Steve Kaplan's Comedy Intensive Online

The Comedy Intensive is a two-day course that explores the hidden tools and principles of comedy: what it is, how it works, why it works, what’s happening when it’s not working and what you can do to fix it, and offers proven and practical methods and techniques. On Day 1, we explore the Hidden Tools–useable, practical tools that you can apply immediately to your work. Day 2 focuses on character, structure, comic premise and specific ways of applying the tools to text.

The workshop covers includes interactive exercises, solo and group writing activities, as well as a liberal use of clips from current and classic comedies to illustrate our points and principles.

Course Outline:

I. Premise

• The Art And Science Of Comedy
• Introduction and Overview
• Dying is Easy, Comedy is Hard
• Comedy Perception Test – Are you seeing 20/20?
• Funny vs. Comic – The difference
• The Comedy Equation

II. Set-up

• The Hidden Tools Of Comedy
• Winning
• Non-Hero
• Metaphorical Relationships
• Positive (and Negative) Actions
• Active Emotion
• Straight Line/Wavy Line
• Four Elements of Jokes
• The Tools Applied.
• Learn how to use these essential tools in your work.

III. Development

• Comedy Practicum
• Entire History of Comedy…in 15 minutes.
• Comedy Archetypes
• Comic Premise—The Lie That Tells the Truth
• Developing the Comic Premise
• The Comedy Paradigm

IV. Payoff

• Structure And Development
• The Comic Hero’s Journey
• Art of Romantic Comedy
• Sitcoms & Pilots
• Final Q&A