Last week I sat with Valeria as she put together a short clip of an interview on BET’s Lift Every Voice inspirational talk show. She had the raw footage up in Final Cut and began splicing up clips, not looking at the big screen on the wall behind her where Martha Munizzi, gospel singer extraordinaire was answering questions, but by listening to what Martha was saying. “First and foremost,” she explained, “you’re telling a story”. Martha could look great but this wasn’t a photograph. We got movin’ pictures now sonny! We wanted Martha Munizzi to look good, but the priority was making sure her story got told: that poorly executed sound didn’t get in the way of the audience being able to enjoy her words.
Last night, I went to see Laughter on the 23rd Floor at The Keegan Theatre. The play was written by Neil Simon as a reflection of his time as a writer on Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows. The play is not so much a comedy as an account of comedy writing during the McCarthy era, told through the eyes of some notoriously funny people. (Characters are based off the likes of Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner).
Neil Simon was funny (this we know from The Odd Couple!). The words were funny. But his jokes were not always able to shine through. It wasn’t the sound but the sometimes poorly executed humor that got in the way of the audience being able to enjoy the jokes. The play was at times overacted and some joke deliveries made me think “well that could be a funny joke, you just told it wrong!” To be fair, that could be my own pretention getting in the way, but I think the performance was missing subtlety. If only Valeria could control that on Final Cut!
Emily
And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter!
Follow @RedEye_Post
______________
Emily Magida was a Spring and Summer 2012 RedEye Intern
Recent Comments