their home.

I have been creating content that is leaning into investigative journalism lately with these 2 videos. I think it is a good area to go down as I have investigated this before during my masters and allows me to have a justifiable reason to create content about current events. Something I think is definitely useful in terms of getting my content in front of many people.

In this video I visited the blue lagoon of Buxton and made a piece about those who were visiting it and its affect on the local area. I have certainly found that this approach is giving me more opportunities to connect and engage with people. In the below video I look at the reopening of McDonald’s. Both of these were big trending stories and it making me more aware of what people are engaging with and what stories are interesting people. I am certainly aware of this at this moment and hopefully this will allow me more engaging content to create in the future.

 

However I do worry about how much this is affecting my ability to create other works that interest me personally. It has also seen a delay to this very website as I am intending to create one of these blogs once a week I have recently had a backlog of videos about gaming which are in a state of both pre and post production. I have felt for a while that the current boom of online content will be fleeting, which for some I think it will however I will be interested to see how many focus and continue to focus on online content once the physical gigs start back up. I feel I may saddle both but I don’t see it as totally unseeable for my focus to become more focused on online content.

The reason for my absence and my comedy metamorphasis.

It occurred to me that this website exists after paying actual money to keep it maintained and alive over the past 2 years when I have barely used it.

So what news is there from the last few years? Well I am a runner up chortle student comedian of the year for 2019 and finalist in the Leicester square new comedian of the year 2019. I had what was considered a successful Edinburgh debut show ‘Tom Short’s wheel of misfortune’ playing at the prestigious Three sisters venue which was simultaneously reviewed as ‘The most fun show in the whole venue’ and ‘The worst 5 minutes of my life’ by someone who identified as Fiona.

There is a couple of reasons for my break from the website: Firstly I changed up what I do and spent a while finding my voice rebranding myself as an improviser solo comic clown act which has been equally freeing and constricting. It is freeing in it allows me to be much more creative than I feel i was in my previous output. But restricting in terms of clear direction in an industry that wants to pigeon hole you in order to market you in a stand up dominated industry.

Myself in clown makeup
Part of my experiments with clowning and street theatre and busking.

Secondly I went to university to do a masters in contemporary performance practice at Salford university which partly inspired my change of direction. Learning of the craft of performance in more specific and investigatory ways has allowed me to create work in exciting ways which I am excited about.

A further thing that I would say is that as part of my research I found links between comic performance and my own mental health. This has set me to approach comedy in a much different way as I think that it is no coincidence that the trope of the sad clown is so prevalent in pop culture especially after the suicide of Robin Williams proclaimed by some to be the funniest man to have ever lived. I feel I am still on this journey and am hoping to eventually study a PhD that investigates this link and hopefully will go on to inform mental health in the comic arts and in parallel comic arts in mental health.*

A further thing that came from my study of contemporary theatre allowed me to more effectively collaborate and create collaborative work. Something which I think my previous direction as a stand up comic made my mindset much harder to overcome creative logistical blocks. My latest thing I have been working on is an online travel series called ‘Tom visits…’ on youtube.

 

*if you are interested in reading any of the research from my masters I have published lots of articles and portfolios on macpptomshort.wordpress.com and have some upcoming articles to be published for the academic journal ‘Comedy studies’ in association with my academic collaborator and mentor Dr Ian Wilkie.