5 Biggest Mistakes To Avoid At The Edinburgh Fringe

Hey! It looks like you're a creative type going to the Fringe! You've probably done a thorough promotion campaign over the last 12 months and don't have anything to worry about going up to Edinburgh then, right? No? Oh.

It can often feel like no amount of work is enough when it comes to preparing for the Edinburgh Fringe. How many promos to do? How much time to spend writing and rehearsing? How much money can you afford to spend on advertising, and what ACTUALLY brings people in?

Speaking as someone who has had arguably the most incompetent run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (hey, that could be a show...), I can't promise I know exactly what you should do. I do, however, know the main things you definitely shouldn't do.

In 2013 we took a compilation stand-up show to the Fringe under the newly-formed banner of WMD Comedy. The show received an okay reception, with okay audiences thinking it was okay. Part of this was the show itself (there's a reason we changed from stand-up to sketches, as we suck at the former), and part of this was due to a chronic lack of preparation. Here are the 5 biggest mistakes we have learned from for our return to the Fringe this year, and how you can avoid them.


5. Know How You Will Promote Your Show

If you're new to the Fringe, it can be difficult to appreciate just how many shows are jostling for attention until you get there. If you are not new to the Fringe, why do you keep coming back?

Is it because you think one year you'll actually climb Arthur's Seat? Because you won't.

Seriously though, there's an entire ocean of performers trying to get visitors, Edinburgh locals, and other performers to come and see their show. The best way to approach this is to use the golden rule of marketing: simply put, the more specific your audience the easier it will be to find them.

This can sound counter-intuitive, as you naturally want as many people to come to your show as possible. However, if you go too wide it will make your show look generic and it won't stand out.

Our 2013 show was called "How To Be Awesome At Everything", which as a title worked fairly well; a lot of people were intrigued by the ludicrously ambitious promise the show made. However, when we started talking to people about the show, either whilst out flyering or meeting other acts, we realised we didn't have our "elevator pitch". Quite simply, you should be to give a one-line description of the show that tells people whether it's for them.

We would often stumble at this, and just say something like "it's a really funny show that we're in". Who cares.

Really what you want is "a comedy show that will teach you how to be better at the thing that is most important to you", or something like that. Some people will hear that and not care. Others will be hooked by the personal aspect that is promised. That's fine. It's better to have an engaged and intrigued audience then one that has been tricked into seeing something they don't care about.

A great time to throw this out is whilst flyering. And speaking of flyers...


4. Make Sure You Have Some Goddamn Flyers

In 2013, we did not have flyers or posters for the first 3 days of the show. To be fair, we ordered them in good time, but due to a mix-up at a depot and other reasons you don't need to know about, we didn't have them for 3 days. We resorted to making some out of paper and pens, and writing C-grade jokes on them in an effort to entice.

It goes without saying, but don't do this.

Now that's not to say that flyers are particularly effective. In fact, I would conservatively say that 99% of flyers are ignored and unwanted. Does that mean you should still get some? Absolutely. In fact, get twice as many as you think you need.

There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, the saturation effect of advertising, which basically means that you are more likely to go see a show if you have heard of it in the first place. If someone recommends a show to you, you might go and see it. If you repeatedly see interesting looking posters for a show, and THEN someone recommends it, you'll think "oh yeah, that looked interesting"...maybe.

"You know what? I AM going to join the army!"

Secondly, it's a great way of reminding people about your show later on. If you blindly hand out 500 flyers a day you may get a few people come, but if you have a chat with someone about your show and then give them a flyer, they will link that conversation with the details of your show at the end of the day, when they pour out all the rubbish they have accumulated.

A flyer should be a calling card. Information should be clear, and the type of show obvious. If it's a stand-up show and you don't have media quotes that describe how you perform, make it clear for people. Say who your inspirations are, so that people can connect you with acts they like. Saying it's really funny and great is nice and all, but it doesn't really mean anything.

All that said, whilst flyers are important, there are bigger things to worry about...


