Would anyone watch my husband’s comedy documentary and give honest feedback?

[lazyuni]

My husband has made a 30 minute comedy documentary about a fictional ghost hunter and nobody will watch it.

This is partly because he is absolutely terrible at self promotion, and partly because it's a bit retro in style so the YouTube algorithm has no idea what to do with it. It is genuinely funny. Dry, subtle, minimal swearing, no crude jokes. He's quite proud of it and slightly sad that it's just sitting there.

If you have half an hour: It's on Youtube

Or maybe it is just bad. Be honest. If people actually like it I'll show him this thread.

I’ve given it a bash - sorry, not for me. I get it is meant to be the in a mockumentary style but when nothing funny had happened in the first five minutes barring the misspelling of professional) I am not giving it any more of my time.

i generally like mockumentaries, but maybe it is the ghost theme or the dead-pan (intentional pun) delivery, it just didn’t work for me.

However, producing a half hour show is way better than 99.999999 per cent of us could ever do, so fair play to him.

I only lasted a few minutes, sorry, did nothing for me.

Well done to your DH for producing this. I gave it a go too, and like the pp immediately noticed the misspelling of 'professional' in the opening title. I like mockumentaries (loved Best in Show, for instance), but have to say that for me, this didn't quite hit the mark.

Since you're looking for honest feedback, I'll say that I think the writing could be sharper/funnier. Trust the premise and the set-ups a bit more. Just as a quick example, at 1.21 it would've been really funny, imo, to simply cut away at 'Can you repeat the question?' rather then actually repeating the question again. I also think it could be played a bit straighter, without the cutesy asides like '(thinking hard)' and so on. These and the title cards (not sure what they're called!) seem to be leaning hard on 'This is funny!' instead of just trusting the material to be funny on its own. I would think instead: if this were a real documentary, taking itself absolutely seriously, what would the titles say?

If this is a first attempt for him, it already has things going for it and he should be very pleased at what he's accomplished. It's a genuinely fun premise. But as someone who works in the creative world, the most important thing is to keep trying and honing his skills. It would be unusual for a first attempt to take off, so you need to be a bit thick-skinned and stubborn and just keep at it.

Good luck to him!

Watched the first couple of minutes, then skipped through to a couple of random points. Didn't see anything that even made me crack a smile.
The sound quality is poor and hard to listen to, and the woman asking the questions is too loud.
Fair play to him having a go, but calling it "genuinely funny" might be a stretch...

Sorry, I also gave it a go and it wasn’t for me. I usually love The Office style satire

I’ve managed about 10 minutes. The thing with a mockumentary is that it has to be played absolutely straight, and this is trying too hard to be funny, and point out that it’s funny. At the beginning, with the ‘why don’t you do it for free’ question, there’s far too much ‘funny’ thinking. No-one does that in real life. The title cards just don’t work, although the idea of dull advertising at random times is good, just not executed very well. The tarot card piece was quite odd. Also, and sorry if it’s you asking the questions, the interviewer’s tone is all wrong. It needs to be more neutral and quizzical. I’m going to assume the spelling of professional with two fs is deliberate, and that kind of worked as a lot of people don’t know how to spell it. A mockumentary is really hard to do I think, and possibly not the place to start if comedy is something he’s new to? He’s done well to put it together though.

Like others have said, well done to your DH for giving it a go. Comedy is no easy thing to do and a mockumentary is at the more difficult end. I didn't watch it all but scrolled through. I thought it was overly slow and lacked energy which may have been deliberate but didn't work for me. Good for him for giving it a go though and I hope he keeps at it if he enjoys it.

I echo what @DreamOfTheRarebitFiend says especially the point she makes about repeating stuff at 1.21. There are two rules in comedy. The first is, always leave them wanting more.

Well done to your husband for writing and creating a half hour piece!

I'm afraid like others I gave up after five minutes. Maybe it gets brilliant after that but there really needs to be something to hook the audience in by then.

The advertising cutting in at random times is a good idea but I think he needs to decide what would be the funniest moments for that to happen?

The interviewer sounded a bit self-conscious, I don't know if that was deliberate or not.

As others have said I think he should try playing it as straight as possible without the text popping up to remind us it's funny. Trust the audience to get the joke.

Anyway, it's a great achievement to have made a half hour mockumentary and I'm sure he's learnt lots from this that he can use in his next one.