YouTube is a veritable smorgasbord of videos designed to tickle your funny bone, and Karan Talwar is the latest to join the bandwagon. The 33-year-old stand up comedian from Mumbai has launched The Dope , a weekly round-up of current affairs and viral videos from all over the Internet.
“I'm the kind of guy who is online at 4 a.m. for no reason. I’ve always wanted to have a web-show but had no idea how to go about it. That’s where Sameer Pitalwalla of Culture Machine helped,” says Karan, speaking over the phone. Culture Machine, a digital video entertainment company, conceptualised and helps put together the show every week.
The format of the show is simple: a short intro, followed by Karan’s take on the week’s “breaking news” (like the Preity-Ness case or India’s ever-entertaining political scene) and viral videos. The show is approximately five minutes long and ends with ‘Gandugiri’, featuring a mash-up of a popular song with a completely unrelated video.
"We shoot in front of a green screen and there’s no fuss. I ad-lib the jokes once the camera is rolling and we wrap up in 10-15 minutes. My creative process is scouring the web and downloading the videos I want and splicing them,” says Karan.
After working in corporate America for a decade, he moved back to India and started a platform for stand-up comedians. “The scene was almost non-existent here even four years ago. Now there is a lot of scope for young comedians as stand up comedy shows are being seen as an alternative form of entertainment now. It's only getting bigger,” he says.
New episodes of The Dope are out every Thursday on the BollywoodGaandu YouTube channel.
