Lockdown Laughs - Sketch Show

At the beginning of January 2021, England went into a third national lockdown, which also meant, we weren't allowed to return to college for the beginning of our second term. Although, it was a shame we weren't able to go back into college and continue working first-hand on projects, particularly working on an immersive cinema experience, our teacher, Kelly, came up with an alternative. We were given the challenge of creating a comedy sketch show, all from the comfort of our own homes. I had very mixed emotions towards this as I do love sketch comedy, such shows like 'Horrible Histories' (2009-2014), 'Key & Peele' (2012-2015), 'So Random!' (2011-2012, a spin-off to the Disney Channel show 'Sonny With a Chance' (2009-2011)) and, of course, 'Saturday Night Live' (1975- ). However, I am not a comedic person. Comedy is subjective, with everyone having their own personal opinions to what is classed as funny or not. So, it's hard to think what you yourself finds funny and thinking if audiences with have a similar sense of humour as you. This definitely was a challenging task and I didn't know what reactions to expect from audiences, as well as my fellow peers and actors who would be involved with the sketch.

As a class, we then started to discuss what this sketch show would involve and how we were going to make it funny and keep audiences entertained. Kelly told us the premise of each sketch should be about life in lockdown and include characters who are exaggerated parodies of different people around the nation, presenting how they are coping with lockdown life for the third time in almost a year. Along with the actors, we started to think of certain characters we could play around with and the situation we could build around them.

We all thought about mostly making parodies based on already well-known TV shows, for example, one of my classmates, Kai, created a sketch based on 'The Masked Singer' (2020- ). It is a singing competition where celebrities must wear an over-the-top costume that hides their identity, making both the judges and audiences guess who is behind the mask. Although, Kai's spoof on the show is a lockdown version where a contestant doesn't understand the point of the show and comes on the show singing a 'Queen' classic, whilst wearing a face mask. With that in mind, I then started to think what popular television show I could parody and immediately thought of one of my favourite reality shows, 'The Great British Bake Off' (2010- ).

'The Great British Bake Off' was, hands down, one of the best parts of 2020. In a time where there was so much chaos and madness, 'Bake Off' was a great way to stay positive and have a small sense of escapism for an hour and a half.

So, my idea for the sketch show was to create another series of the show as 2020's series was so popular. It would be a spin-off to the main show called 'The Great Lockdown Bake Off' with exaggerated versions of the judges (Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith) and hosts (Noel Fielding and Matt Lucas), as well as a few bakers to compete against one another to become the winner. Although, these characters wouldn't exactly be the types of exaggerated people you'd expect in lockdown, the situation of the show would present the struggles and issues of being stuck at home doing a show like 'Bake Off', for example, how will the judges truly judge each baker's bake if they aren't able to taste it in person? As we would only be doing three episodes of the sketch show, I had to think of how these characters would reoccur and develop within each episode, as well as how to keep the comedy consistent and entertaining. Each week, the bakers would be asked by the judges to make a popular lockdown bake, for example (the one's included in my sketch, banana bread, brownies and rainbow cupcakes (the rainbow signifying and representing the NHS).

I thought the comedy within my sketches would heavily rely on the characters, as well as the various bakes they would have to present in each episode.

Originally, I thought of having two hosts and two judges, like in the actual show, although when it came to developing the first sketch episode it was very difficult as each sketch only needs to be around 1-2 minutes, but when writing the sketch, it was getting longer as there were too many characters to present. That was also including the five baker's/contestants that would be on the show, with one being eliminated from each sketch until the last episode, which would be the final three baker's competing to be the winner of the show.

Proposals

Instead, I got rid of the host Joel Wielding and only keeping Pat Sucas on, as for the baker's, I kept it to three contestants throughout each show. Once I had the idea sorted out, I then needed to build the character's up and put them on their feet in the first sketch episode.

Week One - First Sketch

For the first week of working on the sketch, once finishing the script for the episode, I then needed to cast each and every character for the sketch. So, myself and my class discussed who we would like in each of our sketches and we made our decisions fairly quickly. The cast for my sketch was:

Saul Jollypud - Thomas Burton
Rue Keith - Kate Whittaker
Pat Sucas - Sophie Ashcroft
Luna - Izzy Martin
Beth - Sadie Paterson
Joe - Josh Durnall

After making this decision, I then created a group on Teams with all my casts. This was so I could communicate with them easily and see if they were actually interested in being part of the sketch. Luckily, all the cast where onboard with the sketch. I then sent them a costume breakdown for each of their characters for the show.

As a Director, I each let them go off and record everything they needed to from the script. They were all really good but initially they only performed their lines when I had also put in actions and directions in the script for them each to do. So, for every actor I had to ask them for more reaction shots that were noted down in the script already. This was fine as this was our first episode and they now knew for next time to make sure whether their characters name is noted or the word 'EVERYONE' is stated, they must film themselves acting out what is written there. Reactions from characters really add to sketches so this was important for them understand as an actor and to improve the comedy and quality of the sketch.

Once I had all the footage from everyone, I then sent it over to Sam (he was the editor for each episode as he was the only one with the Adobe Premiere Pro editing software) and I sent him some editing notes. So, the sketch went pretty well and I was proud with what I had achieved from the writing, as well as the actor's performances.

First Episode

*My sketch is at the timeframe 18:50*

Week Two - Second Sketch

Week two was very similar to last week, the sketch itself I wanted similar as well as it is based around the characters, just different bakes and jokes being included within the sketch.

Episode 3

*My sketch is at the timeframe 16:43*