Hi. I've made a video of my short (~7 minute) act and was hoping I could get feedback on what I'm doing wrong and suggestions for how to get better.

Here's the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=merEzOSaiWQ

Looking forward to your critiques!

Hi Cal, some good jokes in there but the only way to improve and find out what works and what doesn't is to perform it in front of an audience.

I wish I could tell you a safe shortcut but unfortunately no-one has discovered one yet, even top acts don't know if their new material will fly until they test it in front of a live audience.

Book yourself in for an open spot and see how it goes.

Thanks, Tony. I hope to take your advice and try out the open mic. I'm pretty sure there's one happening once a month here (open mics are rare in my area).

For now, I tried out a few minutes of jokes at the end of a class (in front of maybe 40-ish people). Got laughs, but I'm not sure if that was because my jokes were good, or because they were being polite, or if I was just failing so badly with the jokes that they couldn't help but laugh. I say that because there are definitely long lags between the jokes and laughter, which could either mean the jokes take a while to get, or that everyone saw no one was laughing, and then decided to laugh just to be polite.

If you have the time, please let me know if you think I got actual or polite laughter (or even "Man, that guy is failing" laughter):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KALXgzx1FVw

yeah... you need to do some open mic as you do have some funny jokes there.

I had a problem with understanding the accent, personally, but there's not much you can do about that!

I gave up at 1.00. Inaudible and unintelligible. If you want to record yourself, don't have the mike in the audience.

BTW That first vid of you practicing in front of your Mum has got a germ of something.

[imo]The funniest bit[/imo] is when you forget the name of the sport.. and your Mum prompts you with "skosh". I dunno if you meant it.. reminded me of the hecklers at Kenny Everett's Calcutta comedy club.

Thanks for your feedback, you two.

@Alski: Yeah, it's difficult for me to guess how much my accent is affecting everything, but perhaps I'll practice some enunciation to make myself more understandable. Thanks for pointing it out!

@Stylee: Sorry for the poor quality; there was no mike here. I'll try to ensure the audio quality/volume is better if I ever post another video. If you meant a germ at 1:55, heh, that was a mosquito flying across the camera, I think. If you meant my voice, maybe I'll try being more energetic.

On the bit about sports, I was asking my friend which sport he plays, to which he replied "Squash". I guess that because of my accent, it may have sounded as if I was talking about the sports I play. So, that was unintentional.

Ah you stole my gag about home delivery/pizza! I'll let you keep it though

I'm sure you know comedy's a hard act, so keep keep keep going, don't give up! No one's amazing on their first night, but as 'they' say, practice makes perfect. Good luck sonny jim

I liked it dude. We all have different tastes, but I reckon you have a bit of a stage presence that you could work on and the material was pretty funny too.

Good luck anyway. I reckon you'll be fine.
Paul

ps. I could follow your accent without any problems.

@Goose24:

Thanks, man, for both the encouragement and letting me keep the joke (although I came up with it on my own, I recognize using a joke someone else did previously is a big no-no unless they're okay with it). I'm definitely enjoying this and already have a few specific aspects of my act in mind that I'm targeting to work on!

@Paul Currar:

Hey, I'm glad you enjoyed my act And it's a relief to hear you understood my accent fine; that suggests I don't have to change it too much, and if I know I don't have to change it a lot to get results, I'm more likely to get started on working on it in the first place!

To be honest dude, you could probably make a niche comedy market for yourself if you ever came over here as I can't recall, off the top of my head, any Asian comedians (I mean non british/american asians), though Im sure someone will correct me on that sweeping generalisation. lol
Best of luck mate
Paul