Editing the Museum

Myself and Michael Fouldes...

I'm currently buried deep in the edit of The Museum of Tat Christmas Special.  We had lots of fun recording it, producing seventy minutes of content.
Those are always worrying words - "we had lots of fun" - usually the death of comedy.  Never trust any production where the cast had too much fun.
But why am I doing down my next show - well I'm not really.  The point is The Museum of Tat has always been a very wasteful process and a lot of the show comes out in the edit.  Seventy minutes of incredibly self indulgent wittering by Michael Fouldes and myself, will amount to about twenty minutes of comedy.  I'm currently on the second wave of the edit - the first wave I go through the material fairly quickly, cutting out the big chunks of unfunny/slanderous/sick material and maybe trimming the odd bit of breathing/coughing/urming as I go.  After that first wave I've got about thirty minutes of material.  It was easy to do.
Now I've got to get tough.  There are funny sections that will now get cut, because I'm shaping a show and some bits, funny in themselves, which no longer fit the grand scheme.  Then there are the structurally important bits that I can't cut but which might not be very funny in of themselves.  I have ways of inserting material into these sections for cheap laughs, but it's going to take hours to get a one or two minute section to be moderately amusing.
Unlike the Live from the Get In! shows, The Museum of Tat isn't scripted - it's almost entirely improvised and that creates a messiness to the recording that is also a bitch to cut up.  But it's worth it.  I'm really very fond of MoT, and I'm looking forward to creating a touring version next year.  That said, there is also a sense that there is also a limit now to how many more shows we can create.  We're moving from radio to live shows to shake it up and because in a different medium the jokes work differently, but the format has a limit and after two seasons and few one offs, we know the radio version has only a few more shows before we start repeating ourselves.
So 2017 maybe the last year for the Museum.  But there are always more adventures to come.

The complete series one and two of The Museum of Tat can be heard, for free, here.
Episodes of Live from the Get In! (featuring special live episodes of The Museum of Tat) can be heard, for free, here.

My work couldn't happen without the support of my patrons - if you think you could contribute to the work I create, go to www.patreon.com/robertcrighton and see if you can help.

Also, as there's a lot being planned at the moment, if you want to keep up to speed, why not join my mailing list.  I know, so last century. 

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