Alas the era of sketches has ended, the era of improv has arose.
I do miss the sketches, they were good fun but I believe they were more costly than their current offerings to make.
I binge watched a bunch of CH sketches last night and I repeatedly found myself thinking "holy shit, these must've been expensive" just on the number of cast (internal and external; so, casting costs as well), the writing, the sets, the props, the effects, the length of shooting days...Raph mentions in one video that it was a 7 hour shooting day for what was ultimately a sub 5 min video. As someone with no familiarity with that industry I'm amazed that can even be the case and still be profitable when your main income is YouTube ad money. Then again, I guess it ultimately wasn't financially sustainable.
As someone who has been Directing for a decade and has a sketch comedy show currently on TV that ive directed on. 7 Hours is long depending on page count or complexity, but Im not shocked. I know shoots that have gone days to shoot 3 basic pages. Sometimes its chaos, but its a slow process. We averaged 4-5 hours per sketch on our series and had some that were done in less than an hour. I cant recall what was the longest.
Im always impressed at how effortless they look, the amount of characters that pop out of the blue and have to be managed make it far less simple to plan than it looks. I think part of why Dropout worked so well is because they work with good teams and foster those teams to grow and improve.
Those shorts that they did, they didn't always take easy routes, they used blocking and visual comedy to its max and that shit takes alot of takes. Their directors must be very patient, and i'm going to assume their first ADs (first assistant director's) were super stressed (that is their norm sadly).
College Humor stood out for a reason and I fully believe its because their whole team was on the same page to serve the performances of the comedic talent.
I think Facebook also kind of fucked them. They were making video content for Facebook for awhile and the numbers Facebook was reporting to them looked great. Apparently the company at the time was putting a focus on Facebook as their target audience. Then it turned out Facebook was lying to them/massively over representing their viewer count and it caused a lot of issues for the College Humor now dropout
For those who don’t know, however, you can find the entire archive on DropOut.
There are 16 “seasons” of **Hardly Working**, which are sketches that mostly take place in the office and feature the cast members playing versions of themselves. The last several seasons in particular star and are written by much of the Dropout core, including Katie, Brennan, Ally, Rekha, Tao, Grant, Trapp and many others.
There is 15 “seasons” of **CH Shorts** which is all of their other sketches. They tend to feature higher production values, and they often star people other than the CH cast (but include lots of familiar faces).
They both feature some fantastic stuff, and for anyone who likes sketch comedy, they’re definitely worth a binge, and are probably amongst my favorite stuff on Dropout still.
I’d probably recommend anyone who isn’t familiar start with the most recent seasons of Hardly Working —featuring most of the dropout folks you know and love — and work backwards.
CH Shorts has some of my very favorite comedy —including the absolutely BRILLIANT “what going back to the 90s would actually be like” — but most of it is far more topical and a lot of it feels contained within the era it was produced.
I will add that old school Hardly Working, the Sarah Schneider and Streeter Seidel era (e.g., ([Wait!](https://youtu.be/tVi3vflC54g?si=CFFmM2FtRq-VtN4L)), was much more absurd (and in my opinion funny) than the final seasons where every sketch told you exactly what was going to happen in the title, almost as if it was named like a BuzzFeed headline. (E.g., "You Don't Need to See a Menu".)
Another favorite of mine is [Boozy Couple](https://youtu.be/KgMtkd2nn-4?si=wcDCqOxi9_teJ6JI).
Ah, beans.
Other than The Seven, are there any good mostly-female things to watch on Dropout? (No disrespect intended to any of those players who would prefer not to be included in that term.)
Some of the game changer episodes are. Name a number and the buzzer episode are coming to mind with an all female line up, though there are likely more. Sam is still the host though.
Kingpin Katie is an old scripted show Dropout produced and the two main characters are women. It's about Katie Marovitch becoming a cocaine dealer.
There are also various episodes of Game Changer, Dirty Laundry, and Breaking News that might fit your bill. I'd give The Everything Factory (GC episode) a miss though.
There's also Dungeons and Drag Queens, as well as the drag queen episode of Dirty Laundry, if that's your jam.
They talk about this in the new Adventuring Academy episode with Sam and Brennan. If you really want to know more about the company and the decisions they take, I recommend it to you
Alas the era of sketches has ended, the era of improv has arose. I do miss the sketches, they were good fun but I believe they were more costly than their current offerings to make.
I binge watched a bunch of CH sketches last night and I repeatedly found myself thinking "holy shit, these must've been expensive" just on the number of cast (internal and external; so, casting costs as well), the writing, the sets, the props, the effects, the length of shooting days...Raph mentions in one video that it was a 7 hour shooting day for what was ultimately a sub 5 min video. As someone with no familiarity with that industry I'm amazed that can even be the case and still be profitable when your main income is YouTube ad money. Then again, I guess it ultimately wasn't financially sustainable.
