I’m the Comedian Demi Adejuigbe and This Is How I Work

Demi Adejuigbe has written for The Good Place and James Corden , hosted the podcasts Punch Up the Jam and Gilmore Guys, and turned September 21 into an Internet celebration. He wrote fake credit songs forSpace Jam ,Black Panther ,Get Out ,Infinity War ,Ready Player One ,Aladdin ,Lando and Legacymovie . He became famous for messing around on the Internet, but his most public project right now is the comedy show he co-hosts in Los Angeles, Everything’s Great! By email, Demi told me about his career, his crazy projects and how he shot that September 21st video with the mariachi group.

Venue: Los Angeles, CA Current concert: Nada! Writer / comedian / performer. (Most recently, writer The Late Late Show with James Corden and co-host of Punch Up The Jam ) Current computer: 13-inch MacBook Pro (2017) (and 2017 21.5-inch iMac) Current mobile device: iPhone X One word. which best describes how you work: frantic

First of all, tell us a little about your past and how you got where you are now.

I grew up in Plano, Texas and have always had an interest in writing and video production. I learned video editing and effects from pirated copies of After Effects and Final Cut Pro through online tutorials when I was in high school, initially for school projects, but this turned into a skill that I used mainly to create commercials for online contests. and short sketches. with friends.

I loved it so much that I felt like it was “what I wanted to do in my life,” so I went to the University of Texas at Austin to shoot a film and kept going. In the last semester, I moved to Los Angeles and did an internship working with comedy producers and then worked as an office manager in an animation studio. Soon after, I started doing a podcast about Gilmore Girls (called Gilmore Guys ) with a friend I met on Twitter.

The connections I made at these three concerts helped me move into different fields of comedy and writing, while giving me the freedom to figure out what kind of comedy I like and develop the skills to create my own things (i.e. making a musical comedy, learning logic and composition).

What are your job responsibilities?

I am a writer and a comedian and both have very similar responsibilities. Both require me to make a comedy, but as a writer I often do it for characters or concepts outside of me, and as a comedian I often play or produce comedy with my own voice or from an incorporeal “idea” (i.e. what if X did Y ).

Take us through a recent or noteworthy work day.

Every year around September 21st, I shoot a video dancing to a remix of the song “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire, and release it on September 21st (the date at the beginning of the song).

This year we shot a video two days before this, on the 19th, and it took us a day to equip my apartment with all sorts of gadgets, props and decorations, including a confetti / glue wall emptying my fridge. so I could hide in it by editing myself in the music video for September, stringing on the strings and balloons for the banner, rearranging the furniture, rehearsing the video with my co-producer Marina Shifrin, and bringing the mariachi band to my apartment to perform the song.

And then, after all that, for the next two days I did post-production, editing and remixing of the song itself.

You talked at the 2018 XOXO Festival about exploring a wider range of creative work and trying to become an artist. How was it last year?

It wasn’t easy! Moreover, even when I was performing at XOXO, I had a number of jobs that were my daily concern and did not allow me to fully focus on this broader spectrum of creative work.

Since then, I’ve quit the show I was working on and dropped the podcast I was hosting together to focus on these things – like developing my own projects and writing films – and starting a monthly live show in Los Angeles. it allows me to perform more live, to perform in person and makes me create a whole new, live beat every month. It definitely helped me become an artist and let me work more with my own point of view / voice.

What apps, gadgets or tools can’t you live without?

Well, besides the obvious Mac defaults like Quicktime or Notes (huge sigh): Dropbox, Adobe Creative Cloud (specifically Audition, Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, and Illustrator), Logic Pro X, Final Draft 10, Focus . MPEG Streamclip , Pages, Plex. , Videostream , Keynote, Spotify and VLC .

And on my phone (oh my god): Letterboxd , Lightroom, Music Memos , Metronome, and Google Maps. (I can live without Instagram, but I use it a lot, and I try as hell not to use Twitter, so I don’t keep the app on my phone.)

I also have a cheap Casio keyboard and Akai MPK Mini MKII keyboard that I plug into my computer whenever I compose a song, and a Shure microphone that I record from through the Zoom H6. I also have a Chromecast and Roku that I take with me everywhere because I am spoiled by technology and I love watching TV shows on TV even when I travel !!!!

How is your workplace arranged?

I don’t have a “standard” workspace, and it changes a lot depending on what I’m doing. But when I write, it’s often just from the couch in the living room on my laptop.

It’s the same with editing, if it’s something small, like a video cutter or a lightweight After Effects project, I’ll do it on a MacBook on the go, but when I need to work on something that requires a lot of processing or render time, I do this on a cheap living room table that is dressed like it’s built entirely of cardboard (from a series I shot with some friends – I just loved it so much that I saved it). I also usually write things down on a table in the corner of my bedroom, as my recording rig is so mobile and can be removed when needed.

What’s your favorite shortcut or hack?

It’s not that hard, but I love to record favorites for audio editing in Audition and just let the whole edit sequence fly around automatically when I have to do it a few times.

How do you keep track of what you need to do?

I’m not good at managing my time well, but my best attempt at doing this is to make extensive to-do lists that cover everything I need to do, no matter how large or small. I find crossing out tasks is very motivating, and the more I cross out the little things, the more I want to cross out the big ones.

But since I’m not good at keeping track of to-do’s in general, I just update my to-do lists every few days.

What’s your favorite side project?

It’s weird to call them side projects because everything I do online seems like a side project, but writing fake songs for movies is a lot of fun and just as unnecessary as they are (especially since they often get away from working around ), It’s such silly and reusable self-conceit that I don’t think I’ll stop completely anytime soon.

What are you reading now or what do you recommend?

I am the only person on the entire Internet who is currently reading Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror . (And Elmore Leonard’s ” Switch” .)

Can you share the music playlist you’ve created for work or somewhere else?

I can only work with instrumental music, so my “working” playlist often consists of only soundtracks for films by Johnny Greenwood and Trent Reznor, but I also have so many great playlists that I have made that only serve as soundtracks to inspire scenes in the things I write and help me define the tone of the project. Many of them are included in the playlist that I listen to whenever I go out for a walk, because walking around and imagining scenes in my head seems pleasant and strangely inspiring. Here’s this walking playlist:

What problem are you still trying to solve?

It’s very difficult for me to force myself to do something! Even what I want to do. Having a job that makes me hit a deadline is always so nice because that deadline is a necessary pressure, but when I write for myself, not having a deadline means I’m too careless about it. I need to find a way to set myself a mental deadline that will get me to do my own shit.