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I was in a randomly pissy mood for no reason whatsoever* until I came across this YouTube link in

flamika's LLJ: L and Light in a dance-off at Otakon. (Note to people in A-Kon's and AnimeFest's cosplays: PLEASE pre-record your dialogue like this. None of you know how to use a microphone or project.)

* but probably the fault of the headache I've had for 24 hours. Damn time change.

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Oh. My. GOD. One, that totally makes my day. Two, that makes me love L even more.

XD
Okay, that was amusing.

Haha, I know who uploaded those but I think the Princess Tutu dance-off (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_Ktb0omZa4) was better.

BWAHAHAHA. That L cosplayer has excellent L-like posture and gestures. *snickers*

With that video, my world has shattered. Cosplay skits can be funny?

I've always seen ones that were hilarious.
I guess that it depends upon the area.
But maybe because it was at Denver that they were funny.

I LOVED that. Thank you. Made me start clapping along with em.

Now if only I can get our convention people to start Consplay skits at AnimeIowa. I swear that my friends and I have the best idea ever, yet can't do it because we have no place to do it at.

Though, after watching the rest, there were not that many good skits. LIke only 3 really. I mean, what was with the Greed singing along to "Tired" from Blazing Saddles??

Cosplay skits are often excruciatingly dull. People have *no* clue what is and is not funny, have no clue how to FACE THE FRICKIN' AUDIENCE*, have no idea how to project their voices, and have no idea how to talk into microphones.

And let's not get into the fact that they feel the need to fill their 3-minute time slot, so put in a lot of running around or veeeeery sloooow posing just to stay on stage, which bores the audience. Or they go over because they enver timed their skit, and the cosplay organiziners never cut the skits short, even though they say they'll do it in the program book.

And back to the voices - if there are no microphones, they won't have practiced in a large room so they don't know how to speak loudly without yelling - especially over a rowdy audience. If there are microphones, they hold them far away from their mouths - like down near their waists - because they have no clue that the mics won't pick up their voices unless they're right next to their mouths. And they don't realize that even though *they* can hear their voices, nobody past the first row can.

* If two characters are talking to each other on stage, you fake it by turning only 1/4 to each other and 3/4 towards the audience. Profiles are deadly dull on stage, as are backs, unless there's a specific reason to show the back.

* And if the skit calls for one character to interrupt another, they have no idea that the person interrupting needs to start talking *before* the first person is finished. It's really horrible when the first person stops talking in the middle of a sentence and the second one waits half a beat before speaking the "interruption."

Honestly, everyone needs to record their dialogue beforehand and burn it to CD. You get stuff like in the video where L's last line was cut off because the DJ didn't realise s/he was waiting for a punchline, but at least people can HEAR the skit.

I can tell that you have some.... qualms about skits. ;)
I too know about using your voice and making a presentation. I've seen enough to know that we wish we could scream at them to speak up!

And skits are to be actually funny, sometimes their joke is only an inside thing that no one else will get.

THe best skit I saw was called Anime Sells Out. and had mini commercials of anime characters eating doritos, making slogans for pop, and even diamonds. But the delivery was what made it wondeful!

You should ph33r my one semester of theatre arts! (Well, and being in a school play, and running a light board, and so on.)

I think the skit I like best from the humor standpoint was one that was thrown together at the last minute before signups closed, by people running around and grabbing people costumed as well-known bishounen and asking if they wanted to be in the cosplay. The skit itself was just them standing on stage in a row for a few seconds as the audience noticed that they were all bishounen from various series, and then starting to jam out as the Backstreet Boys' "Larger Than Life" blared out. Total running time: about 30 seconds.

The skit I liked best from the technical standpoint, because it showcased the costumes very well, as well as the characters they were portraying, was a Milice Mizer cosplay group that, I think, recreated the dance and movements from a Malice Mizer video. They won Best of Show, and beat out the group of girls that had won something like three years in a row. The non-winners had several mistakes: they cosplayed Fruits Basket characters before the manga had gotten much exposure here and wore school uniforms to do it so that they weren't that recognizable, they wrote and performed a song (well, ok, that was their schtick that won them the prize before for Sailor Moon cosplay and something else), and NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THEM could project, so their entire skit and song was completely incomprehensible. They'd managed to do better in previous years because it was in a different hotel, with better acoustics, and they didn't put music on as a background, which drowned out whatever volume they managed to summon up.

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