UPDATE: Our classmate Lisa Maria recorded the whole  demo.  It’s 11 minutes of awkwardness, but it gets the point across.

Talk Back – Careful Jack, the Characters Talk Back!

Elevator Pitch – User-generated MST3k.  Users watching a show on tv/web can text in any comments/questions they have and the characters will respond back, the best of which appear on the screen for everyone to see.

Origin – Talk Back was created out of a desire to pick up the snarky commentary on screen that was used in “Blind Date,” “Next,” and other dating shows, not to mention Pop Up Video by VH1, and expand it to television and movies to a point where you are interacting with the characters.  Our constraints included the use of only pre-taped material, so we decided administrators would read the comments texted in and respond as in the characters voice.  There was a level of excitement that came with improvising responses immediately and then showing them on screen as they arrived.  We ended up choosing a 5 minute scene from “Real Genius,” due to Robert Carlsen and I’s mutual love and the film’s insatiable quotability.

Structure – Textmarks would send the messages to a page, which was then redirected into a Google Spreadsheets, wherein, multiple admins could be logged in at the same time.  We each would speak in the voice of the character.  Each row has a Flag column.  When the flag was marked Yes, the Question and Answer were sent into a queue to be shown above and below the screen.

Success – The textmarks did transfer into Google Documents and the information was able to show up on screen.

Failures – Google Documents would not let the sheer amount of text messages to be injected into the database, so we ended up with a bottleneck with the messages, which created a delay time for the responses to show up on screen.

The Future - In Phase 2, the messages would go directly to the individual who wrote it.  Eventually, there could be the capability to respond to people in various languages.

Screen Grabs:

The show works very well in regard to the structure. I don’t know if interactivity would improve the show. Offering people the ability to rate skits might be useful when attempting to figure out sketches to bring back. But I believe the current structure of ‘internet buzz’ works just fine. Plus, sometimes sketches need to be given a second shot. Not to go negative, but theoretically, the audiences at home could feasibly vote up or down sketches and have them yanked, like in the days of vaudeville, but that has too many drawbacks.

1. Too high a potential for tampering.
2. The added expense of additional sketches as backup.
3. The serious headache of scheduling sketches versus advertising.

Saturday Night Live’s actors all derive from theatre based sketch comedy and improvisation. Some of the actors on there are some of the best improvisors out there. I enjoyed the improv scene in Los Angeles scene for 8 years and I was a fan of “Who’s Line is it Anyway?” when I was younger, so I may have a bias.

I don’t know if they are taking full advantage of the performers they currently have.  I think there is an opportunity to have a second show that is entirely improv based and a little more baudy, keeping in with the late night viewers.  The audience, and by audience I mean Anyone Everywhere, can offer a suggestion and then have people ‘digg’ them up or down as suggestions could definitely be fun. Perhaps there would be incentives for people who came up with the most creative offerings. The audience could also digg up or down the game types, but that might be too open for people to kill a good thing.  You don’t need to write the show, just shoot for an hour and 15 minutes and air 42 minutes leaving you with 30 minutes of material you can cut if necessary.  Most of the same cast could be on the show as most of them came from an improvisational background.  I would think/hope that would save on costs  Set is minimal.  The idea to keep it from being family friendly will allow more freedom to the actors.  I realize improv has been done in the past, but from the user experience, people will be interested by what is on the suggestion list, especially if it’s more topical and edgy.  The american version of Who’s Line Is It Anyway imho suffered from a feeling of prerehearsed bits and very safe suggestions and a general feeling of Middle America. That would not be bad if it had stayed on the air, but it didn’t get high enough ratings.  Perhaps you even allow the clips to be shown on the web and then let the viewers rate the clips and the highest rated ones end up on the air.  I would be curious if the viewership on the web would be higher or lower or the same if they were first on the web.  My guess is your hardcore fans would watch all of them and most of America would wait to see just the best of the best.

I feel like there’s something far more interesting that could be done here that I haven’t tapped on, but I also might need some coffee.  Eitherhow, just a few thoughts.