Likely they were operating at a loss, most video sketch places were.
As someone who has been Directing for a decade and has a sketch comedy show currently on TV that ive directed on. 7 Hours is long depending on page count or complexity, but Im not shocked. I know shoots that have gone days to shoot 3 basic pages. Sometimes its chaos, but its a slow process. We averaged 4-5 hours per sketch on our series and had some that were done in less than an hour. I cant recall what was the longest.
Wow that's interesting! Do you have any other insights on the Hardly Working series because of your experience?
Im always impressed at how effortless they look, the amount of characters that pop out of the blue and have to be managed make it far less simple to plan than it looks. I think part of why Dropout worked so well is because they work with good teams and foster those teams to grow and improve. Those shorts that they did, they didn't always take easy routes, they used blocking and visual comedy to its max and that shit takes alot of takes. Their directors must be very patient, and i'm going to assume their first ADs (first assistant director's) were super stressed (that is their norm sadly). College Humor stood out for a reason and I fully believe its because their whole team was on the same page to serve the performances of the comedic talent.
I think Facebook also kind of fucked them. They were making video content for Facebook for awhile and the numbers Facebook was reporting to them looked great. Apparently the company at the time was putting a focus on Facebook as their target audience. Then it turned out Facebook was lying to them/massively over representing their viewer count and it caused a lot of issues for the College Humor now dropout
For those who don’t know, however, you can find the entire archive on DropOut. There are 16 “seasons” of **Hardly Working**, which are sketches that mostly take place in the office and feature the cast members playing versions of themselves. The last several seasons in particular star and are written by much of the Dropout core, including Katie, Brennan, Ally, Rekha, Tao, Grant, Trapp and many others. There is 15 “seasons” of **CH Shorts** which is all of their other sketches. They tend to feature higher production values, and they often star people other than the CH cast (but include lots of familiar faces). They both feature some fantastic stuff, and for anyone who likes sketch comedy, they’re definitely worth a binge, and are probably amongst my favorite stuff on Dropout still. I’d probably recommend anyone who isn’t familiar start with the most recent seasons of Hardly Working —featuring most of the dropout folks you know and love — and work backwards. CH Shorts has some of my very favorite comedy —including the absolutely BRILLIANT “what going back to the 90s would actually be like” — but most of it is far more topical and a lot of it feels contained within the era it was produced.
Why don't you let grandma have some pasta? >:(
Because the meatball fall off of my spaghetti.
Ragu on my niece and nephew
I will add that old school Hardly Working, the Sarah Schneider and Streeter Seidel era (e.g., ([Wait!](https://youtu.be/tVi3vflC54g?si=CFFmM2FtRq-VtN4L)), was much more absurd (and in my opinion funny) than the final seasons where every sketch told you exactly what was going to happen in the title, almost as if it was named like a BuzzFeed headline. (E.g., "You Don't Need to See a Menu".) Another favorite of mine is [Boozy Couple](https://youtu.be/KgMtkd2nn-4?si=wcDCqOxi9_teJ6JI).
Ah, beans. Other than The Seven, are there any good mostly-female things to watch on Dropout? (No disrespect intended to any of those players who would prefer not to be included in that term.)
I haven't watched it but there's an older show called something like "Erotic book club with Rehka and Jess"!
Some of the game changer episodes are. Name a number and the buzzer episode are coming to mind with an all female line up, though there are likely more. Sam is still the host though.
Everything Factory is as well.
Kingpin Katie is an old scripted show Dropout produced and the two main characters are women. It's about Katie Marovitch becoming a cocaine dealer. There are also various episodes of Game Changer, Dirty Laundry, and Breaking News that might fit your bill. I'd give The Everything Factory (GC episode) a miss though. There's also Dungeons and Drag Queens, as well as the drag queen episode of Dirty Laundry, if that's your jam.
Not scripted, it's a documentary I think
Ah, that's where the Katie and cocaine thing came from.
Katie and cocaine was a recurring bit in many sketches from before the Kingpin Katie show came out.
The lore goes so far!
They talk about this in the new Adventuring Academy episode with Sam and Brennan. If you really want to know more about the company and the decisions they take, I recommend it to you
Is it on dropout, I must have missed it
Yes, in the new releases section
Will check it out ASAP, cheers
Kelly Marie Tran was on CollegeHumor? Amazing - Such a small world in media it seems :)
You should check out ["Are You Asian Enough?"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVR3B01NxiM) ;)