Dial-up and northern house-stuff killing the sched -- will be back on track Monday. Good luck to any of our friends in Houston, hope you've been on the road long enough that there's no bloody chance you're reading this.
Stay safe, all, and see you soon.
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Ch. 2 of Dingo
Just a reminder, Nelson's posting a chapter a week of his novel. You will dig. Chapter 2 is now up.
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Majiksthe Journo-tastico
By the way, big props to Lindsay, Brooklyn-based blogger who put on her hip-waders, grabbed her digital camera and went into the "K-Hole" as its known to do actual guerilla journalism from the ground. Spider Jerusalem would approve. You should swing by, cycle back through those posts and read her stories.
Monday, September 19, 2005
Writing: The Pilot Pitch - Prep
(All standard disclaimers apply, your mileage may vary, etc.)
So, you’re pacing in a network/studio hallway, trying to ignore the posters of failed 80’s sitcoms on the walls, waiting to go into the pitch. What do you need to do once you get into that exec’s room?
Yes, you in the back.
“… blow someone.” No. Don’t be stupid. You don’t blow someone for a pilot script commitment.
You blow someone for a time slot.
As we’ve discussed, beyond the purely “write the show” issues, television seasons (as they exist currently) require your pilot idea to generate literally a hundred-odd story variants in order to make sense from a business/programming viewpoint. Yes, this is changing. But having a show that'll run a hundred means pitching your 13-a-year will be a piece of cake. So master the Big Network Pitch, and your kung fu will be strong.
To know what to do in that room, you need to have done a shitload of work before that room. In a TV series, you have to sit down and create, very explicitly, what I call the story engines and story lenses. All of this depends on the very simple idea that story = conflict. Or, at least, story seeds grow from conflict-rich soil.
The story engines are: the exterior conflicts – obstacles—for the characters to overcome; the circumstances (setting, genre, etc.) within which the characters must work to solve the obstacles; the different viewpoints each character has that will bring them conflict as they overcome said obstacles; those different viewpoints that’ll put them in conflict regardless of any exterior issues; and the differences in approach to those exterior circumstances that’ll bring characters into conflict when attempting to overcome exterior obstacles.
Let’s take – hmm, was going to say CSI, but those characters are ciphers. Noooo, don’t want to do Lost, I have friends on that show – ah, the classic. X-Files.
Big whoop. Mulder’s a believer, Scully’s a skeptic. Moving on – no, wait up. Humor me for a moment.
First, exterior conflicts: the cases. Every week some new inscrutable mystery will need to be solved by our intrepid agents. Because they are working for the FBI these cases will run the gamut from normal-seeming crimes to government issues, homicides to white collar crimes to complete bug-nuts sci fi mysteries, they will be nationwide. One of our characters has connections outside the FBI and so more cases will come from the shadowy conspiracy world he is connected to.
Nice. No lack of legitimate exterior conflicts for Mulder and Scully (… Scully in the top hat. Ahhhh, Scully …) to solve.
Our characters also work in very specific circumstances – a world where apparently malign sci-fi forces do seem to exist, AND shadowy conspiracies, AND a bureaucracy which both empowers and constrains them. For each exterior problem, you then get to see if one of these conflicts will aid you building story. Does the FBI want them to solve this case? Are the government’s near-limitless resources an aid to them, or are the bureaucrats over them an added obstacle? Are they throwing the FBI’s weight around, or are they working just under the radar, stretching the limits of their authority? Is this case somehow linked to the agenda of some larger authority, be it government or conspiracy, which will offer resistance beyond that of the already formidable problem of solving this week’s mystery?
Note that these two engines often overlap. In hospital shows, for example, the circumstances of, oh, bureaucratic strictures of the hospital, the physical layout or inherent dangers of working with crazy/sick people, the lack of funding – all those can manifests as explicit exterior conflict. Either can be a primary conflict with the other as a modifier.
Back to the X-Files. Each character has a very specific attitude that will put them in conflict as they approach each problem. Mulder will go in with an open mind, no theory too wild—while Scully insists on the scientific method – hypothesis, experimentation, repostulation – and will in fact dismiss many possibilities out of hand as being fanciful. Mulder’s the people person, the old-school investigator while Scully’s the forensic whiz. Just their attempts at solving the problems from such different points of attack will generate conflict.
