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May 5, 2006

Not To Beat the Colbert Thing To Death, But…

by AltHippo @ 10:00 am. Filed under Uncategorized

One of the various roles I played back in Boston was A/V tech guy at comedy shows (besides running my own venue). I remember the first time I was one of the camera people for a show at the Comedy Connection. As I was setting up another camera person gave me what he thought was a tip: you can get an RF device that plugs directly into the live feed coming from the performers mike, the idea being you get a much cleaner signal.

My question to him was: how do you get the audience response into the mix? He said: you don’t, the whole idea was to keep all the “extra” sounds off of the audio track. Later, I had the chance to review both of our tapes. It was like we were at two different shows! In his “clean” version with no audience response it looked like the comic totally bombed. In my “unclean” version with the audience response the comic killed. (If you’re reading this in a foreign country or are from the FBI or NSA, “killing” in the context of a comedy show is very good. In any other context “killing” is very bad. Trust me, no audience members were harmed.)

This is a long way of saying that, if you listen to the Democracy Now show of Wednesday, May 3, you’ll notice that Colbert pretty much “killed” at the WHC. I’ll wager that the Democracy Now camera person used the built-in mike on their XL1, while CSPAN had one of those RF gizmos to take the feed directly.

I’m just saying: maybe Stephen Colbert is funnier than Richard Cohen after all.

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6 Responses to “Not To Beat the Colbert Thing To Death, But…”

  1. KCinDC Says:
    May 5th, 2006 at 7:35 pm

    No, no, you’re supposed to start off by saying “I am a funny guy”, so we’ll know you know what you’re talking about. Maybe even mention how your elementary school teacher thought you were funny.

  2. AltHippo Says:
    May 5th, 2006 at 9:44 pm

    I thought about that, and that was pretty much my first take. On the other hand, I had a fairly visible role in the alternative comedy scene in Boston, and had first-hand experience about what comics do when they put together an act. I’d read the Cohen article yesterday, and thought it was embarassing. I really don’t know why Cohen hasn’t retired, much less writing an editorial about a field he hasn’t any experience with.

    More importantly, most of us on the internets got their first impression of the Colbert routine by watching the CSPAN coverage. Which is technically well done, except that it cuts out the audience response giving the impression that people weren’t laughing at the lines. Many of which were brilliant.

    After listening to the Democracy Now coverage I realized that, no, the audience response was what I would have expected. Colbert rocked.

    In retrospect, I realized that it should be obvious that CSPAN is putting together a good recording, not trying to create an HBO special. I think that point may have been lost on many who have covered the Colbert bit, however.

  3. KCinDC Says:
    May 6th, 2006 at 6:19 pm

    Oh, I understand. I was just getting in more Cohen bashing. I think you’re making an important point, and the situation reminds me of the Howard Dean scream, where the noise of the crowd he was shouting to be heard over (as well as the context) was mostly absent from the feed that TV watchers based their opinions on.

  4. KCinDC Says:
    May 9th, 2006 at 8:09 am

    Sigh. The outrage Cohen provoked apparently proves that the left-wing is insane and hateful — which no one on the right ever is, of course.

  5. AltHippo Says:
    May 9th, 2006 at 9:15 am

    I saw the latest from Cohen. I think he may be yearning nostalgically for the good ole days when he was all-powerful op-eder, Richard Cohen. And I’m pretty sure he’s not used to being talked back to.

    There’s also a conventional wisdom at work. The notion is that lefty bloggers are unhinged, teeming with Bush derangement syndrome. I’m not sure there is a conventional wisdom about the mouthbreathers, I mean right-wing bloggers.

  6. KCinDC Says:
    May 10th, 2006 at 8:24 am

    The conventional wisdom about the angry right is that if they’re complaining about something we must be being too liberal, so we’d better shift further right. The conventional wisdom about the angry left is that if they’re complaining about something they’re a bunch of obscenity-spewing wackos who should be at best ignored and at worst publicly ridiculed. That’s why I’m feeling less confident about the transformative possibilities of liberals trying to hold the media to account, though I suppose I should give it a few more years.

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hip·po·pot·a·mus n. A notion, perhaps distinct from conventional wisdom, that needs to be verified by reality-based scrutiny.

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