3. All Hail The App

A lot of advice on publicity talks about different flyer techniques and gimmicks, when at the end of the day the vast majority of people use the official EdFringe app to find what shows they are going to see. This is a mixed blessing, as on the one hand it does a lot of the work for you, but on the other hand it limits what you can do influence people. So, how you can get the most out of this?

The simplest way of improving your luck with the Fringe app is to make sure you have a strong web presence for your company, your show, and your journey to the Fringe. Naturally having great reviews is a good start (and in fact, probably a good ending point). But what if you have a new show, or haven't quite managed to pull in reviewers? Or what if you've had reviews but they aren't particularly favourable (hey, it happens)?

I was going to quote our 1 star review but it's still too painful.

Remember that punters can leave reviews on the Fringe site, meaning word of mouth can help build up support for your show. There is no shame in gently nudging/forcefully pushing a receptive audience to leaving a nice review after a show. It helps you gain an edge over other shows and will help people using the app land on your show when making the call as to what they can see in the next hour.

Pre-fringe, having as much going on as possible online is a big help. When we played the Brighton Fringe festival earlier this year we always asked audience members where they heard about the show, and a few guys on our first night said they saw it in the brochure and Googled us. They found some of our web sketches, liked them, and came along to the show. And not a single flyer was put in their tiny hands.

It also goes without saying that hitting Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube (maybe even Blogger) for the entire duration of the Fringe is a must, including from July onwards (at the latest). That said, don't go too crazy, as it's also important to...


2. Don't Be A Dick

I like to think this advice speaks for itself, but just in case it doesn't; don't harass people. Don't make promises you can't keep. Don't email people, then ignore their replies. If you offer to play a variety show, play it, even if it's to one person. And most importantly, respect people who come to your show.

If you are a small show starting out you will likely struggle for audiences at times. Hell, if you're a medium show and it's mid-week you probably will. But remember; that's not the fault of the audience. Don't ever treat them with contempt, and always give them the best show possible. If you phone it in they will not remember the criminally under-attended masterpiece they saw, they'll walk away thinking "yeah, I can see why it was so empty".

The Fringe is a slog. It's tiring, expensive, frequently frustrating and often underwhelming. But it's also a great opportunity.


1. Connect

The biggest mistake we made in our first run at the Fringe was by not engaging enough with other performers, and the scene as a whole. Even if you have an under-rehearsed show, with no publicity and a terrible time slot 5 miles from the Royal Mile, the Fringe is still a prime opportunity to network.

It can be tempting to just focus on your own show and see other shows you like, but talking to as many people as possible is so valuable. It will give you ideas for how to promote your show, help your learn about new gigs, open up opportunities to collaborate, and perhaps most importantly, you'll have a great time socialising with like-minded people.

The Fringe is the biggest festival of it's kind for a reason, so get out there and meet people. And if you do find the time, do go and see "WMD Makes Everything Better" this year. It's...really, really funny. Let me give you a flyer.

Weekly Write Up: Goth Ghost Music Review and A Beginners Guide to Reddit

*NB- I wrote this last week and forgot to post it! So here it is:

So, this week we learned some beginner lessons in Reddit-ing, and released our most recent Friday sketch, which was specifically made for Halloween:

We really enjoyed filming this one. As much as filming inside one of our homes is fun and all, I'm always much happier with a sketch we shoot on location, and fortunately York has no shortage of old stone graveyards. Unfortunately it meant our lighting and audio took a slight hit, but I think the setting of a vlog parody suits the guerrilla style.