But they will also be in conflict without a mystery (exterior conflict) to solve. Those two worldviews are so different, if Mulder and Scully were accountants working at adjoining desks at Budget Rent-a-Car, they’d be in constant conflict over coffee conversation. A good story has a conflict illuminated by the opposing viewpoints of the characters. A GREAT story is really about the characters’ viewpoints, with the traditionally pitched “story” as a means to draw them out.
Where was – oh, and this one’s a bit subtle. “…the differences in approach to those exterior circumstances that’ll bring characters into conflict when attempting to overcome exterior obstacles.” Mulder and Scully, to varying degrees of importance in the episode:
-- will be in conflict with the exterior problem,
-- will be in conflict with the exterior circumstances constraining their solution to the exterior problem,
-- will be in conflict over how to solve the exterior problem
--, will be in conflict with each other regardless of whatever exterior problem they’re facing, but ALSO
-- – they will also attempt to manipulate/overcome the constraining circumstances in different ways. Hence, conflicto-gasm.
There are times Mulder will attempt to bargain, cajole, lie, abuse the FBI in his quest. There are times Scully, considering the same FBI, will believe it’s right to just straight-ahead call them in and certainly as shit not lie to them. There will be times Mulder wants to enlist the aid of, say, Lone Gunmen fellas, while Scully prefers to work with more established/credible figures. Yes, some of this relates to their different worldviews, but those worldviews don’t always create a consistent approach to operative authority.
You’ll note that in serial/soap-opera style shows, struggling with the constraining circumstances can actually become a lead source of conflict. Much of the shenanigans (… much or many? Is “shenanigans” a collective noun?) on Desperate Housewives consists of the housewives dealing with the societal expectations of their micro-world. Dealing with an illicit affair is tricky: it is considerably complicated by the spatial intimacy and (surface) propriety of Wisteria Lane.
Stepping back, we see that X-Files was, well, amazingly conflict-deep. At no point would any one episode put equal weight on all those conflict engines. But a season as a whole would draw on all of them to construct the episodes. Each show will be a little heavier in one attack approach. But you need that arsenal to aid you in generating 100 stories.
Each showrunner, hell each writer, tends to focus on certain types of conflicts to generate stories. It becomes their swing. When we had the three writers pitch for Global Frequency, each person came in with very distinct styles. Diego Garcia tended to focus on the person of the week, how that new innocent would deal with the world and draw Sean and Kate closer together He seemed to really dig the “You are on the Global Frequency” aspect. Dave Slack pitched darker – how the weirdness of the world would test the characters, really slam them against each other to either bond or destroy them. (Dave also … killed a lot more people in his pitches. Just saying.) Ben Edlund had a great change-up. It would seem like he was pitching typical genius Edlund high-concepts, but then he’d show it was really just a flashy way of expressing some conflict in Sean and Kate’s relationship he found fascinating. Someday, Ben, someday, I will find a show for Paco the Pearl Diver and his Oyster Knife of Justice. (And someday if we’re lucky enough, one of you will have a staffing question for me, and we can continue this conversation)
Okay, those are the story engines. Now the story lenses are much more a style concern. I’ve never actually articulated this before, so bear with me.
Your lenses allow you variety in storytelling style and tone. Usually, your characters act as lenses. Mulder-centric X-Files tended to be conspiracy-heavy, or … wackier. Scully-heavy ones tended to be more emotional, and deal with religious faith in a very specific manner. To use another geek example, on Buffy a Xander-heavy episode not only tended to have a different type of conflict, it felt different. In a more explicit way, I had three primary characters on GF: Sean, a “retired” homicide detective: Dr. Finch, science girl: and Miranda Zero, enigmatic conspiracy secret agent. By adjusting the weight of each character in a episode, or picking which character’s lens we told the story through, you could modulate the feel of the show up and down for more variety over the years. Sean-heavy eps are going to feel more 24-ish, street-level. Kate will be more X-Files or more properly Andromeda Strain; and Miranda-heavy shows will – sorry, would have been – a bit more of the old ultra-violence, high-spy style.
Again, that’s a bit more down in the clockwork than most approaches, but I like the idea that you have yet another tool for creating variety within a show without breaking the genre of a show.
Does every Hollywood writer do this work? No. Many times -- several shows a year, in fact -- a writer has a great, GREAT high-concept or a piece of talent, and that’s enough to get a pilot script. And that writer writes a barn-burner of a pilot, and the pilot gets shot. And the pilot is GREAT, and the show gets picked up because that was forty-five minutes of ass-kicking television!!
