Last weekend I participated in the 48 Hour Film Project in NYC. Basically, each team gets 48 hours to write, film, edit and submit a 4 to 7 minute film. You draw a genre and are then given a prop, a line of dialogue and a character name and have to work it all into your movie.

We had:
Genre: “Film De Femme” (strong female character)
Prop: Tennis Ball
Dialogue: “Are you sure?”
Character: Ethan St John, President of ___

I proudly present our movie, “Margot”:

Our creative process was:

Friday 10pm -- 1am: 8 people shooting around ideas for a film, agreeing on an idea then story arcing it

Saturday 1am -- 3am: 5 of us who were going to be writing and acting in it and the director wrote a first draft

Saturday 3am -- 5am: 3 of us wrote a second draft while sending everyone else to sleep

Saturday 7am: Start setting up for filming and cast the roles, go through the second draft and make additional changes with the whole team

Saturday 9am: PA’s, PM’s and DP show up

Saturday 11am -- 11pm: Film the different scenes

Saturday 11pm -- Sunday 10am: Edit the first cut

Sunday 10am to 1pm: Give notes on the first cut and re-edit

Sunday 1pm to 7pm: Fix up the sound, make final touch ups, export and submit the film

I wound up not acting in it, which was okay with me because there was so many other things for me to do. I wound up sleeping 5 hours in two nights.

My favorite part of this is how 5 comedians came together and wrote a dark movie that has very little comedy in it…

Last thought: I highly recommend everyone pick a “48 Hour Challenge” where you have 48 hours to complete a task that would otherwise take a really long time (write a short book, make a music album, paint ten paintings, etc). You’d be surprised at how efficient you can be when you’re on the clock.

Here’s my current comedy writing process, hopefully this is helpful to someone.

The Daily:

Every morning, when I wake up and before I have breakfast, I write three pages of stream of consciousness by hand. My goal is to just write for fifteen minutes without stopping my pen. Anything goes in this and I really try not to judge it. Most of the stuff I write isn’t even an attempt at a joke, but occasional funny ideas pop into there, and the more important thing it does is get the writing momentum going for the day.

Whenever I notice something, think of something or something happens to me that I find funny, I write it down. Usually I type it into the notes feature on my phone, but sometimes if I have a notepad with me, I’ll write it on that. I usually note between 1 and 5 funny things each day.

The Weekly:

I’ll email my newest notes myself once a week and then go through each idea. If an idea still seems funny to me, I go through it that one idea a few times and rewrite it as a stand up bit. If I like the joke, I’ll move it into my joke file, and put it under the “new jokes” header. If I don’t like the new joke or if an original note is completely uninspiring, I cut and paste them into a file of “New Jokes that are still forming” (aka the junkyard). If an idea seems better as a sketch, I put it in a file called “Sketch Ideas” and before my weekly sketch group meeting, I go through that file to write a sketch.

I have a weekly stand up writing group, and I work out my newest jokes there and discuss them. More than half of the jokes that I bring in there, I never even try at an open mic, cause I can see they don’t work. We’ll discuss a joke at the writing group, I’ll take notes and I’ll either rewrite it or put it into the “still forming” pile.

If the joke passes the writers group, I’ll try it at an open mic (after I’ve said it aloud to myself five or ten times to more or less memorize it). I analyze how the joke sounds and feels the first time on stage, and if I still like it, I’ll keep doing it at mics and random bar shows. If the joke keeps working, it starts to go into my “better shows” set. Otherwise, it eventually ends up in the “still forming” pile.

I try to go through my existing jokes once a week and see if I have any updates to them, because I usually make a change in a live set before I make it in my file.

And whenever I work on a new joke or a complete rewrite of an existing joke, I create a new word document where I only have that joke there, so I don’t get distracted by looking at other jokes.

Once a week, I review my videos, and write the performance critiques. (I count this as part of my stand up writing.) While I watch the videos, I’ll have my joke file open and edit it down on the spot.

The Actual Writing

I talk into my mic as I write and when I practice the jokes, I’ll do them without looking at the word file. Sometimes I’ll come up with additional punch lines when I’m practicing memorizing the new material. Talking into the mic helps this “writing on your feet” process more than just talking aloud.

