Stand-up Documentary Features Comedy Evaluator Pro

Keep your eyes peeled for a stand-up documentary called “I Am Comic” directed by Jordan Brady and will premiere in January 2009 at the Slamdance Film Festival.

My Comedy Evaluator Pro software is featured (along with me) in that documentary, along with the likes of famous comedians such as Sarah Silverman, Tommy Davidson, Carrot Top, Kathy Griffin, Carlos Mencia, Jeff Foxworthy and Phyllis Diller.

And from what I understand, my scenes in the film can be quite polarizing.

Why?

I think it’s because comedians have a hard time grasping the indisputable fact that there are only two major (and measurable) events that occur when a comedian is performing:

The comedian is delivering their performance or the audience is responding with laughter cheering or applause (Positive Audience Response or PAR).

Common sense would dictate that the more laughter a comedian can generate during any performance for a particular audience, the higher their PAR Score will be. The same is true in reverse.

In order to challenge this seemingly obvious observation of fact, one would need to challenge well established time measurement and simple ratio calculations that a 5th or 6th grader could do.

Note: I did not invent time measurement or ratio calculations. I merely applied these simple, yet foundational processes to stand-up comedy performances.

I haven't yet reviewed the stand-up documentary myself. But here are a few of the questions asked by comedians during filming/screening of the documentary:

One of the questions asked was:

Does your Comedy Evaluator Pro software account for audience size?

Directly, no it doesn’t.

But every comedian knows that…

The larger the audience, the longer and louder the audience laughter can be. The smaller the audience, the shorter and less loud the audience laughter can be.

In other words…

A comedian with a PAR Score (laugh time vs., talk time ratio) of 35 (an average of 21 seconds of laughter each minute) with an audience of 225 people is probably NOT going to maintain the same PAR Score with an audience of 25 people.

But while audience size certainly affects a performer’s PAR Score, it is still relative to a comedian’s measurable ability to generate laughter.

Another question was:

Does Comedy Evaluator Pro measure laughter intensity?

Again, not directly. But the intensity of audience laughter is directly related to the duration of laughter (which is directly measurable).

It doesn’t matter what size an audience is—the more intense the laughter, the longer it will last. And again, audience size will have a direct impact on laughter duration and intensity.

If I were to pontificate on why my Comedy Evaluator Pro software can be so polarizing…

I would say it’s because comedy artists don’t like the idea of having a tool that shows them exactly how funny (or not funny) they really are using objective metrics.

Ironically, stand-up comedy is one of the very few performing arts that lend itself to this sort of objective performance measurement.

It will be very interesting to see what sort of buzz happens once the stand-up documentary is widely released. The world premiere of “I AM Comic” happens on Jan 27, 2009 at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City Utah.