I’ve watched the Judd Apatow one with my wife a bit, so it’s the only one I can comment on, but here’s where I think it shines:
1. Exposure to his story. How did he get there. What did it take? How long? How did he pay his dues? How did he get lucky? How did he make his luck?
If I were a teenager, this would’ve been HUGE. It isn’t a blue print, but it gives you an idea of what these people go through, and how many years it takes to get where they are.
2. Exposure to his methods. How does he come up with jokes? How does he shape a story? How does he harness inspiration? How does he workshop and develop those ideas?
This is valuable to anyone interested in doing what he does. It’s a playbook for getting started. It has the potential to shatter the whole, “I don’t even know where to start” barrier.
“Start writing down funny things that happen” is obvious as hell, but hearing that’s exactly how one of the best in the world does it, from the horses mouth, gives it a different weight.
3. It’s entertaining. Even if you’re not intending to write comedy, it’s kinda like watching an episode of VH1 Storytellers. You get to hear great stories about how things, that you’re intimately familiar with, happened.
4. Pro-tips. This kinda goes with 3, but there are some real gems. He’ll say something casually about how he does X, and you just think, “duh. Of course that’s how I should be doing X. Can’t believe I never thought of that.”
Think about times in your life when you’ve learned something small from a peer and had your mind blown that you’ve not been doing it that way your whole life. Those are peppered throughout.
5. Demystification of the “master”. I actually think this might be the important thing in all of this. These people are just people. They worked hard and put themselves out there. They fail a lot; probably more than most.
I had the same feeling arriving in a start up office in Silicon Valley from a Texas childhood. I had pulled back the curtain, and it was just more people. Sure, they know a lot about machine learning, but that’s not because they’re superhuman, it’s because they spent the last 10 years (PhD) studying that extremely specific topic.
Seeing how human these people are makes me feel like there are a lot of people I know who are every bit as capable of writing funny things as he is. That doesn’t mean it’ll be easy for them, or that they’ll ever reach his level, but it makes it feel like if they just reprioritized a few things and did it — they might surprise themselves.
——
So, will he teach you the intricacies of script structure, dialog, timing, etc... no.
Will he spark enough creativity and interest that you get off your butt, start writing some stuff, and go find the content that will teach you those things? I think so.
In my mind, Masterclass is like a tasting menu of hobbies / alternative professions. It gives you a feel for what’s involved and what it takes, and then the person can decide if that’s the rabbit hole they’d like to go down.
1. Exposure to his story. How did he get there. What did it take? How long? How did he pay his dues? How did he get lucky? How did he make his luck?
If I were a teenager, this would’ve been HUGE. It isn’t a blue print, but it gives you an idea of what these people go through, and how many years it takes to get where they are.
2. Exposure to his methods. How does he come up with jokes? How does he shape a story? How does he harness inspiration? How does he workshop and develop those ideas?
This is valuable to anyone interested in doing what he does. It’s a playbook for getting started. It has the potential to shatter the whole, “I don’t even know where to start” barrier.
“Start writing down funny things that happen” is obvious as hell, but hearing that’s exactly how one of the best in the world does it, from the horses mouth, gives it a different weight.
3. It’s entertaining. Even if you’re not intending to write comedy, it’s kinda like watching an episode of VH1 Storytellers. You get to hear great stories about how things, that you’re intimately familiar with, happened.
4. Pro-tips. This kinda goes with 3, but there are some real gems. He’ll say something casually about how he does X, and you just think, “duh. Of course that’s how I should be doing X. Can’t believe I never thought of that.”
Think about times in your life when you’ve learned something small from a peer and had your mind blown that you’ve not been doing it that way your whole life. Those are peppered throughout.
5. Demystification of the “master”. I actually think this might be the important thing in all of this. These people are just people. They worked hard and put themselves out there. They fail a lot; probably more than most.
I had the same feeling arriving in a start up office in Silicon Valley from a Texas childhood. I had pulled back the curtain, and it was just more people. Sure, they know a lot about machine learning, but that’s not because they’re superhuman, it’s because they spent the last 10 years (PhD) studying that extremely specific topic.
Seeing how human these people are makes me feel like there are a lot of people I know who are every bit as capable of writing funny things as he is. That doesn’t mean it’ll be easy for them, or that they’ll ever reach his level, but it makes it feel like if they just reprioritized a few things and did it — they might surprise themselves.
—— So, will he teach you the intricacies of script structure, dialog, timing, etc... no.
Will he spark enough creativity and interest that you get off your butt, start writing some stuff, and go find the content that will teach you those things? I think so.
In my mind, Masterclass is like a tasting menu of hobbies / alternative professions. It gives you a feel for what’s involved and what it takes, and then the person can decide if that’s the rabbit hole they’d like to go down.