For our project I was in the writing group for the sketch comedy show ‘Sketchy Students’. I was teamed up with fellow classmates Jordan, Liam, Michael and Angus. The concept itself was pitched to be a mockumentary show like ‘The Office’ and ‘Summer Heights High’. But somehow it morphed into just being more like a sketch comedy show with hardly any similarities to a mockumentary style at all. Then there was some debate on what the genre of this show was actually going to be. I preferred the mockumentary style but other people thought it was better to have a cross between sketch and mockumentary. I preferred to go with one or the other; both genres mixed together seemed a bit odd to me. This format has never been done successfully before but this is what certain people wanted.

I’m not really a fan of sketch shows and I thought that some of our ideas were quite restricted when it came to writing comedy. The jokes had to be politically correct, non-discriminate, non-offensive, non-stereotypical, no swearing clean humour. So many restrictions bored the crap out of me. Too much political correctness is bad for comedy and just makes for bland humour. It just seemed like we were trying to play it too safe and the comedy was affected as a result. We were targeting an audience between the ages of 15 to 24. But I think this type of sketch comedy is better suited to a younger audience between the ages of 8 to 15.

I was also disenchanted with some of the decisions made in the editing process. One of my drafts was basically put aside with no feedback at all. Then a new draft appeared that wasn’t even remotely like the one I wrote. This left me feeling quite agitated and I lost interest in the project. It felt like there were too many opinions on what should actually be included in the script. Coming to a general consensus with five writers and three people from the management group was never going to work well.  My opinion is that the writers should have been given more power to decide how the final draft should play out.

The feedback from people who weren’t in the writing group was also incorporated into the scripts all too often. It should have been the writers’ decision on what feedback to take in. It would have been more ideal to have more face-to-face time with everyone to discuss management and script decisions. I think some other members of our group were also disenchanted with some of the decisions being made as well. When the writers finally had more influence on the final draft in the last episode, it turned out to be the best one.   But overall it was a good learning experience and I think the production team did a great job with the material provided.