We write the development package, so your team can start shooting.

What we actually sell

A package, not a pitch. When you buy a FUNYSCRIPT script you get a series bible that defines the world, the cast and the engine that generates an episode; a hook map that tells you what the last five seconds of the first ten episodes are; and a shot-by-shot board of episodes 1-5 with a budget for the rest of the season. A director, a DP or a boarder can pick it up on Monday and be working from it.

Every deliverable is a single plain-text file. There is no app, no login, no expiry and nothing to install.

Why short-form comedy

A 60-90 second vertical episode is the most constrained format in scripted production, and that constraint is a design problem before it is a budget problem. One episode is one joke with a reversal. There is no room for a subplot, no room for a scene that sets up a scene, and no room for a wide two-hander in a nine-by-sixteen frame. Everything we publish is written to that shape from the first line.

The commercial argument is simple: the format is cheap to shoot if the boards are disciplined, and the audience is already there.

The three genres

Workplace & Office Humor

Office comedy is the cheapest premise in the catalogue to shoot: one standing set, a fixed cast, and a clock the audience already understands before the first line lands. It also travels further than any other genre, because everyone has had the same manager. Vertical 9:16 suits it better than a wide frame, since the format is already about faces and reaction, which is exactly what a workplace gag runs on.

Family & Neighbours Humor

Family comedy is the widest-reaching genre on a vertical platform, and the one that survives the shortest attention span, because every gag is a relationship the viewer already has. It shoots out of one living room and one street, which keeps a sixty-episode season inside a single standing set. Ensemble casting is the cost: five mouths to feed across the run, but those five also carry every reaction shot the format depends on.

Time-Loop & Absurd Comedy

High-concept comedy is the most shareable thing on a vertical feed and the cheapest to write around, because a loop is a rule the audience learns in eight seconds and then predicts, which is what makes the reversal land. It costs more to shoot than a domestic sitcom: repeats need matching continuity, and every consequence gag is an insert or an effect. The payoff is that a single location can carry an entire season without the audience noticing.

How a script gets written

Every series starts from an engine: a machine that produces a different joke every episode while the situation stays the same. If we cannot state the engine in two sentences, the premise does not get written. From there we lock the world rules first — they exist to close the obvious holes a commissioner will find, the ones that end a series in episode three because somebody could simply tell the truth.

Then the hook map, because the format lives or dies on the last five seconds of each episode. Only after that do we write the board, and the board is where most of the work goes: shot sizes, camera movement spent sparingly, and props that fail on camera, because comedy that is only in the dialogue does not survive a phone screen.

Licensing

The standard licence covers developing, adapting and producing the material described in each listing. Translation, resale and sub-licensing require the extended licence supplied with the All-Access Master Library. If your situation is unusual, write to us and we will answer in plain language rather than pointing at a clause.

Talk to us

Questions about a specific script, a licence, or whether a series suits your slate: rongxilinko@outlook.com. We reply within two business days, and we will tell you when something is not a fit.

Browse the catalogue