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Sketch Diary - Newsreader speaking at a Funeral
🕑 Added 2023-01-13 11:08:58 +0000 UTCThis sketch had many many different versions, I won't bore you with the details, but our best sketches usually do. Each version adds another batch of jokes to the pot, and much like cooking stock, you let it cool off, wait a day, trim the fat, and then light the fires again. You're boring them with the details Conor. Sorry. I recently started making soup, just so you know. One success one abject failure: I used a recipe on the first, the second I was like "Recipe? Purlease, i am an artist! I do not deal with mundanities as temperatures or times, I beseech the ingredients to bend to my will!" ... by hopelessly overcooking them beyond flavour it would seem.
Sketches are a bit like that... you need to get the balance right, you mostly need the correct ingredients and you don't want to overcook them, or they come out flat and everyone complains
So, how to cook Tiernan? Well... this recipe took a while. The thing about Tiernan is, he doesn't work as well in a vacuum. Tiernan needs to be surrounded by people who set his world in our reality. Whether its a confused interviewer, annoyed date or perplexed mourner, Tiernan needs to be juxtaposed with normality to be funny. We couldnt figure out how to do that for such a long time - the answer on fourth attempt seemed so simple... extras! Where could we get extras at 24 hours notice though? Duck is on holidays and it seemed like our regular crew of actors are a bit overqualified.... hmmm. TO THE COSTUMES ROOM! We'll cook up our own. Now here is the fine line we must observe. If we remember back to earlier in the paragraph... class? CLASS? pay attention now... we needed Tiernan to be contrasted with reality. So, these people need to be real and behave real, so a bunch of people in ridiculous wigs isn't going to wash. I need to wash the costumes, but that's another matter. "But won't the extras ll just look like us?" I can hear you say. Well, yes.. but it's a small rural town... and as Anne Flanagan would say " We're a small island nation".
The performance of these cap wearing (disrespectful) and moustache donning (take that Foil) needed to be just right. I took my lead from the lads - subtlety is not my strongest acting suit.... Those of you who watch our videos will perhaps observe over the years that I have improved, but the lads still top me in this department - and subtlety was required. The looks of the congregation are going to have to be maintained for 2 mins... if they have a face on them like they just ate some of my second attempt soup in the first 10 seconds, then there's not going to be anywhere for them to go. You can't look on the verge of intervening for 2 minutes and do nothing, unless you're me cooking soup without a recipe.
Once we cracked that particular nut, we were all set, just missing an ending. Foil suggested the boxing announcer and we laughed. Sometimes thats all the discussion you need. We knew we'd have a longer than normal shoot, so we wanted to get it on camera early. The set was fun and surprisingly easy to put together as you can see. I was all for trying to rearrange the furniture to show the other side of the church, when Foil pointed out that we could just reflect the image in post! Jokes on him though, as now he's blessing himself with the wrong hand, the heathen.
I'm really glad this sketch went down well, as we had a lot of fun doing it, took some interesting risks, and it appears to have paid off. We can't forget one of the reasons we started doing sketches, which was to figure out how to be funny on camera. This week was a good lesson.
Class dismissed.
Arms
ps: a potato can thicken a soup but make sure you don't- oh who am I to give cooking advice.
Comments
I wonder was it a particular newsreader Arms was inspired by or do most sound like that over there?
Georgie Ferguson
I made a curry tonight and thought of you! Not exactly soup, but it’s only my second or third go at curry and, well, they don’t sell McDonnell’s here so…
I would like to know more about the expensive flowers. Did you pick them up, or did a bewildered florist deliver them to your office? Does the florist know how many views their now-famous flowers have gotten?
Thank you very much for the kind words ☺️
Melissa Nordling (TippyTheTerror)
Oh I do remember reading about that on your blog a while back! I just didn't recognise it because the only picture of it I've seen was the game itself rather than the box. It's such a beautifully crafted game, even just the box looks like something that would be sold in a shop. Danish Turtle really outdid herself with that one! 😊
sure, I'd love to share that! And I'm crossing my fingers that they'd really make that FAH board game. My niece deserves the Ann-Oisin-Barry board game but *I* deserve the FAH board game 🤣😁
That was made by Danish Turtle. I have an Ode to the FAHns Interview with her on my website. You can read all about how she made that brilliant game.
Melissa Nordling (TippyTheTerror)
I love the idea of making a board game based around the Anne Flanagan sketches! Please share a photo if you do make it, one of the things I love the most about the FAH fan community is seeing the amazing creativity of people from around the world. 😊 And I'll certainly be joining you in saying "take my money!" if the FAH board game in the pictures is ever for sale!!