And that writing staff has a gun in its mouth by January.
You know who you are, people.
Now, quick aside. The great thing about all this conflict-centric prep is that you may find one of your characters is not generating nearly as much conflict as the others. Or, their conflicts tend to overlap other character’s story ideas too often. You have found some deadweight. Sometimes you will find two characters seem a little poorly defined, or aren’t quite popping. Try combining them into one. Find the strongest combination of need and limitation. A character must be unique and contributing strongly to the story engines—or cut them. Ruthlessly. Each character on a show is like a prism, transmitting a distinct element of the overall story. No matter how much you love the concept of a character, if they are not generating conflict (or at least goddam jokes no one else can do), you will grow to hate them. Because week after week they will eat your page space and not give you anything in return. Trust me, you will learn to hate the actors all on their own after a while, never mind with the head start of being scene deadweight.
One word: Boone. 'nuff said.
All right, one more thing and we’ll tighten and summarize for the pitching room. It is said “Television is the art of rewriting the pilot every week.” As I’ve discussed before, many TV writers have a hard time making the jump to film because the overall goal of a television episode is to return to the staus quo. To bring you, by the end of the ep, to the same place which made the show interesting for the viewers to first tune in.
This has changed enough that you may wish to have in your back pocket some examples of how you will change the characters and some of their relationships over the course of the five years. Talk of radically-evolving characters tends to spook execs, who quickly form visions of confused viewers fleeing the show they once loved but now no longer know. However, showing them that you’re changing the characters enough to constantly generate new fields of conflict is good.
Oooookay. So, you’ve done all this spiffy work. You have a bunch of characters you want to live with over five years.* You have a unique, or at the very least interesting, setting to slap those characters into. You have a whackload of stories you want to tell with those characters in that setting, and maybe even one over-riding meta-story or theme you’ll be expressing over those multiple seasons. Now how the hell do you get that across to the suited humans with the checkbooks?
We’ll cover that next time. But, short version, to consider before we meet again:
-- no pitch ever sold because it was longer then ten minutes.
-- A pilot pitch has two parts:
“Why this show should be on the air.”
“How this show will stay on the air.”
* (yeah, didn't think about it that way, did you? Pretty scary, huh? But don't worry -- a bit more success and you can abandon your half-baked ideas to doomed writing staffs as you move on to the next high-profile project. Viva Hollywood!)
So, you’re pacing in a network/studio hallway, trying to ignore the posters of failed 80’s sitcoms on the walls, waiting to go into the pitch. What do you need to do once you get into that exec’s room?
Yes, you in the back.
“… blow someone.” No. Don’t be stupid. You don’t blow someone for a pilot script commitment.
You blow someone for a time slot.
As we’ve discussed, beyond the purely “write the show” issues, television seasons (as they exist currently) require your pilot idea to generate literally a hundred-odd story variants in order to make sense from a business/programming viewpoint. Yes, this is changing. But having a show that'll run a hundred means pitching your 13-a-year will be a piece of cake. So master the Big Network Pitch, and your kung fu will be strong.
To know what to do in that room, you need to have done a shitload of work before that room. In a TV series, you have to sit down and create, very explicitly, what I call the story engines and story lenses. All of this depends on the very simple idea that story = conflict. Or, at least, story seeds grow from conflict-rich soil.
The story engines are: the exterior conflicts – obstacles—for the characters to overcome; the circumstances (setting, genre, etc.) within which the characters must work to solve the obstacles; the different viewpoints each character has that will bring them conflict as they overcome said obstacles; those different viewpoints that’ll put them in conflict regardless of any exterior issues; and the differences in approach to those exterior circumstances that’ll bring characters into conflict when attempting to overcome exterior obstacles.
Let’s take – hmm, was going to say CSI, but those characters are ciphers. Noooo, don’t want to do Lost, I have friends on that show – ah, the classic. X-Files.
Big whoop. Mulder’s a believer, Scully’s a skeptic. Moving on – no, wait up. Humor me for a moment.
First, exterior conflicts: the cases. Every week some new inscrutable mystery will need to be solved by our intrepid agents. Because they are working for the FBI these cases will run the gamut from normal-seeming crimes to government issues, homicides to white collar crimes to complete bug-nuts sci fi mysteries, they will be nationwide. One of our characters has connections outside the FBI and so more cases will come from the shadowy conspiracy world he is connected to.