We came up with this idea originally to film with one person, as that week was proving difficult in terms of travel. However, as the sketch evolved, it necessitated multiple characters, and of course the graveyard setting. Originally it was going to be a ghost telling a ghost story about how scary living people are (hence the line about the undead being the living), but it was difficult to find a direction to take it in. At one point we even considered returning to fan-favourite character Mr Harrison; since he is dead in his only appearance, the only way to revisit him is when he is a ghost:

This was also the first week when we have delved into the dizzying world of Reddit. As someone who has never really used Reddit, or indeed any forum, on any regular basis, it was an intimidating prospect, but also one I knew could be an excellent way of reaching a new audience. After speaking with my good friend Jak (of "It's Jak!" sketch fame, found here, as well runner of the excellent 103 Percent Complete Blog, found here), I have put together my top 3 tips for the new Reddit user:

1. Read, Don't Write

As you would expect with forums, people tend to rush there when they have something to say, and scroll through in a bored way when they want something to read. As such, the best thing you can do is find a subreddit you are interested (for example, comedy writing) and then spend some time reading through what people post and, perhaps most crucially, what people upvote. It might sound cynical, but this form of market research means you can not only maximise the payoff from your efforts but also not annoy people but spamming or posting unwanted content.

2: Match Your Content

Finding an audience who are genuinely going to be interested in what you do is vital. We are always of the opinion that it is more valuable to have an engaged and interested viewer than 10 who will watch ten seconds of what we do and then get bored and leave. Therefore, once you have done your reading research, picking the key sub-Reddits to hit will make a big difference. For example, for our Goth sketch, we hit Halloween, Goth, Comedy Writing and Sketch Comedy.

3: Have a slick product

The last part of making a successful pitch on Reddit is making sure what you put out is of a quality you are happy with. This is not necessarily the same as being of the highest quality; after all, you may be limited by time, production quality, resources, experience etc. The main thing is making sure what you put out matches your target quality for that moment. When we started putting out weekly sketches nearly a year ago our standards were a lot lower than they are now, and will likely be a lot higher this time next year. Remember; just because something is of a low quality doesn't mean it shouldn't be shared, but something of a lower quality than are happy with shouldn't be put out there.

- Ben

No Sketch Group Is an Island

As a group we've been going on and off for a while now, but I'd probably say we've been seriously making things (like our weekly sketches) for a solid year. In a way I consider our effort to be about a year old. And that year has involved a hell of a lot of work. Getting something off the ground is extremely difficult. I always tend to correlate it to working on a band - starting a band is incredibly tough, getting other people to join your band once it's rolling is a little easier. As we've grown and developed our body of work, we now find ourselves desperately hungry for other people to work with.

These guys tried starting a sketch group for years. Genuinely found aeronautics easier

When you start making something like this, everything has to be done by you. It's like you've not earned enough credibility at this point for people to trust putting their time into the project, so at the very beginning, you have something to prove. This bit is a real uphill struggle and that hill is itself a learning curve. You want a cool design for the next transition? Cool, well I hope you can design things well, because if not, your choices are: A, it looks crappy. B. It is stolen (I mean sometimes it's both)

Even something painfully simple like this has to be designed because no program default lettering looks quiiiiiite right

Myself and Ben are ostensibly writers and performers, but in order to display those skills, we have to learn a whole host of different skills in order to get something even close to a finished product. I'll definitely have missed out some, so a small selection of what we've learned mostly through mistakes (and in no way mastered) includes: 

• Directing
• Video Editing
• Graphic Design
• Music Programs
• Lighting
• Song Writing
• Social media promotion
• Make Up
• DIY Special Effects
• Location Scouting
• Camera work
• How much of a pain literally all of this stuff is

Nothing in that list is funny. You can edit things in a certain way to emphasise timing, or an effect or a song can have a humourous outcome, but they're not jokes. Actual jokes. 99% of the work involved is just graft trying to make what you're doing even function let alone achieve the result you want. All those credits at the end of everything that is professionally made, that's because there are people, or whole teams of people, whose full time jobs it is to oversee even just one of these roles. And here we are just trying to sling it all together on the fly. I'm alright on the guitar. And I mean okay. But I knew exactly zero about music production, recording or the programs you use to create it all, and what you end up with is incredibly rough as a result.

When this was finished I was like. "Ah, it's perfect." The next day I listened again, and was like, no wait, wtf, of course it isn't

This now sounds a little bit like I'm complaining, but I'm not. (well maybe a bit). But a lot of that graft is actually really exciting and fun. It's a case of constantly encountering new challenges and going, oh man, how do we achieve that? Well let's find out quickly, cause it's literally just us doing it, and the deadline is in two days. But even when we do manage to work though a problem we've never encountered before, the result is usually less than perfect just because the given task is outside of our skill-set. So if you're reading this right now. We want you. Badly.