Melissa Nordling (TippyTheTerror)
Also, much more importantly, when did you create a board game based on your sketches and where can I get one???
Melissa Nordling (TippyTheTerror)
Doing a check for bald spots with that photo from above eh Arms? 😉
Translations to British English (can’t speak for Irish English): the broiler = the grill. Cilantro = coriander (leaf). Sounds delicious!
Gris
It's so great to read your thoughts about the sketch, Arms! Thank you for sharing all of these. I do believe that 'Art happens not in isolation, but in community.' And the fact that I'm reading an artist's thoughts is exciting–I'm going to watch your videos again with the soup metaphor now :)
Andrea Groh
Stock Recipe for Asianesque Dishes This works much better than standard stock for dishes with roots in China, Vietnam, Thailand and India. Rub one small onion, quartered, and 5cm piece of ginger lightly with oil, and grill them till lightly charred under the broiler Chop the ginger, throw it, the onion, 1 whole star anise, 1 thin cinnamon stick into a pressure cooker. Add one skinned chicken carcass halved through the ribs, or 1 kg skinned chx backs/wings. Add water so it’s 1 cm over top of chx. Cook under pressure for 1 hr. Depressurize, put back on heat and simmer a small bunch of cilantro (frisches Koriander in DE) for 15 min. Strain, cool, and freeze in sizes your recipes call for (I do 100ml and 400ml plastic containers, then pop them out and store in freezer in a lg ziplock bag.)
Andrea Groh
Congratulations, Arms! Stock-making is a basic, crucial skill to master for good cooking. I’m impressed it seems you’re going for the classic ‘two rounds’ method—make stock then use the stock instead of water to make stock again? That’s what it sounded like. Must admit I’m too impatient and lazy to do that regularly. Worked with a Cordon Bleu-trained chef in a lab once, and she did a stock-making workshop for us. She taught us a cheat method making brown chicken stock: rub a bit of tomato paste on the skinned chicken pieces, then put all pieces and the veg in a hot oven for 30 min (some of the veg may need to come out earier), then dump everything into the stockpot. Also, add one cup of dry white wine to the pot with the water.
I know I LOVE a sketch when hours later after watching it, that said sketch sneaks in and makes me laugh OUT LOUD (sometimes embarrassingly in public) 😜 Tiernan's latest sketch is one of those. And after reading this -diary entry- from Arms and knowing what had been behind the scenes, it shouldn't be so surprising that I have already placed a spot for it in my TOP TEN of 2023 🏆 Just those looks from the mourners, and yes, the disrespectful cap wearing ones---I laugh even when writing this 😆🤣😂 And the boxing announcer 😆🤣😂 You have outdone yourselves with this one, Arms. I've probably watched the sketch around 25-30 times since Thursday. I should stop counting 😆 Your diary entries are ALWAYS a treat for me. And the visuals that go with them ---- a big chef's kiss! 😍😍😍 One comment about something though.... That FAH board game based on your sketches (it's my first time to see that) caught my attention because I have been thinking of making an Ann-Oisin-Barry board game that I'd be giving to my niece as a seventh birthday present. Her birthday is just a day behind yours and Foil. I took some old Snake and Ladders board that I was thinking of refurbishing and drafted kid-friendly ideas including a part where one needs to speak an Irish word (that we'd Google, of course ....or OF CURSE because we'd probably butcher it) and "punishments" from Ann like "do the gardening, re-tile the bathroom, pave the driveway" and I'd add a lot of interactive paper dolls. My niece has been a fan since I played your Oisin sketches last Christmas. (That playlist is all I could show her ...for now) If you do have that board game though...I'll be breaking my oath to stop shopping abroad. I've been good last year and if you had that board game for sale---- yep, just take my money!!!! 🤑🤑🤑 Oh, and HAPPY NEW YEAR, lads and FAHns!
Wow, these sketches and this set are a kid's dream come true. Reminds me of doing sketches with my brother at a young age - wildly collecting stuff from the household to build up to something astonishingly coherent. Which truly is like making soup!
selkie
Oh Arms, you don't bore us! Your sketch diaries are a delight, even if your soup wasn't (and that'll improve with practice, I'm sure). This sketch was wonderfully full of absurd humour and nuanced opportunities for acting, set-building, and filmmaking skills to shine. Your behind-the-scenes pictures are always such fun too! We get to see how a just-barely-big-enough set comes together so convincingly, like magic, from what you have lying around the office. (Foil in shorts-and-half-a-costume also invariably gives me a laugh!) You got the year wrong in the caption of picture #11, though; it's 2023 now. 😊 Tiernan is definitely a favourite character; you do such a great job of bringing him to life!
Always a treat to read Arms’ writing! :)
