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Writer, performer and comic strip artist Kev Sutherland
is the mirth-ober-furher of Situations Vacant which
develops new sitcom and comedy for TV and radio. www.sitsvac.org
is its online community, where writers 'meet' through
e-groups to discuss ideas and collaborate over scripts.
Casting is also done online and thus far several scripts
and a couple of BBC pilots have been commissioned. There's
also an excellent guide to writing
sitcom.
A few questions then Kev – let's start with
when, where, throw in a why, a wither, a whether and
end with a whenceforover?
Our work, developing sitcoms and testing them on stage,
began with writers and actors meeting round a table
in a pub and sending all the scripts by mail. As soon
as I discovered e-groups and the website, it enabled
many more writers and performers to get involved, and
for us to reach a much wider public. The website and
e-group should, ideally, facilitate what we do, and
enable an infinite number of writers to develop an infinite
number of ideas, which we then present to an infinite
number of viewers.
The danger being that you'll probably end up with
the complete works of Shakespeare – well the comedies
anyway. So did you build the site yourself?
Yes, totally homemade. I started by using HomePage Lite,
a free program. Then I found out how to write plain
HTML and to, er, copy it from other sites. Now all my
pages are written in raw HTML.
Impress us with your hardware you big lovely lad.
iBook, Simpletext (for writing HTML), Netscape Navigator
3.0 (the best way of spotting glitches in websites,
and my preferred browser), the latest Netscape and Explorer,
Fetch (for uploading), Photoshop 5 (for graphics) and
GifBuilder (for building gifs).
I use other machines and programs for other design
work (QuarkXpress, iMovie, CD Writer and many more)
but the above seem to suffice for my rudimentary web
design.
I've had Flash on 30 day try-outs and always run out
of time before I've even bothered to look at them. With
more time to dabble, there are some incredible programs
for those more ambitious than I.
Which sites make tears roll down your leg?
I've got millions. My current favourite is in Flash,
downloads in seconds and gives you an animatable skeleton
to die for. Vector
Lounge and of course The
Onion is brilliant.
A good comedy site is something unique that you can't
get anywhere else. It's telling that, at the moment,
a successful comedy site is one whose content 'graduates'
to TV. I enjoy e-groups when they come close to intelligent
conversation.
How does it differ to TV or radio comedy?
I'd say online comedians are less pedantic about grammar.
And that's 'differ FROM'.
I was going to ask you if you had something to plug
but after that bout of pedanticness...
The word is 'pedantry'.
Thanks...Oh go on then, what would you like us to
plug while we're here?
The Comics 2002 Festival, which I produce. Not comedy,
just gold dust. Check it out.
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