If you're somebody who likes making things, get in touch with us! We're actively looking for different people to collaborate with. 

Do you perform: "Finally sketches with more than 3 characters!"

Do you make music: "How well do you know the 5 chords?"

Know anything about film: You can definitely help us. Even if you just want to lend a hand.

Can you draw/design: We're honestly constantly looking for logos and funny transition stuff

Do you make balloon animals: I guarantee we will need something like this at one point

Honestly, whatever you do. If you're another sketch group up for a collab, a creative looking for other artists, or just a person who likes our stuff and wants to be involved at all; we are always looking for other people to work with. I can't count the amount of times I've needed a voice over for a sketch (and it can't be one of us) and I've had to just rope in my housemates to record something.

BUT WAIT WHAT ABOUT....

"Pay artists who do things for you." ~ Artists everywhere

Good point. 

We're looking for people at a similar level to us. We don't make any money from WMD and can't afford to pay anyone. One thing we can offer is a work exchange. We have a pretty decent camera/sound set up and are competent at using it. So in the past we have worked with other performers and in return come to their gigs and filmed their material for showreels or just to playback and learn. We also would be happy to lend a hand in any project you might have going on, that you think we would be useful for.

This for us is day one. Collaborating with other people is just yet another skill we are trying our hardest to get our heads around and this is the first step. An open call to anyone that is interested in doing stuff with us. Send us a message on facebook: Facebook(dot)com/wmdcomedy or an email: WMDcomedy(AT)gmail.com.

Here's an example of some work we did with our friend Jak from University last week. He just happened to be up, he's a comedian and writer and was well up for being involved in something very stupid:

Even if you just have a home, or office, or cool location and would happily invite us into it in exchange for beer/food/gratitude. I'm so so sick of filming in my damn living room.

Thank you

Weekly Write Up: It's Jak! and Impersonating Robert Smith

So last week we put up a sketch simply entitled "It's Jak!"

This was a sketch that we shot at very short notice, which wasn't too much to our detriment, given the fact it is a very low tech sketch. In fact, we shot it at such short notice it was literally a case of Tom walking through my door and saying "Right, since we've got Jak, here's a sketch about him".

Unfortunately Ryan was unable to film this one with us, which would have made things even weirder, but we made sure to get Ryan in some of the flashbacks to compensate. We also worried that it would look silly having Jak blatantly in different rooms during the flashbacks, but then realised that the idea of him being there all along is stupid enough to carry through, and is in fact amplified by him being in different places. Also, fun fact; Jak bought that t-shirt specifically for this sketch! Well, sort of.

In terms of structure, "It's Jak" has some very silly jokes, but if we had spent more time on the script might have some more solid lines. I think the idea and the execution are solid, but the dialogue is sometimes a little functional. The lack of a proper punchline (settling for the ridiculous anti joke "He's gone bowling") does let the sketch down a bit, though I think the twist of having Jak's name appear at the end instead of the usual WMD sting is nice.

Ultimately I think this is a sketch that is funny if you watch a lot of our sketches, particularly if you go back as far as "Moustache Intervention", but isn't the most welcoming sketch for newcomers. Thankfully, I think we will balance that out with our next sketch, which is our first proper holiday special sketch. We decided to shoot a Halloween sketch about a goth in a graveyard, which I think will go down well for this time of the year. It's one of our most visually distinct sketches and features Tom doing his best Robert Smith. In the meantime, here is the only other time-dependent sketch we did, this one being about the referendum:

- Ben

Weekly Write Up: Skype Etiquette and Upcoming Guest Star

So last week we released one of more "internet culture"-based sketches, focusing on how people interact on Skype, as well as how people probably don't interact on Skype. If you haven't seen it, it can be found here:

I hope this is a sketch people can identify with. We have been toying for a while with the idea of doing a sketch base d around a phonecall, but we felt there was more that could be done with Skype due to the character s  being able to interact visually. I also think there is something funny about characters speaking over video but still treating it as if it's over the phone, hence the joke about being on hold. I always imagine when I am put on hold the person I am speaking to is just having a break from talking to me to do something more interesting for a few minutes. To be honest, I wish we could introduce a face to face variant (actually, I've remembered that we already have smart phones).