Nice. No lack of legitimate exterior conflicts for Mulder and Scully (… Scully in the top hat. Ahhhh, Scully …) to solve.
Our characters also work in very specific circumstances – a world where apparently malign sci-fi forces do seem to exist, AND shadowy conspiracies, AND a bureaucracy which both empowers and constrains them. For each exterior problem, you then get to see if one of these conflicts will aid you building story. Does the FBI want them to solve this case? Are the government’s near-limitless resources an aid to them, or are the bureaucrats over them an added obstacle? Are they throwing the FBI’s weight around, or are they working just under the radar, stretching the limits of their authority? Is this case somehow linked to the agenda of some larger authority, be it government or conspiracy, which will offer resistance beyond that of the already formidable problem of solving this week’s mystery?
Note that these two engines often overlap. In hospital shows, for example, the circumstances of, oh, bureaucratic strictures of the hospital, the physical layout or inherent dangers of working with crazy/sick people, the lack of funding – all those can manifests as explicit exterior conflict. Either can be a primary conflict with the other as a modifier.
Back to the X-Files. Each character has a very specific attitude that will put them in conflict as they approach each problem. Mulder will go in with an open mind, no theory too wild—while Scully insists on the scientific method – hypothesis, experimentation, repostulation – and will in fact dismiss many possibilities out of hand as being fanciful. Mulder’s the people person, the old-school investigator while Scully’s the forensic whiz. Just their attempts at solving the problems from such different points of attack will generate conflict.
But they will also be in conflict without a mystery (exterior conflict) to solve. Those two worldviews are so different, if Mulder and Scully were accountants working at adjoining desks at Budget Rent-a-Car, they’d be in constant conflict over coffee conversation. A good story has a conflict illuminated by the opposing viewpoints of the characters. A GREAT story is really about the characters’ viewpoints, with the traditionally pitched “story” as a means to draw them out.
Where was – oh, and this one’s a bit subtle. “…the differences in approach to those exterior circumstances that’ll bring characters into conflict when attempting to overcome exterior obstacles.” Mulder and Scully, to varying degrees of importance in the episode:
-- will be in conflict with the exterior problem,
-- will be in conflict with the exterior circumstances constraining their solution to the exterior problem,
-- will be in conflict over how to solve the exterior problem
--, will be in conflict with each other regardless of whatever exterior problem they’re facing, but ALSO
-- – they will also attempt to manipulate/overcome the constraining circumstances in different ways. Hence, conflicto-gasm.
There are times Mulder will attempt to bargain, cajole, lie, abuse the FBI in his quest. There are times Scully, considering the same FBI, will believe it’s right to just straight-ahead call them in and certainly as shit not lie to them. There will be times Mulder wants to enlist the aid of, say, Lone Gunmen fellas, while Scully prefers to work with more established/credible figures. Yes, some of this relates to their different worldviews, but those worldviews don’t always create a consistent approach to operative authority.
You’ll note that in serial/soap-opera style shows, struggling with the constraining circumstances can actually become a lead source of conflict. Much of the shenanigans (… much or many? Is “shenanigans” a collective noun?) on Desperate Housewives consists of the housewives dealing with the societal expectations of their micro-world. Dealing with an illicit affair is tricky: it is considerably complicated by the spatial intimacy and (surface) propriety of Wisteria Lane.
Stepping back, we see that X-Files was, well, amazingly conflict-deep. At no point would any one episode put equal weight on all those conflict engines. But a season as a whole would draw on all of them to construct the episodes. Each show will be a little heavier in one attack approach. But you need that arsenal to aid you in generating 100 stories.
Each showrunner, hell each writer, tends to focus on certain types of conflicts to generate stories. It becomes their swing. When we had the three writers pitch for Global Frequency, each person came in with very distinct styles. Diego Garcia tended to focus on the person of the week, how that new innocent would deal with the world and draw Sean and Kate closer together He seemed to really dig the “You are on the Global Frequency” aspect. Dave Slack pitched darker – how the weirdness of the world would test the characters, really slam them against each other to either bond or destroy them. (Dave also … killed a lot more people in his pitches. Just saying.) Ben Edlund had a great change-up. It would seem like he was pitching typical genius Edlund high-concepts, but then he’d show it was really just a flashy way of expressing some conflict in Sean and Kate’s relationship he found fascinating. Someday, Ben, someday, I will find a show for Paco the Pearl Diver and his Oyster Knife of Justice. (And someday if we’re lucky enough, one of you will have a staffing question for me, and we can continue this conversation)
Okay, those are the story engines. Now the story lenses are much more a style concern. I’ve never actually articulated this before, so bear with me.
