A letter from Brent Forrester — Writer & director from "The Office"

Hello comedy fans! My name is Brent Forrester. I was a writer for the Simpsons in seasons 5 and 6, and a writer/director at “The Office” for seven seasons. I love to teach comedy writing, and for years I’ve been telling writers, “Don’t wait for permission to make your show. Shoot it yourself and put it on YouTube.”

Well, this year I decide to take my own advice.

In 2025 I pitched a show to NBC, Netflix and Fox called “Historic Freedomburg,” a workplace comedy set at a tourist site where they re-enact American History. All the execs laughed at my pitch. Then they all passed on it. So I decided to shoot it myself as a YouTube series.

I financed “Historic Freedomburg” myself on a micro-budget. For a crew, I found a bunch of recent grads from the University of Indiana. I rented a location in Oxnard, and borrowed costumes from a theater in my neighborhood.

I wasn’t too worried about the lack of budget. Sure it might look cheap. But only two things really matter in a comedy: the script and the performance. I put the script through lots of rewrites, until it was good enough to get the attention of three brilliant comedy performers: Seth Morris, Wayne Wilderson and Jee Young Han. For a week, I rehearsed the actors, punching up the script with every reading.

When it came to shoot on my tiny budget, so much went wrong. We lost our location. Cameras malfunctioned. Props never arrived. It was a series of crises that never happen in big budget TV.

But the script and the performances came through. And to my surprise, the ultra-low budget contributed to the comedy style. There’s a lack of corporate slickness that gives the show an underdog feeling.

Episode One of “Historic Freedomburg” dropped July 4th on my YouTube channel: @ProfessorBFo

Please check it out and tell me, is this MORE or LESS funny than the big budget comedy coming out of the networks?

My strategy moving forward is to land some kind of brand sponsorship, and keep the show going. If you make 6 episodes of a Web Series you can qualify for a short form Emmy. Aim high!

Hope you go to @ProfessorBFo and follow the journey of “Historic Freedomburg.” I predict big lessons here for all of us who are trying to create in this new entertainment landscape!

— Brent Forrester AKA Professor BFo