Jack Howard speaks with TenEighty about the latest Jack & Dean sketch, Who Threw That?
The comedy sketch, which has garnered over 164,000 views since being uploaded on 29 September, is the latest in a series of videos the pair have uploaded in 2018, including The Goblin and What’s His Face
Premiering last month during Buffer Festival 2018, Who Threw That? features Dean Dobbs as a teacher, whose students keep throwing objects at him while he’s trying to teach. As the sketch progresses, the items become more and more outlandish.
Speaking with TenEighty, Jack shares how the idea for the sketch came about:
“We put together a writers’ room of all our funny friends and as soon as I started writing on the board, [they] started immediately pretending they were in school and I, literally, started playing the character. I started going, ‘Who threw that?’ And then we just kept going and escalating it, and eventually I was like, ‘Guys, this is a sketch.'”
The idea to put together a writers’ room came from Jack and Dean’s time as Fellows at this year’s Sundance New Voices Lab. The approach is different from how the pair normally put together their sketches, with the two normally either working by themselves or with their friend, Paul Neafcy. As Jack notes, this new style was a “natural” fit:
“It was very natural, with everybody just throwing in ideas. Eventually, when I sat down, I took 20 minutes, put some headphones on and wrote down all the ideas and put them into a properly formatted script. […] It was a very, very different process, but I like that the process changes. I like that there’s a development on how we write it. It makes me feel like I’m not getting bored of the process.”
Along with featuring Jack and Dean, Who Threw That? also stars fellow YouTuber Myles Wheeler, who plays a student who is picked on by the other kids.
“Myles is somebody I’ve loved for several years, as a comedian, as a presenter, as a performer and as a filmmaker,” explains Jack. “I think he’s done some of the most exciting stuff on YouTube for the past few years. […] When I said to Hazel [Hayes], I was like, ‘I need to find somebody who is comedic, who can be very physically funny, who looks like a kid.’ She just went, ‘Myles.’
“It was great him being on set. He got it totally. There were ideas I had in my head that he just did. […] He did different things for every take. Like, he was just really good at capturing the tone, and he was just great to work with.”
Who Threw That? is currently available for viewing on Jack and Dean’s YouTube channel.
Want More?
Louis Cole and Adrian Bliss were amongst the YouTubers to take home honours at Buffer Festival’s Gala Award Show. Alternatively, you could read about the first round of YouTubers to be announced for VidCon London.
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