Thank You

Posted on March 5, 2014 by Lee

Well, I’ve been blow away.

When I opened the submission window on the 1st of February I was expecting only a handful of people to send in their ideas. Boy, was I wrong!

I’ve literally just finished logging everything that’s been sent in and even with my basic maths I can count almost 200 sketches. Thank you so much to everyone who has spent countless hours writing stuff for consideration, it is very much appreciated. I’ve only managed to read about a tenth of what I’ve been sent so far but already I can see a few sketches that could work. The inclusion of themes for series 3 really seems to have helped writers to focus their ideas and hopefully it will also make the episodes a bit more joined up… well maybe.

I aim to have read through everything over the next few weeks and so I’ll commit to letting everyone know if they’ve been successful by Tuesday 1st April. This should put series 3 on track for the first episode being released in May, but I’m not going to put that in bold just yet.

For series 3, I plan to record more than I need and cut sketches that don’t work out in the recording which is a common policy on shows like the BBC’s Newsjack and The Show What You Wrote. The idea with this is to be left with the strongest material whilst giving everything that I like a good chance. Hopefully this also will encourage those that get recorded but not used that they are on the right path for the show.

So thanks once again for sending in your work, it’s good to know that people like 4amcab enough to spend their time submitting sketches.

Almost done

Posted on December 3, 2013 by Lee

On Saturday 30th November, the 4amcab team assembled for the last time this year and recorded the final episode of the current series. It’s been so much fun to work with all our brilliantly talented actors, that I just wanted to acknowledge them all in white and black, for giving up their time to do our silly little show.Chris B, Anna, Will, Helen, Chris L, Jo and Dan have been fantastic and always up for trying out our crazy sketches, even when they are just that little bit too rude (sorry Anna & Will in particular!).

Once the final episode is released into the wilderness and we’ve had time to recover from all the festivites we will begin working on the next stage of 4amcab’s existence (whatever that is?) and Rachel and I certainly hope that all our actors will join us again for the ride. I’m fairly confident that they will, as they get to go to the pub afterwards!

The final episode of Series 2 will be released on Wednesday 18th December, just in time to get you in the Christmas Spirit.

The Window is Shut

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Lee

A big thank you to all the writers that have sent us their work over the last month for the forthcoming series of 4amcab, our inbox has been filling up nicely. We’re going to now read everything that was sent and can begin the process of planning out all six episodes of the second series.

Follow us on twitter to keep informed about how the project is progressing and if we need any more material we’ll put a call out on there (and on here too but there’ll be links from twitter).

So once again, thank you for taking the time to contribute and we hope to be able to use as much as possible.

Done and Dusted… for now!

Posted on November 27, 2012 by Lee

And now, the end is near. And so I face the final curtain.

Well there are no curtains but, metaphorically, the final one has fallen on series one. We’d just like to take a moment to pat ourselves on the back –

*humph*

“Owwww!”

We’d also say a few thank you’s to all the wonderful people we’ve worked with on the project so far. We’ve had nine writers, 16 actors, one animator and one Bi Polar Bear! Not to mention 6,368 downloads of the whole project to date, which has far exceeded our humble expectations. We’ve recorded in seven different locations, ranging from a proper studio and a converted church all the way to Lee’s garage and garden shed.

I hope you agree that we have come a long way from the start and that as we’ve gone along the episodes have improved in every way. We are going to spend some of our time off looking at what has worked and come back with a bigger and better show in the New Year.

In the meantime, we are working on a Christmas Special (are we? – ed), so it’s not really the end. Series Two will kick off once we’ve recovered from our Yuletide hangovers, so expect something in February. We will continue to post stuff up on this website and we are quite active on Twitter too, oh and don’t forget to ‘like’ us on Facebook … we’ll even throw in a digital latte!

Thanks for your submission

Posted on September 19, 2012 by Lee

We once again opened our door, or rather inbox, to you to submit your sketches and scripts for the next episode of 4amcab and, flippin’ ‘eck did you respond? Yes you did. We had by far our highest number of would be cabbers send us their thoughts and we thank you all for taking the time and interest to send us stuff. We’re currently sifting through everything to see what will work and what is, well, not quite right for us.

We had a really wide selection of ideas, probably in the region of about 50 sketches. We did notice there was one topic that was more popular than others which can only be termed ‘bedroom’ sketches. I guess you lot get up to more interesting things at 4am than we do. Seriously though, we too send our ideas out to other programmes in the hope that we will one day be loved, so we know how it feels to get rejected. If you’d like to get some feedback on why we’ve not used your contribution then do get in touch and we’ll get back to you. We’ve had some useful dialogue with several writers that have sent in their work. David Salisbury, from the Live from Kirrin Island podcast, sent this response after we’d given him feedback:

“As you know dealing with comedy writers, especially beginners involves a lot of fragile egos so your gentle approach to criticism is appreciated I’m sure. As I wrote recently, submitting sketches is the emotional equivalent of asking complete strangers to slap you in the face in the hope that one day they will miss. So it’s always good if they’re not swinging their arm too hard!”

Read David’s full blog post here

Episode 5 ought to be ready towards the start of next month, we will shout about it the minute it is ready. As always, follow us on twitter for updates.