THIS IS SITCOM.COM

BREATHE-OUT-YOUR-NOSE FUNNY

THE IDEA.

I wanted to learn how to write humorous dialogue.

It’s an art. It’s a science. And it’s incredibly difficult.

For some reason, my mind was drawn toward the sitcom genre. There are so many strong tropes and cliches within it,

that there would be plenty of room for irony and a little bit of satire.

But, I still had three problems looming over my head: I can’t act. I can’t draw. And I had no idea how to produce it.

To be quite honest, I have no clue how I came up with using Animoji's. I was just writing the script one day and it came to me.

Luckily, it was the answer to all three of my problems.

THE SONG.

The song was the first thing we wrote. I sat down with my brother and we conjured up a sitcom-esque beat, again, utilizing the tropes of the genre. Because it seems like every single sitcom intro tries to convey a positive message, I thought it’d be funny to write something similar, but then twist it at the last moment. Here are the lyrics:

So many people living on our planet

You’re the only one that’s you,

So don’t take yourself for granted

Everyone is so unique when you take a closer look

Spend a moment in their shoes and walk the roads they took

If you take the time

To like inside

Into somebody’s mind

Man, I’m sure you’ll find

People are annoying

(People are the worst)

People are annoying

(Here’s another verse)

People are annoying, yeah they’re so annoying

People are annoying

(Wasting precious space)

People are annoying

(Let me tell it to your face)

People are annoying, yeah they’re so annoying

(sitcom.com, sitcom.com, this is sitcom.com, yeah sitcom.com)

THE SCRIPT.

Once the song was finished, it was time to work out the script. I keep a note pad in my iPhone of different things that annoy me, interesting observations I’ve made, and other funny situations I’ve been in. From that note pad, I took three different ideas and tried to interweave them together:

-Name Changes

-What Naming Someone Entails

-Terrible Questions to ask in conversation

The first draft was… long. Really long. I had never tried to put three ideas together in this fashion, so some of the connective tissue rambled. I went about trimming the fat, but it wasn’t until we acted it out a handful of times that I realized we had too much content.

So, it was back to the drawing board. After listening to our most recent recording, making a ton of edits, and trimming down dialogue, we finally had something that wasn’t only workable, but was short enough to keep the attention of the audience.

THE EXECUTION.

The execution was interesting to say the least. As I said before, I can’t act or draw, so, I chose a medium that was both easy to create with and seemed fairly original.

We first recorded the vocals. This was done in multiple takes as we attempted to get the correct intonation. Once the voiceovers were done, we plugged in laugh tracks and “ohhs and ahhhs” to the recording.


We then created Animoji’s and acted out the entire sitcom in one take. Because of the limitations of the in-text animoji's, we ended up having to screen record our takes.

Then, we put the pieces together, creating Sitcom.com.

THE FUTURE.

I think I’ll make more episodes. It’s not only a great exercise on dialogue, but it forces me to be succinct, which may be a weakness of mine.

Overall, it was pretty dope.