OUT OF MY DEPTH? (Patreon)

There's this quote from David Bowie, which I've been seeing a lot in recent years, and it is this:

“If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”

Though it has been over-quoted, I love that. I love that thrill of doing something that I'm not quite sure how to do. Found Footage, Digi The Show, Digi Live, making music... and next, hopefully, Digitiser The Show series 2, and... Digi Live 2.0. 

The advice also applies to comedy, I find. I had it a lot when writing the first Digi Live. Having never written for a live event before, I wasn't sure how some of the stuff would go down. I had a feeling - a gut sense - that certain parts of the night (Even More Beautiful Boy, Braben etc.) would be the ones that would stick in the memory for people. And thank god they did. Likewise the whole "The alarm's gone off" thing in The Golden Bean. I didn't know if that would be funny. I just knew that I found it funny. 

Without trying to repeat ourselves, I'm kind of in the same place now with Digi Live 2.0. It'd be lovely to be able to do a warm-up show, and test some of this stuff, but we don't have a big enough audience for that. It's a case of going on that gut feeling again, the sweet spot of being just-a-bit out of my depth.

I'm in the middle of editing/animating a video clip of... something for Digi Live... and I'm having one of those 'Can I do this?' moments. I suppose you'd call it a 'Turner The Worm being sick' moment, where I find myself caught between laughing at the inappropriateness of it... and worrying that - in this case - people will literally walk out. It's funny... but is it the wrong sort of funny? Can I say what the right sort of funny is? Often it's not something I can put into words. It's an instinctual thing. 

Live comedy is a real balancing act. Ideally you want to create a bit of tension in the room, get everyone slightly off-kilter, because it makes the laughs bigger, without going too far with it. But it would be very easy to go too far, to create the wrong sort of tension. I don't mind making people a little grossed out, or disgusted, or shocked - but not too much. 

One of the overriding memories of the first Digi Live was peering through the Even More Beautiful Boy mask at the audience. About the only thing I could see through it was some poor terrified woman, who had clearly been dragged along under duress, and didn't want anything to do with this thing that was handing out miniature babies in front of her.

So anyway. For the past couple of days, I've been working on the end of a section that... in all honesty, my gut is telling me goes too far. Everything leading up to it goes up to the line, without crossing it, but the ending might just peek a toe over, which I don't want. So, it'll likely be snipped out. 

Anyhow. Thought I'd share a little insight into the creative process behind the live show. All this stuff gets thought about, you know!

P.