Your lenses allow you variety in storytelling style and tone. Usually, your characters act as lenses. Mulder-centric X-Files tended to be conspiracy-heavy, or … wackier. Scully-heavy ones tended to be more emotional, and deal with religious faith in a very specific manner. To use another geek example, on Buffy a Xander-heavy episode not only tended to have a different type of conflict, it felt different. In a more explicit way, I had three primary characters on GF: Sean, a “retired” homicide detective: Dr. Finch, science girl: and Miranda Zero, enigmatic conspiracy secret agent. By adjusting the weight of each character in a episode, or picking which character’s lens we told the story through, you could modulate the feel of the show up and down for more variety over the years. Sean-heavy eps are going to feel more 24-ish, street-level. Kate will be more X-Files or more properly Andromeda Strain; and Miranda-heavy shows will – sorry, would have been – a bit more of the old ultra-violence, high-spy style.
Again, that’s a bit more down in the clockwork than most approaches, but I like the idea that you have yet another tool for creating variety within a show without breaking the genre of a show.
Does every Hollywood writer do this work? No. Many times -- several shows a year, in fact -- a writer has a great, GREAT high-concept or a piece of talent, and that’s enough to get a pilot script. And that writer writes a barn-burner of a pilot, and the pilot gets shot. And the pilot is GREAT, and the show gets picked up because that was forty-five minutes of ass-kicking television!!
And that writing staff has a gun in its mouth by January.
You know who you are, people.
Now, quick aside. The great thing about all this conflict-centric prep is that you may find one of your characters is not generating nearly as much conflict as the others. Or, their conflicts tend to overlap other character’s story ideas too often. You have found some deadweight. Sometimes you will find two characters seem a little poorly defined, or aren’t quite popping. Try combining them into one. Find the strongest combination of need and limitation. A character must be unique and contributing strongly to the story engines—or cut them. Ruthlessly. Each character on a show is like a prism, transmitting a distinct element of the overall story. No matter how much you love the concept of a character, if they are not generating conflict (or at least goddam jokes no one else can do), you will grow to hate them. Because week after week they will eat your page space and not give you anything in return. Trust me, you will learn to hate the actors all on their own after a while, never mind with the head start of being scene deadweight.
One word: Boone. 'nuff said.
All right, one more thing and we’ll tighten and summarize for the pitching room. It is said “Television is the art of rewriting the pilot every week.” As I’ve discussed before, many TV writers have a hard time making the jump to film because the overall goal of a television episode is to return to the staus quo. To bring you, by the end of the ep, to the same place which made the show interesting for the viewers to first tune in.
This has changed enough that you may wish to have in your back pocket some examples of how you will change the characters and some of their relationships over the course of the five years. Talk of radically-evolving characters tends to spook execs, who quickly form visions of confused viewers fleeing the show they once loved but now no longer know. However, showing them that you’re changing the characters enough to constantly generate new fields of conflict is good.
Oooookay. So, you’ve done all this spiffy work. You have a bunch of characters you want to live with over five years.* You have a unique, or at the very least interesting, setting to slap those characters into. You have a whackload of stories you want to tell with those characters in that setting, and maybe even one over-riding meta-story or theme you’ll be expressing over those multiple seasons. Now how the hell do you get that across to the suited humans with the checkbooks?
We’ll cover that next time. But, short version, to consider before we meet again:
-- no pitch ever sold because it was longer then ten minutes.
-- A pilot pitch has two parts:
“Why this show should be on the air.”
“How this show will stay on the air.”
* (yeah, didn't think about it that way, did you? Pretty scary, huh? But don't worry -- a bit more success and you can abandon your half-baked ideas to doomed writing staffs as you move on to the next high-profile project. Viva Hollywood!)
An Unpleasant Team-up
Wonky Blogger and Dial-up connection conspire to slow my posting. As I hone the pilot article, I can only buy time referring you to the guy who found ancient buried Roman ruins in his backyard using Google Earth. (via Boingboing)
Saturday, September 17, 2005
Writing: The Pilot Pitch - Background
At some point, during your TV series/pilot pitch, I will bet you my grandfather's watch you will hear the question:
“How do you get to episode 100?”
As my college friend Ita answered – “Um, by being really funny for the first 99?”
