UCB and HP team up to write five days of sketches on the fly via emails from YouTube suggestions

Were you on YouTube on Friday? You probably noticed Rob Riggle on there hosting a special two-hour live improv show with his colleagues from the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater.

That was just the start of a five-day promotional stunt for HP's ePrint, which has allowed viewers to submit their sketch ideas via email and watch as UCB players create short videos for them.

Here's one about a comedian on the subway:


 

It reminds me of those filmmaking competitions in which performers run around a city creating shorts, only in this case, it's all happening in a studio and the YouTube viewers dish out the premises.

The UCB players are accepting and writing about 16 new sketches each day — the promotion runs through Wednesday. Brandon Gulya said he and the other writers are working from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., with crew and actors on an earlier schedule, and editors working later into the nights. The performers are Jon Gabrus, Jon Gemberling, Fran Gellespie, Ben Rogers and Joe Wengert, with sketches written by Gulya, Anthony King, Dan Klein, Arthur Meyer, and Melinda Taub.

Each day has a different theme and setting, such as home, office and school. Today's theme is travel, while Wednesday's is "anything goes." If you want to send in a suggestion — in the form of pictures, poems, single words or drawings, email ideas@hpeprintlive.com. If your submission gets picked, you'll receive a link to the personal video via email, and see it online at the HP ePrint Live YouTube channel and the HP for Home Facebook page.

Here are a couple of other videos from the ongoing promotion:

 

Two suggestions in one sketch:

 

And here's the full two-hour live show from Friday, hosted by Riggle!

 

 

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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