Pranks

For our television show we want to use VT’s of pranks, and in our groups we have been researching various shows that have also done this type of thing. The main influence is Balls of Steel. This is very much like our idea, except we have our own characters.

Balls of steel uses many different situations, and is always hidden camera. We also want to keep our pranks all hidden camera, as it is also good to catch the victims reaction once they realise they have been pranked.

The characters we have thought about so far are :

• Awkward Allen, a character that just gets involved in peoples conversations, if there are a group of friends chatting in a bar, allen will just walk up to them and sit with them, or start laughing as therer are laughing, making the victims feel very awkward.

• Patsy Postbox, a character that hides inside a postbox, and talks to the victims, it beign people walking past or people trying to post a letter. Patsy would make the victims jump and scare them as it is not something you expect when trying to post a letter.

• Sammy the seagull, a character that is a person dressed in a seagull outfit, and basically terrorises the public, scaring the children at the beach by stealing chips, and acting like a seagull but obviously in human form. This idea is based on the seagulls shown in the film ‘Finding Nemo’ who has the catchphrase ‘mine,mine,mine,mine’ this is also something we would use in our pranks.

• Background boy, this character is just the basic and well known prank who scares people by jumping out on them, he would forever be in the background like a normal person in public, but would then suddenly jump out with a mask or just shout to make them jump.

We have developed these idea’s, and began to think of pranks that would be re-occurring throughout the show, and to become a regular and recognised part of the show, we would want our characters to be known for their particular prank.

For our show we also need to make sure that the person we have pranked, will give their permission for the prank to be shown and that no one becomes offended by these pranks, and that they are just made for comedy.

There are various prank tv shows, and online youtube channels, we researched for our prank segment. The main influence being ‘Balls Of Steel’. The main reason for this being, that our show is a magazine show, so combining pranks and a magazine show, this is the closest we got.

I watched a few episodes of this to see how they introduce the pranks and what sort of things they talk about, whether it being after or before they show the video tape. As pranks are not often a segment shown on a magazine show, we needed to know how to be able to get it to fit in.

Other shows and online pranks I watched were:

• BBC’s Just for laughs
• Prank patrol
• Stitch Up