Accessing Jokes

I keep a copy of my latest version of my jokes on Google Docs so then I can access my entire joke file on my phone wherever I am.

How do you do your stand up writing? I’m always looking for new ideas on how to be more productive…

I’ve recently found a great new way to organize my material and I thought I’d share it. (You’ll need Microsoft Word for this, although other programs might have a similar feature.)

Before I give instructions, here’s what the end result might look like:

Basically, when you click the little “+” button it expands into lower levels of headings and then into the actual joke text. So how do you do this from scratch?

Select View – > Outline

You’ll get a blank screen with one bullet point, that’s your highest level of header

Type in some categories of jokes, then under each category type in the name

Then highlight the joke title’s (in the above case, Joke 1, Joke 2 and Joke 3) and click the green arrow that’s pointing to the right in orderto indent the jokes. Notice when your cursor is on “joke 1” the “Level 1” sign changes to “Level 2”

Type in joke text under each joke, then click the little drop down arrow below level 2 and select “body text”

There you go, you’re now more organized with your jokes. Click the “+” and “-“ buttons to expand and collapse joke sections

If you want to view and edit jokes normally, just click on

You get the following view:

And yes, this is a pain to do the first time, but once you’re done, you have all your jokes nice and organized and it’s easy to add new jokes to this file, as well as to find a specific joke. Plus, you can now easily build a set list based off of your joke titles.

I wrote this song based on the time I was doing comedy until 2am every Friday and Saturday night in NYC. By the time I’d get to the bars with my comedian friends, the cream of the crop was long gone. So we started to affectionately refer to going out this late as “Dumpster Diving”.

I apologize for my lack of musical skills in both singing and background music. At least now you know my joke of “I got into stand up cause I can’t share the spot light, but I can’t sing or dance. So it was either this or tennis… And I can’t play tennis drunk!” is based on truth.

If you can actually sing, create a cooler video and/or record real background music and are interested in remixing this, please get in touch with me.

Another common sketch format is the Superhero sketch.

Starting notes:

- This is like the older super hero movies of the 50’s and 60’s (think original Batman)
- Instead of a big super power, give the hero a very small super power
- Every super hero has a sidekick with an even smaller but related power
- Every hero should have a super villain that’s the exact opposite of the super hero
- The fighting doesn’t have to be physical
- Try to have specifics about the characters in every single line, each line should push the sketch forward

The Parts of the Superhero Sketch

Scene 1
Similar to a commercial, two people are having a problem and they ask, “can anyone help us?” The Superhero comes in and says “I’ll save you.” Here, the audience should find out whether the townspeople love or hate the hero.

Scene 2
Announcer explains the origin of the superhero. The stage blacked out, as it is being setup for the next scene, so use the mic. When in doubt, something generic like falling into toxic waste works as simple explanation. This scene mostly serves to buy time.

Scene 3
The Superhero and his sidekick is hanging out talking about a previous adventure they had (not the one from Scene 1). This establishes the relationship between superhero and sidekick: Some options are: a) sidekick idolizes the hero b) sidekick works hand in hand with the hero or c) sidekick hates the hero

Scene 4
The super villain enacts his dastardly plan. Generic plans like rob a bank, destroy the world, or kidnap someone important work as the characters are what makes this sketch funny. The Mayor asks for help, the hero appears, the villain and hero lobby back and forth until the hero is knocked down for the count. This is where the hero is at his lowest point.

Scene 5
Announcer says “oh no, the hero is down for the count. Will he return? Find out after the break.” Commercial break (insert commercial sketch here to make the show flow better). After the break the announcer says “when we left off, our hero was in trouble.”

Scene 6
Hero finds something to get out of trap, or sidekick helps him. Hero finds villain, fights him and wins. Mayor or whoever congratulates hero on saving the day. Hero says cheesy pun and  everyone laughs.

Scene 7
The announcer says “stay tuned for next time when…” and adds about 10 seconds of possible future plot. Characters can appear on stage to act it out.

SNL Example:

(The best I could find anyway, this format isn’t as recognizable as others)

Ben’s Example:

Click below to download a super hero sketch I wrote.

(My plugin for displaying the script wasn’t working right this time.)

Ben Rosenfeld – BEARWOLF – Hero Sketch Example – BigBenComedy.com