festival info +
APPLICATION GUIDELINES AND SUGGESTIONS
FROM LCF FOUNDER, DONNIE MARSH
Lookout Comedy Festival was founded in 2018 as a labor of love by Chattanooga comedian Donnie Marsh with the volunteer help of other local Chattanooga comics and fans with day jobs. Over four days every October the goal of the festival is threefold:
(1) to provide comedy fans with a rich buffet of different comedy styles from some of the best rising comics from around the country,
(2) put our featured comics in front of enthusiastic audiences and helpful industry representatives,
(3) bring attention to the city that’s given us such a supportive place to do comedy.
Our festival headliners are booked months ahead of time by the Comedy Catch, JJ’s Bohemia, Don’t Tell Comedy, and our other local producers of independent showcases. Show openers will be selected from the featured comics accepted from applications. We accept submissions for any style of standup comedy, with preference for five to six minute videos of uninterrupted performance. If you send a longer video it should be bookmarked from the spot you want the judges to start watching from, but you will be judged on the following five minutes.
A well shot video from a comedy club is ideal, but any video is acceptable as long as it has good enough sound and lighting to allow your performance to be the focus. If someone talking in the back of the room where you placed the camera is too loud, or if it’s too blurry or distant for us to see you, that hurts our ability to assess you well, and we will favor the videos that weren’t as difficult to watch.
Do not send a video of a podcast or of you simply talking into the camera. That’s not what we’re doing here and we will not review those. It needs to be from a real show.
When judging the videos, our highest values are originality, hilarity, and the sense that the audience is in very good hands. It should come as no surprise that some topics have been beaten to death, and the judges have to watch a lot of videos, so we appreciate any novel, innovative material. For instance, the year after we came back from Covid, over a third of the sets were about that and it was a bit much. We invite you to bring something fresh to the table.
We also look for comics who behave professionally and will represent the festival well, so your reputation may be relevant. We’re unlikely to book anyone who we’ve heard will cause the other comics not to have a good time.
Your bio should include your home club, any relevant credits you have, other festivals you’ve been on, and some headliners you’ve performed with. It is not the place to sell us on your comedy. The video should do that. Every year there’s someone who calls himself “the funniest guy you’ve never heard of,” but he never is.
If you were accepted to the festival in years past that is neither a plus nor a minus, unless you were with us in the last year. If you were just on the festival last year, we ask that you take a break and give others a chance.
Each video is watched by at least three judges, graded on a scale of 1-10, and then watched by more judges and haggled over when there’s a tie or dispute. Most years, at least half of the comics who submit to the festival are probably good enough to be on, but when other comics are submitting great material, “good enough” isn’t good enough. You basically want to make us think we’re going to look dumb one day if we didn’t have you, and the best videos achieve that.
The top five to ten videos usually stand out from the pack and exhibit high quality in every way. They get high scores (9-10) from every judge and are hilarious the whole way through, in addition to having good sound and video quality. After the top ten it can get a little subjective, and what separates 11th place from 35th might be one judge who just didn’t get what you were doing. When the scores are compiled, three eights (24) beat two nines and a five (23), so your odds are best if you do the material that’s least likely to confuse or alienate someone.
If you’re accepted, congratulations! We hope that this weekend is not just a fun hang that you can write off on your taxes, but a tangible stepping stone in your career. We bring in club owners, agents, and other industry reps who can help you via the industry panels, and they’ll be watching and hanging out all week. Based on previous years, we can promise that if you do well you will get paid work in places you want to perform.
If you’re not accepted, there is just one reason: there were simply too many videos that the judges liked more. There may be nothing particularly wrong with your video, and it doesn’t mean you’re delusional to pursue comedy- it’s just that a major part of whether or not you get accepted to these kinds of things is the quality of competitors you’re up against, and the judges felt your competitors were stronger. This is why getting an excellent five minute video is a high priority. In this case, quality is better than quantity, and it’s better to take six months getting a great one than to film a lot of sets that are just okay. The “good enough” sets may produce small clips that are good for social media, but they don’t help with this.
It’s hard. It was certainly humbling for me when I started this festival and watched submission videos for the first time in 2019 to realize that I didn’t have any videos that were good enough for me to get into the festival I started. We know how hard it is to get a video you’re really proud of, so we mean no disrespect.