Television has a particular problem. Set aside your ideas for characters, funny or touching situations … just do this. Think of someone you know really well, say – your spouse, your best friend, whatever. Think of one story about her. Something interesting, the sort of story you’d tell at a party – but it HAS to be entertaining enough to keep the interest of a group of drunken strangers, with a nice payoff. Seriously, take a pencil and a pad and jot it down. Nothing detailed. Premise, complication, payoff.
Good. Think of another.
Good. Think of two more.
Good. Three more. No cheating, write them down. Stories both entertaining and detailed enough to last a few minutes.
Good. Three more.
Good. Three more.
Good. Now, realizing that on average only about half the show ideas pitched in the room actually work out as full episodes – write thirteen more. I’ll wait.
… Congratulations. You’re now halfway through your first American television season. Only 87 more to go (or, with the same success rate, 174).
A little history. Skipping over early golden age TV, the working model for modern television * proceeded roughly thus: Networks paid a licensing fee to get the show, and then collected their filthy monies from advertising during the show. As the licensing fee was rarely big enough to actually cover the cost of the show, studios made shows at a loss – deficit financing – and then recouped their expenses when they sold the show into syndication. Syndication – for you real wee ‘uns – is when your favorite shows run in repeats at odd hours. Back in the three-channel days that meant on weekdays between 4:00 in the afternoon and seven-ish, then local news and then your local TV affiliate would pick up the network feed. With cable, of course, syndication is non-stop. But you get the idea.
Now, for a show to be worth buying, it had to fill a full year of weekday programming without too many rebroadcast shows. As the syndication business evolved, that came to mean five seasons, or roughly 110 episodes, with a bare minimum of 100. Hence, the historical basis for the mythical “Episode 100.”
Syndication money, by the way, was obscene. I have heard film directors with multiple mega-blockbusters under their belts say “Well, yeah, I’m rich – but I’m not Bochco rich.” Even lowly writers with our crappy deals would make enough off world-wide syndication to live off of for years. This also is the source of many rueful anecdotes about coming up juuuust short. There are even stories, told under dark glances, about a vengeful network exec canceling your show, or even more viciously short-ordering your last season, to deprive the exec producer of his hundred episodes and thereby render the entire previous 41/2 years financially moot.
This is, when you think about it, the creative equivalent of wildcatting. This means, spec-monkeys, that not that long ago a show could have great ratings -- allowing the network to clean up from charging advertisers more money for airtime --but wind up an unprofitable sinkhole of tens of millions of dollars for the studio if it didn’t go into syndication. Small studios could go broke with a few shows on the air, but none that went into syndication. Even more desperate can be the situation a major Hollywood studio found itself in a few years ago – wildly successful with many, many shows on the air, but not enough going into syndication to cover the growing deficits. It was literally succeeding to death.
With the advent of DVD and home-video, we are right now, and I mean right now, in the middle of a radical sea change. The vast amount of post-broadcast income on a show comes from DVD sales now – and a popular show can start selling big fat boxed sets from first season on. Luckily, we writers have cunningly ignored that our income model is changing, and decided to let DVD revenues slide negotiation after negotiation.
(Seriously. I have not just voted for a strike the last three times, I have written “STRIKE GODDAMMIT YOU LUDDITE MORONS!!!” in red magic marker on my union ballot. But that’s another column …)
So why still hew to developing shows that can run to episode 100? Well, other than tradition, it does not behoove a network to develop a show that’ll succeed for one year only. In the constant battle for ratings, execs need shows that consistently deliver, and the execs depend on building nights around these anchors, launching other shows under the protective wings of these hits. A successful show is a money geyser for all involved. They want a show to last.
This is linked to a creative issue. When you are pitching a TV show, you are asking the studio to invest millions of dollars and asking the network for a ferociously valuable piece of real estate. You need to prove that your wee idea can sustain itself for a considerable length of time. If the show is good, your audience wants you to go on making it, your network will want you to go on making it, you will want to go on making it – but the question is, will the premise support you, err, going on and making it? Because you’ll need stories to tell with that show. You need to tell a hundred stories. With the same characters, because characters are how the audience lock into shows. You don’t go tossing characters away willy-nilly. To be blunt, even developing 22 interesting stories is a bitch, never mind going the distance.
So, in order to see where you want to take your show, what you want to do with it, how you will sustain audience interest, whether your ideas have the depth to carry the show on with entertaining and original ideas – basically measuring both your creative testicular fortitude and how well-constructed the show idea is – all this is summarized in the largely traditional question of … “How do you get to episode 100?”
