The Joke of the Day has been airing for quite a while now so I thought some of you might be curious about the process. As you probably assumed, it is, in fact, much akin to rocket science. Here we go.
Let me preface this by giving props* to Chuck for coming up with the idea. It was as simple as this: let's tell a joke once a day, air it daily at a certain time, and see what happens. Originally, it wasn't our intent to only tell terrible, terrible jokes. But we did want to get lots of our friends from around the workplace to come and tell a joke on camera, and in case they didn't have anything good, we decided to fill a fishbowl with some easy two-liners.
Well, that sort of backfired and everybody was just too lazy to attempt an actual GOOD joke. Also, we realized that short-and-quick worked better on the internet than a long preamble leading up to a punchline.
These terrible jokes we were telling in and of themselves are not funny. So, to make up for that we do one of two things, or sometimes both:
- Present the joke in some wacky manner, like reading it in languages nobody understands, and never interpreting it, OR...
- After the punchline, we jump into some random, irrational action, like somebody running up with a Polaroid to snap a picture, or simply eating the joke.
As for some other "behind-the-scenes" info, you should know that some of the stuff is improvised, some of the stuff is planned just before the joke is performed, and absolutely none of it is planned anywhere outside the window of a minute and a half before the camera rolls. It's quite the process.
Oh, and, in case you're wondering... Those arms coming from off-camera with the joke jar? Yeah, that's usually me. We try not to put my face in things if we don't have to.
*Yeah, I give props like it's 1998.
BELOW: Chuck tempts Danila with another stunningly bad Joke of the Day!
1 comment:
Telling a joke a day and being funny everyday is going to be tough.
Sure there are plenty of jokes out there, but most of the jokes we know of are jokes we've heard around the office, jokes at school, and jokes we've been told by friends and family. More than likely, they're jokes we've heard before. Most of them will only give us a quick chuckle. When we're put on the spot and we're told to come up with a quick joke, it's tough to come up with a really funny one that no one's heard before.
So, yeah, this is a tough segment to do...
I'd try coming up with an idea that better takes advantage of the medium, the internet, and allows you to be more interactive with your viewers. I'd ask your fans to sumbit video jokes of the day (or week) to and let you guys pick what you feel is best to share as a featured joke on your website.
Otherwise, just a basic joke will continue to be a challenge to come up with every day. I'd change the topic to a quick random bit of nonsense, like "Meanwhile, somewhere else..." ideas or "And now for something completely different" gags Monty Python used to do. You even admitted yourself that you liked to give things a bit of a kick with an unexpected random gag at the end, maybe focus on that instead?
Just giving you my thoughts. I notice there's not too many people posting here yet, so I thought I'd let you know that there are a few people reading the blog, at least. I hope it grows in popularity soon. You guys deserve it.
I love the work you do. Keep up the great work! I became an addicted fan just this month and I showed almost every Runawaybox video to a group of my friends last night. I think I got you guys a few more viewers! >; ]
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