Greg Dean Inside the Stand-Up Studio

Inside the Stand-Up Studio
Greg Dean
Independent release 2010
61 minutes

Greg Dean Inside the Stand-up Studio is a sixty minute How To course on stand-up comedy. This is a low budget single camera, white board, small classroom deal. It doesn’t get in the way of the lessons. Few believe you can teach stand-up comedy but Greg Dean makes the case you can on this DVD. This DVD will also be very useful to any public speaker looking to deliver a stronger presentation.

What does get in the way of Inside the Stand-Up Studio is you cannot clearly see the white board and Dean’s handwriting is bad. Using Powerpoint on the DVD would have greatly enhanced the material. Fortunately, the whiteboard only shows up at the beginning of the couse.

The lesson is divided in seven segments: Joke Structure, Character and point of view, Microphone technique, Ranting and riffing, Writing and editing, Rehearsal process, and Show structure.

The section on writing is quite fun to watch as you actually get a few jokes here.

If you are thinking about stand-up comedy and curious as to how to go about it Greg Dean Inside the Stand-Up Studio is quite informative. It is less and less so as you gain experience though a refresher, especially on mic technique would be useful for some comics I see.

I wish my students laughed as easily at my jokes as Greg Dean’s do, especially in the first three minutes when he blows a punch line while teaching joke structure.  Dean says,“My grandfather died a peaceful death. He died in his sleep. The other passengers in the car were wide awake” The punchline is is “in his sleep … not kicking and screaming like the passengers in HIS car.” In Dean’s version, you assume the grandfather was another passenger.

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