With that context, we will attempt to help you handle that question in the next post.
* (before the FCC fucked up big time and let studios own television networks)
“How do you get to episode 100?”
As my college friend Ita answered – “Um, by being really funny for the first 99?”
Television has a particular problem. Set aside your ideas for characters, funny or touching situations … just do this. Think of someone you know really well, say – your spouse, your best friend, whatever. Think of one story about her. Something interesting, the sort of story you’d tell at a party – but it HAS to be entertaining enough to keep the interest of a group of drunken strangers, with a nice payoff. Seriously, take a pencil and a pad and jot it down. Nothing detailed. Premise, complication, payoff.
Good. Think of another.
Good. Think of two more.
Good. Three more. No cheating, write them down. Stories both entertaining and detailed enough to last a few minutes.
Good. Three more.
Good. Three more.
Good. Now, realizing that on average only about half the show ideas pitched in the room actually work out as full episodes – write thirteen more. I’ll wait.
… Congratulations. You’re now halfway through your first American television season. Only 87 more to go (or, with the same success rate, 174).
A little history. Skipping over early golden age TV, the working model for modern television * proceeded roughly thus: Networks paid a licensing fee to get the show, and then collected their filthy monies from advertising during the show. As the licensing fee was rarely big enough to actually cover the cost of the show, studios made shows at a loss – deficit financing – and then recouped their expenses when they sold the show into syndication. Syndication – for you real wee ‘uns – is when your favorite shows run in repeats at odd hours. Back in the three-channel days that meant on weekdays between 4:00 in the afternoon and seven-ish, then local news and then your local TV affiliate would pick up the network feed. With cable, of course, syndication is non-stop. But you get the idea.
Now, for a show to be worth buying, it had to fill a full year of weekday programming without too many rebroadcast shows. As the syndication business evolved, that came to mean five seasons, or roughly 110 episodes, with a bare minimum of 100. Hence, the historical basis for the mythical “Episode 100.”
Syndication money, by the way, was obscene. I have heard film directors with multiple mega-blockbusters under their belts say “Well, yeah, I’m rich – but I’m not Bochco rich.” Even lowly writers with our crappy deals would make enough off world-wide syndication to live off of for years. This also is the source of many rueful anecdotes about coming up juuuust short. There are even stories, told under dark glances, about a vengeful network exec canceling your show, or even more viciously short-ordering your last season, to deprive the exec producer of his hundred episodes and thereby render the entire previous 41/2 years financially moot.
This is, when you think about it, the creative equivalent of wildcatting. This means, spec-monkeys, that not that long ago a show could have great ratings -- allowing the network to clean up from charging advertisers more money for airtime --but wind up an unprofitable sinkhole of tens of millions of dollars for the studio if it didn’t go into syndication. Small studios could go broke with a few shows on the air, but none that went into syndication. Even more desperate can be the situation a major Hollywood studio found itself in a few years ago – wildly successful with many, many shows on the air, but not enough going into syndication to cover the growing deficits. It was literally succeeding to death.
With the advent of DVD and home-video, we are right now, and I mean right now, in the middle of a radical sea change. The vast amount of post-broadcast income on a show comes from DVD sales now – and a popular show can start selling big fat boxed sets from first season on. Luckily, we writers have cunningly ignored that our income model is changing, and decided to let DVD revenues slide negotiation after negotiation.
(Seriously. I have not just voted for a strike the last three times, I have written “STRIKE GODDAMMIT YOU LUDDITE MORONS!!!” in red magic marker on my union ballot. But that’s another column …)
So why still hew to developing shows that can run to episode 100? Well, other than tradition, it does not behoove a network to develop a show that’ll succeed for one year only. In the constant battle for ratings, execs need shows that consistently deliver, and the execs depend on building nights around these anchors, launching other shows under the protective wings of these hits. A successful show is a money geyser for all involved. They want a show to last.
This is linked to a creative issue. When you are pitching a TV show, you are asking the studio to invest millions of dollars and asking the network for a ferociously valuable piece of real estate. You need to prove that your wee idea can sustain itself for a considerable length of time. If the show is good, your audience wants you to go on making it, your network will want you to go on making it, you will want to go on making it – but the question is, will the premise support you, err, going on and making it? Because you’ll need stories to tell with that show. You need to tell a hundred stories. With the same characters, because characters are how the audience lock into shows. You don’t go tossing characters away willy-nilly. To be blunt, even developing 22 interesting stories is a bitch, never mind going the distance.
