The Infinity Project
Kayla Bell, Tony Brown, and Xenia Shih
Convergence Capstone 4992 Project
The Task: develop a prototype for a local news parody akin to the Daily Show or Colbert Report
Getting started:
Research
We spoke with Jim Spencer of Newsy.com about the trends in online video. From his interview, we learned the humor segment of online video had increased over the previous year by 179% and that on average, viewers were watching longer videos of up to 30 minutes.
We also read the books The Philosophy of the Colbert Report and The Philosophy of the Daily Show, and began watching each of the shows religiously. From these sources we began to learn about writing comedy for broadcast and the process for creating episodes.
Recruiting a Team
We realized very early on in the project that we alone wouldn’t be able to write comedic scripts for a parody news show. To help, we tapped some local talent in the form of comedians Kyle Ayers, Ryan Beck, Virginia Collins, and Dan Friesen. Beck brought with him experience from interning on the Daily Show over the previous summer.
To help with shooting, we asked Travis McMillen, the studio director for RJI for access to the studio.
Implementing a Process
Finding a good time for seven students to get together in the midst of work schedules and classes was a challenge. However, we were able to meet Monday evenings for writing sessions. In these sessions, we talked about recent news, talked about what was funny about each story, wrote scripts, and rehearsed the content.
Later, we would converge on the studio for further rehearsal and the shoot. Kayla, Tony, and Xenia edited each of the episodes together and put them online for iknowcomo.com.
Partnership
Trying to find an outlet for the published aspects of our project was another challenge. We approached iknowcomo.com, another convergence capstone project, to see if they’d be interested in hosting our videos. They were, and a nice partnership developed. As of writing, only one of the Infinity Project videos was posted to their site, but it drew an incredible number of followers to their site. In fact, the Infinity Project page is the most-viewed page on the site, by nearly ten-fold.
Iknocomo.com’s daily site views peaked after our video was added to the site.
The videos are also hosted on vimeo.com.
Lessons Learned
Our philosophy for the first episode was a “shoot first, ask later” mantra. We wanted to simply get jokes on camera and begin to work with the comedy team in a studio setting. We learned we needed to:
-Rehearse more before shooting
-Give Travis better camera cues
-Figure out how to chroma-key a little better
-Improve the delivery of our material
-Check equipment before going to shoots
After our second episode, we learned we needed to:
-Rehearse. Each time made so much more of a difference.
-Still figure out the chroma-key
-Focus on character or situation development
-Shorten the amount of time between punch lines
Making a News Parody Successful in Columbia, Missouri.
-An outlet with a significant commitment of resources and money is critical to the success of a project such as this. Not only is an outlet needed for the product, but money to pay talent and the credibility of a major media name is necessary as well.
-Multi-faceted talent with the ability to write for broadcast as well as the ability to be comfortable and dynamic in front of a camera
-Look for trends in the news. Stories have to remain fresh after a two to three week writing/shooting cycle.
-Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.