Check Out Piper Hinson’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Piper Hinson.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Josh and I met in our UCB 201 Improv class. We always joke that we were drawn to each other for some reason. And because of the seats we chose in class, it changed both of our lives. We hit it off quickly and I would say we both thought the other was a good improviser and became friends. At the finish of the class, we had a class performance and at our post-show bar hang, one of the gals in the class got a little drunk and came up to us and said “you guys are so funny! …and I have all this camera equipment, we should make stuff! You guys should write!” Josh and I (who were much less drunk) looked at each other and said, “yes! let’s do that!”

So we started writing and making sketches in 2013. We initially tried to put out a ton of content. We would film several sketches in a weekend (3-4) then have a steady release schedule of one sketch a week. At that point, we were writing and acting and shooting these with some of the people from our 201 class. Through the years, we changed who was in the group.

We named ourself “Just Giggle It” a few months in and have been making content ever since!

We started getting YouTube viewer attention with a couple of videos. “Powerpuff Girls Trailer” and our series “Harley Quinn and The Joker Vs The Real World”. Josh wrote both and they have made it so we can keep making sketch content over the years.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The biggest struggle was always how to pay for it all. We had no problem making funny ideas and scripts and had a great pool of actors to work with. But locations cost money, crew costs money, etc. So once we had income coming in from the Harley Quinn and The Joker series, it made MAKING the comedy so much easier. Money was not holding us back like it did in the early days. In the beginning, every actor in a sketch would put in money to pay the crew. It sucked to have to do that…but we knew we needed to spend money to make money baby!

Some other struggles have been having people peel off to do other things. For Josh and me, Just Giggle It was our life. We would give anything or sacrifice anything to see it succeed. Not everyone can put in what we do, so sometimes people would leave the group to focus on other things. That was always sad because everyone who has been part of Just Giggle It is special to us! We are all friends and spend so much time with each other it’s hard to “lose” someone. At our biggest, I think we were about 12 people writing and acting in sketches on a regular basis. And for the past 4-5 years, we have been 4; Piper Hinson, Joshua Thomas, Katie Mary Garland, and Alex Poncio.

People have gotten married, had kids, moved away, then moved back. Life happens!

The good news is most people who have been part of the group will pop back in to be a “special guest” when they have time. We are all on our own path and it’s great to have people we started out with doing such great things now!

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
We are known by most of our fans for the “Harley Quinn and The Joker vs The Real World” series. Josh wrote and created this world. What the whole group is good at is making dark-humored sketch comedy. We all bring something to the table that makes our group unique. Alex brings a wacky comedy perspective that the rest of us would never think of but it’s hilarious! Josh is both a great writer, editor and director, Katie brings a more pop culture comedy perspective and I bring a musical background.

One of the things we are most proud of is our “Just Giggle It- At Home” Show that we made during the pandemic. We decided since we always make sketches on a budget and usually at someone’s house, we could make a show at home- during the pandemic. We each filmed things on our own, filmed a few Zoom sketches and created a 4- 30 minute episodes. It was really fun seeing what we each came up with by ourselves. I’m so proud of us for making something when it seemed impossible. We all made some really great stuff over that time!

I think what sets us apart is that no matter what comes at us over the years, we have always been able to keep going, keep creating and keep growing. We started our group 8 years ago with no one but our moms knowing who we were and having to beg friends and family to watch our sketches, and now we have a YouTube channel with 144,000 subscribers and almost 50 million views!

How do you think about luck?
I don’t know that we have much luck- good or bad. We work our buns off and have for years. The reason we have success now is from believing in ourselves, taking chances and working hard- that’s it. There were years we were making sketches and 50 people would watch. Josh has a talent for understanding niche fan bases. He has written several viral success. But they weren’t just “luck.” We had been making content for years, making it better each time and the videos that went viral were because Josh made what he loved and we made them well. We didn’t try to get clicks, we just tried to make stuff we thought was funny and looked good.

We have about 80 scripted sketches written by all of us and many more videos on our channel.

That’s all from each of us finding something funny, writing a script, organizing a shoot, editing the footage and finally putting it out.

I think the only luck we have is that we all ended up meeting each other at the right place and the right time.

Contact Info:

• Email: justgiggleit@gmail.com
• Website: http://justgiggleit.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justgiggleit/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/JustGiggleIt