Final Dress
A Guide to Producing Your Own Comedy Special, OR the Creative Projects That Led Us to Final Girl, Pt 1
Happy Wednesday, Leorah here!
Someone once said “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” I’m not sure who, perhaps a very patient and/or egotistical Roman. But we all know what the adage means, and likely you can see where I’m going with this. We’ve dedicated many posts to all of the ways in which producing Final Girl has been a slow burn. But today, I wanted to zoom out even further, and give you a look at a project that predated Final Girl, and the ways it would lead to the webseries as it now exists. That’s right, we’re talking about my standup special, Dress Up.
Let’s begin at the beginning. For my twenty-fifth birthday, I decided I wanted to produce my debut hour of stand up comedy. At the time, I had been working as a comic for two years, and putting out an hour with this little experience is kind of unheard of. I don’t say this to hilight that I was exceptional in any way for attempting this undertaking, except for perhaps exceptionally ambitious and naive.
So, if you’re now asking yourself, how does one even go about self-producing a comedy special?...I had the same question. I did somehow figure it out in stages, so let’s break it down.
Writing:
After spending my first year as a comic writing jokes without a clear process, I challenged myself to create and polish eight new minutes of material a month throughout the year following. Writing this way, I started to prefer storytelling stretched across the length of a set over unrelated set-up punchline style jokes. Creating each 8 minutes felt like a puzzle I couldn’t wait to assemble, figuring out ways to punch up narrative threads, and how to sprinkle in callbacks to past bits so that the audience members could feel like they were in on the joke as the set progressed. Through developing this style, I became hooked on building longer and longer sets.
Halfway through that year, I had a night out bar hopping with friends that I knew would be the perfect topic for a set. I can factually tell you there was nothing especially crazy about that night. No, it stood out because it occurred in clear story beats, segmented by each bar we attended and the characters we met there. For this reason, the whole thing was begging to be put on paper, and the end result was a 15 minute set. After I wrote that, I had a gut feeling that it would make a killer closer to a special, inspiring me to piece together the opening 45 minutes. I pulled all of my favorite jokes and stories, and then began assembling them to flow well into each other.
And my final secret to quickly generating enough material for an hour? I also padded the thing with comedy songs. Comedy songs have been a part of my act since my first stand up show, including them was always part of the plan. And, they take up a lot of time; about a third of the special is sung. In summary, I lucked out that my writing style lent itself to the form.
Producing:
Once I felt confident that I had an hour of material that I was proud of, I worked to find a venue where I could perform it. My biggest piece of criteria was finding someplace that could professionally film the show. If I was only going to be able to perform the show once, I wanted to ensure that I would have a recording to post online, elongating the life of the show.
Caveat, a cabaret theatre on the Lower East Side, seemed to fit my requirements perfectly. They boasted a three camera setup, so I could live stream the special, and then keep and re-edit the footage after the fact. I was lucky enough to have friends who had produced with them previously, and parlayed those contacts into a meeting.
Caveat agreed to slot me in for a weeknight show a few days before my birthday, and, to this day, I’ll never know if it was because my ideas had merit, or that the Canva slideshow I slapped together was just that impressive. Either way, I was approved, and had around two months to prepare.
This is where my village came in. Officially, the show was solo-produced. In actuality, many people generously offered me their time and energy to make it happen. My friend Julia ran the social media to advertise the show, and worked in tandem with my mom to customize and tailor the vintage dress that served as my costume. Others helped me onstage, opening and emceeing the show, while my offstage support system fielded my first-time producer questions, and listened to my breakdowns as I worried that the show was working or wouldn’t sell. Fletcher, who will be playing Tom in Final Girl, was the show’s official photographer. I’ve said it before and I’ll likely say it until I’m blue in the face, art cannot exist in a vacuum. Even solo shows. I am eternally grateful for my community, who rose to the occasion big time.
In the end, the show was a hit. I think. It was well attended, and I felt like I left it all on the stage. However, when all was said and done and the footage was delivered to my inbox, I was at a loss for next steps.
Releasing the Special:
Six months passed after the show’s performance, and I posted a TikTok about how I wanted to grow my following so that I could have a big enough platform to release the special online. It was a Hail Mary, and it was not supposed to work. But overnight, my TikTok audience grew by 10,000. Shocked to learn that my actions had consequences, and that strangers online actually wanted to watch the special, I set about editing the footage.
A week and an Adobe Premiere Pro subscription later, I began to realize that I was out of my depth, and would need professional help. And I’m not just talking about therapy (this is a bad joke, the ones in the special are better I promise). I had met Caroline Pace (you all know her!) through connections in the comedy scene, and, knowing that she had a background in film, asked if she would take me on as a client. She agreed, and we spent the following two months meeting weekly to hunch over her laptop while we cut footage, synced audio, and color graded. Caroline taught me a lot about editing, most memorably that I am so pale I broke the venue’s camera’s auto white balance…because I was the whitest thing in frame. During these sessions, Caroline and I bonded, sharing embarrassing middle school anecdotes and talking about our mutual love for camp horror. Sometimes paying people to hang out with you does actually work. At the end of it all, I had a dream collaborator, and a special ready for prime time (if that’s what we’re calling YouTube these days).
The Aftermath:
Dress Up was not the smash hit online that I hoped it’d be. It was released in February 2024, and hovers around 8,000 views. I’m incredibly proud of it, and am thankful to everyone who watched it, but it certainly did not go viral. I think it’s something of a creative rite of passage to convince yourself that whatever project you’re working on will lead to your big break.
The past year and a half have provided me the gift of hindsight, and I now believe that in these cases, a reframe is important. Because of this special, I tested my writing chops, I got to see first hand the immense love and support of my community, I grew my social media following, and I met Caroline. All of those things led directly to the creation of Final Girl. I told you I would tie it in.
Hopefully this illustrates that creative projects are dominoes, and Final Girl exists because of the undertakings before it. If you’d like to keep the chain reaction going, helping to create even more sparky collaborative connections, fresh ideas, and new works, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you as always for reading, and we’ll see you next week!