Tony Hinchcliffe On Forging Better Connections With His ‘Kill Tony’ Audience Thanks To VR Live Streams

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The stand-up comedy landscape is crowded these days. Big expansions, like the “Netflix Is a Joke” campaign (which is pushing the streaming giant’s current and upcoming work with Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Ellen DeGeneres and Jerry Seinfeld), are happening by the hour. Meanwhile significant reductions, like Saturday Night Live‘s decision to bar freelancers from Weekend Update, are effectively cutting comics off from previously reliable methods of getting their jokes — and their names — out there. And to make matters worse, even newer outlets like Seeso are already getting pushed out.

Enter Tony Hinchcliffe, the 33-year-old comic best known for writing some of the Comedy Central Roasts‘ best jokes, and for hosting his popular Kill Tony podcast at the world-famous Comedy Story venue in Los Angeles. Since 2013, Hinchcliffe and his comedian friends have presented audiences with an hour and a half of uninterrupted comedy that, among other things, includes giving random amateurs a chance to impress them and the room with their best jokes. To liven things up, Kill Tony began live streaming its tapings via YouTube, an element that now includes the use of virtual reality (VR) — thereby affording viewers the chance to experience the entire show in 360 degrees.

The use of VR in stand-up comedy isn’t all that new. Comedy Bang! Bang!-alum-turned The Late Late Show bandleader Reggie Watts performed a virtual stand-up set in a Second Life-like virtual environment last year. Other projects, like the “Comedy Living Room,” have made use of AltspaceVR to create digital environments in which comedians can try out their material on an audience of fellow VR users. Kill Tony, however, doesn’t go quite as far for the artist as these endeavors — and that’s because Hinchcliffe is more concerned with making his show more accessible to those viewers who just can’t make it to the Comedy Store that night. The Ohio native explained this and more in a recent chat.

I’ve caught episodes of Kill Tony before, but your use of VR is more recent.

It’s a brand new thing. It’s mind-boggling to me. I think ours is one of the only shows that really plays into it, that best uses the 360 degree experience, because there are so many moving parts to it. There’s a band on the left, a comedian who got pulled out of a bucket down the middle, and two amazing guest comedians to the right every week. And then there’s me, my sound effects guy and producer Brian Redban, and house artist Ryan J. Ebelt, who draws every episode while it’s happening. So if you look from left to right, you can see all of these the things. If you look down and to the right, you can see Ryan drawing a caricature of the episode, which he’s been doing for hundreds of episodes now.

When a name gets pulled out the bucket, you can turn around and see them come from the back of the main room at the Comedy Store, which is a really cool thing. It’s like the most famous, biggest comedy club ever, and all of a sudden you can tune in from anywhere in the world — and be able to turn around. It’s not just that you’re seeing our show in VR360. I’m pretty sure we are the first show to stream live, VR360 content in a comedy format, and in one of the oldest comedy clubs in the world. Everybody around the world who wants a chance to go to the Comedy Store can now do it. They can get some of the venue’s vibe by putting on their little headsets, which have also become lighter, more cost-effective and quite efficient. All of this technology is happening at once, and we’re excited to have a show that’s at the forefront of it.

What sparked it

I’ve always been very interested in that field, and always looking ahead for ways to give an audience a more in-house experience. I tried it with the one-hour special I made for Netflix, One Shot. We shot it all in one continuous steady-cam take. It was my little brainchild, and once I’d thought of it, I attacked it until it was done. I shot and produced it myself — which, if you knew what my bank account looked like at the time, you’d be quite surprised we managed to turn it into anything. This is also how I’m treating this VR360 thing. I just want to be at the helm of it and knock it out. I want to give the audience the truest possible perspective, to let them see what the shows are really like — not what they see in these fancy specials with canned laughter and clear editing. I trust my work so much that I don’t mind taking that chance to stream it live, to let them see what we’re really doing. It connects the audience more to what we’re doing.

There’s something to be said about putting comedy out there that doesn’t have a nice sheen to it. That’s raw, it’s more…

It’s just what it really is. The things that you see on a typical special aren’t really what you see when you go to a show, and if only the best and biggest comedy fans end up noticing what I’m doing, I’ll take it. I don’t really have this die-hard following of people. I mean, it’s people that like the good stuff, if that makes sense. They get it. Meanwhile, I think a lot of old school comedians are afraid of these technologies, or new things in general, because they’re set in their ways. They have everything set the way they like it, and that’s fine. But me I still get excited about taking chances and experiencing the kind of pressure where, if I screw up, all of my podcast fans are going to see or hear it. I love that. I guess you could say I’m a playoff guy, you know How Tom Brady stayed cool when he was down 28-3 at halftime.

But do you worry you won’t get a bigger audience with, or because of, these kinds of things That it will be too niche

No, it’s the opposite of that. We’re watching our numbers in the Comedy Store’s main room explode every Monday. People travel from all around the world to come see our show now. Last week we had someone from the Ukraine, a guy from Poland, and another who drove all the way in from Charlotte, North Carolina. Fans to come to the show, all the way across the country. I had a guy from Dubai once, and I didn’t even believe him. I called bullshit. I literally said, “Bullshit. Show me on your phone. Show me your podcast app.” Sure enough there it was, Arabic lettering and all. And it just hits you like, “Holy shit! What we’re doing must be special.” It’s different than TV, typical comedy specials, or normal podcasts. It feels wildly improvised because it is. I mean, we’re pulling random names out of a bucket for the amateur showcase. We’re improvising jokes on the spot. It’s just us messing around for an hour and a half, and that’s why all these Kill Tony fans come in to see us. We’re really having a lot of fun with these shows.

Has the use of VR made any noticeable differences to this audience response

It definitely hasn’t affected it negatively. It’s hard to tell whether our more recent increases have been because of the quality of the show, or because people hundreds or thousands of miles away want a chance to be in the main room or the Comedy Store. Either way, the numbers are always consistently going up. Our first episode of the show over four years ago had about, I think, ten live audience members in total — and all ten of them were comedians. So to watch us go up to 250 people last week, with at least 70 names in the bucket, isn’t something we can ignore. Even if only eight to 10 of those bucket names get picked. Yet those who aren’t picked not only end up enjoying themselves, but they also learn about the trade and return for future recordings. I learn something new at least once per episode, and I’m obsessed. I’ve been doing comedy for over a decade.

Is it something you see yourself playing with for a while Or do you already have ideas about other things you want to try

It’s more the latter of the two. I’m a believer in having fun, laughing, making other people laugh, and capturing as much of the footage as possible. So, for example, with this tour one of the cool things Jeremiah and I are doing is we’re basically filming just about everything. We’re recording these car rides with a fancy GoPro and a whole lot of other cameras. It’s a constant upkeep. Sometimes we’ve got ten minutes before a show starts and you can hear the crowd roaring on the other side of the wall, Run the Jewels playing to the audience — and you can tell they’re real fans. You can feel it in the air. Meanwhile, there we are uploading and transferring footage so we can clear the file. So we can get to the set we’re about to do. Even though we’re making a point to stay above it all, and not let it stress us out, we’re working on it constantly. We’re constantly trying to put more things together. I mean, we don’t even know what we’re going to do with it all… though we became the truck-honking champion of America.