It's probably also telling that at the moment I spend a lot of time dealing with external phonecalls, and that may have influenced the topic of needlessly bad customer service. I also know that if I were to encounter anything like that I would respond exactly how Ryan's character does and go along with it out of politeness, as I would sooner suffer in silence that challenge someone. Britishness for the win.


The ending was an example of "hmm, this sketch doesn't have a particularly funny ending". We often joke about how incongruous some of our sketch endings are, and whilst this isn't the worst offender I'd probably put it in the top 5. The most ridiculous by far is in "Subliminal Swearing":

Coming up this Friday we have a very exciting special guest star. I can't really say more without giving away too much of the sketch, but let's just say it'll change your entire perception of WMD this far.

- Ben

Weekly Write Up: Weirdest Ever Gumtree Ad and Komedy Kulcha

So last week (and indeed last month) was a busy one for WMD, Last Friday saw the release of our most recent sketch, Weirdest Ever Gumtree Ad, which if you missed can be found here:

This one was I found very funny from the start. Originally the sketch took place in a fridge shop, and featured copious amounts of gurning from the salesman, which was replaced with him being a much more pathetic and less openly perverted figure. Due to us being unable to shoot on location it needed tweaking slightly, and we thought the idea of doing a sketch about Gumtree and it's ilk would be fun.

A couple of little references are in this one. Firstly, the high-pitched "Will just stop it!?" was a callback to an outro I made for our sketch about the Hokey Cokey:

There is also a moment I particularly like, what I call the "fastest fridge close in the west" at around 2 minutes. Finally, the "aw, pwease" line is from an anecdote Ryan is fond of telling that I regrettably cannot do justice in a blog post.

Last we also travelled across to sunny Wakefield to play Komedy Kulcha, an arty night in a suitably arty town. It was a strange night where it quickly became apparent that all bets were off, not least after the first act was awarded a pack of "scurrilous greeting cards" as a reward for performing.

Me and Tom decided to play things fast and loose, trying a whole bunch of new lines and ad-libs (and in the process forgetting several scripted lines too). Mike the unswayed, our current closer, went down very well, despite being adapted from a 3 man version into a 2 hander.

Tomorrow night is Friday, and sees another sketch (closing in on a year now). I've got plenty to say about it, but that's a story for next week.

- Ben

50th Anniversary: Batman, Star Trek and WMD!

So, believe it or not, but both the original series of Star Trek and the original TV Batman series are both 50 years old this year. I say "believe it or not", it's an objective fact, so either believe it or live in ignorance and denial. Also, WMD is now 50!


...okay, first off, a disclaimer; WMD has not been going for 50 years. That's barely our collected ages. But we have now put out our 50th sketch, which is a milestone in itself. We started putting out the odd sketch as early as 2014, and have been putting out one a week since the tail end of 2015. This might not sound like much, but if you've been following our output you'll realise this adds up to over 2 hours of material. That's crazy.


So, what's the plan going forward? Well, we are still going to continue putting out our weekly sketches, and continue to improve our production values and vary our shooting styles. We are also starting to do regular live gigs, with a view to playing some of the choicer comedy and short film festivals in the next 12 months, and will be putting up a "Gigs" page shortly.


We have also started using Funny Or Die, Dailymotion and Vimeo, and are uploading our HD back catalogue to those sites over the coming weeks, if you are so inclined to use any of those sites instead of Youtube.

So, I am very much looking forward to writing a similar article in around a year's time, celebrating our 100th sketch. In the mean time, please enjoy our 50th sketch, "The Methane Show":