FastForwardImprovShowSetups

Fast Forward Setups

Why Setups?

• It gives us a quick way to get the players inspired, and hopefully get over the slump of 'getting in gear' time that afflicts our scenes.
• With this many scenes, it's easy to drain your creative reservior so setups are a bit of priming for the pump.
• ???

Qualities the Setups Need to Have

• They should take < 2 seconds to explain to the players
• Either they need to be immediately understandable to the audience, or the audience has to be able to figure it out from context
• They should complement whatever rhythm the players have built.
• ???

Generic Setup Notes

Notes that any setup will include a call-out for a specific number of players. This is because, if we don't ask for a specific number of players, there's an odd inertia while everybody figures out what's going on.

So, the host says something like:

• Two players!

• Two players, with two on deck!

  • This means that two players start on stage, and two other players get into a position where they can easily make entrances.

    • We need to tighten the signalling; this should probably be shortened to 'Two and two!' Perhaps later in the show once we have a rhythm.

All setups can include a one-word or -phrase suggestion.

We will take these from the audience before the show as slips of paper (in a bucket; Bob suggests halved 3x5 cards or something the size and stiffness of a business card so they're easy to pull out of a bucket.).

Keep in mind that this is where we can do crazy, screwed-up shizznit that would never fly in a "precious moments figurines" show like Micetro, where Every Scene is (relatively) Sacred. If it crashes and burns, the burn only lasts for about twenty seconds.

The big list of setups

In addition to the generic setups above, there are some more specific ones:

• A scene with as much reincorporation as possible. (later in the show)

  • You could be more specific, asking for (say) "as many characters we've seen before as possible."
  • This could be a good one to end the show on.

• Death in a minute

  • By the end of the scene, at least one of you is dead

• Movie in a minute

  • Recount a movie in one minute.

  • Ask one of the players for a movie s/he's seen.

    • Make the 'internal ask-for' very quick.

• "Half the players, create a movie!"

  • "The other half, make the foreign film that move was based on."
  • "... make the Hong Kong action version"
  • "Dub it and edit it for TV."
  • "... make the prequel"
  • "... make the third sequel"
  • "... make the Quentin Tarantino ripoff"

• "Do the first episode of a miniseries"

  • (10 minutes later) "Do the middle episode of the miniseries."
  • (20 minutes later) "Do the last episode of the miniseries."
• "I'm tired; Amy, tell me a bedtime story and the rest of you act it out."
• "Sell me something horrible."

General setups that work in this format:

• One of you has a secret
• Three-word sentences
• Alphabet game (in one minute!)
• ???

Chain Setups

Ed has raised some valid concerns about shape of show. Now, I'm not one to prescribe a certain shape of show ahead of time, but I do feel like whoever's host needs to have tools at his/her disposal for shaping the show. Now, I know that longer scenes are not kosher here. However, we can have chains of scenes that go together thematically or include the same characters, thus creating a sense of longer work even though the scenes stay short, and bring us closer to our 'goal' of ninety scenes in ninety minutes.

Some examples:

• Six degrees on crack

  • File off the serial numbers and run Six Degrees over the course of about nine minutes.

• The Slacker game

  • One character runs into another, who runs into another, who runs into another, and so on.
• ???

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Footnotes