So, in order to see where you want to take your show, what you want to do with it, how you will sustain audience interest, whether your ideas have the depth to carry the show on with entertaining and original ideas – basically measuring both your creative testicular fortitude and how well-constructed the show idea is – all this is summarized in the largely traditional question of … “How do you get to episode 100?”
With that context, we will attempt to help you handle that question in the next post.
* (before the FCC fucked up big time and let studios own television networks)
Friday, September 16, 2005
Bones
Wow, Boreanz turns out to be the genuine TV star of the Whedon bunch. Hot damn. Pity he's lumbering through those speeches. Nice military background, though. But why hint at it so adroitly in Act One, and then decide to puke it all up before the end of the show?
Thank you for not just laying pipe, but laying all the interpretation to the pipe, just in case we didn't get how somebody's parents disappearing might affect them. And thanks too for mentioning the disappearing parents/orphan thing five times.
One other small problem -- Boreanz is so filthily likable in this role, when the scientists ("squints") unload the snark, you hate them for dumping on the one guy you like in the show. Hell, guys, technically I'm a squint, and I can't stand these condescending know-it-alls to a one. They are not quirky. They are hateful. You know, I'm a die-hard enemy of the whole "liberal Hollywood" trash, but there is an issue with many writers not actually having any experience outside film school and Hollywood -- which leads to bits which boil my blue-collar bartending blood. As they discuss the lead (Deschanel) shooting the suspect, and how she might get in trouble:
Boreanz: "She did shoot the guy with no warning, and alcohol on her breath."
Assistant Squint: "How many guys did you warn when you sniped them?"
At that point, Boreanz's character is well within his rights to grab this fuckwit by the neck and say: "Huh, I don't know, let me think back on when I spent SIX YEARS SERVING MY COUNTRY, RISKING MY LIFE EVERY. FUCKING. DAY AND FORSAKING MY OWN GODDAM HUMANITY IN ORDER TO KEEP OTHER BASTARDS FROM PUTTING A .303 THROUGH THE BRAINPAN OF SOME RESERVIST WHO JUST WANTED TO GET HOME TO HIS WIFE AND KIDS." And then banging that arrogant little shit's pasty face against a tombstone until he passes out whimpering in his soiled Dockers.
That's how I would've written it. But fielder's choice I guess.
I'll give it one more, expecting that a fair amount of the endless pipe and the awful "I'm super-good at everything" shit they loaded on Deschanel's character were monstrously clumsy network pilot notes. You've got to give big props for the in media res drop into the character relationships, and were some nice bits of dialogue, so one more.
Thank you for not just laying pipe, but laying all the interpretation to the pipe, just in case we didn't get how somebody's parents disappearing might affect them. And thanks too for mentioning the disappearing parents/orphan thing five times.
One other small problem -- Boreanz is so filthily likable in this role, when the scientists ("squints") unload the snark, you hate them for dumping on the one guy you like in the show. Hell, guys, technically I'm a squint, and I can't stand these condescending know-it-alls to a one. They are not quirky. They are hateful. You know, I'm a die-hard enemy of the whole "liberal Hollywood" trash, but there is an issue with many writers not actually having any experience outside film school and Hollywood -- which leads to bits which boil my blue-collar bartending blood. As they discuss the lead (Deschanel) shooting the suspect, and how she might get in trouble:
Boreanz: "She did shoot the guy with no warning, and alcohol on her breath."
Assistant Squint: "How many guys did you warn when you sniped them?"
At that point, Boreanz's character is well within his rights to grab this fuckwit by the neck and say: "Huh, I don't know, let me think back on when I spent SIX YEARS SERVING MY COUNTRY, RISKING MY LIFE EVERY. FUCKING. DAY AND FORSAKING MY OWN GODDAM HUMANITY IN ORDER TO KEEP OTHER BASTARDS FROM PUTTING A .303 THROUGH THE BRAINPAN OF SOME RESERVIST WHO JUST WANTED TO GET HOME TO HIS WIFE AND KIDS." And then banging that arrogant little shit's pasty face against a tombstone until he passes out whimpering in his soiled Dockers.
That's how I would've written it. But fielder's choice I guess.
I'll give it one more, expecting that a fair amount of the endless pipe and the awful "I'm super-good at everything" shit they loaded on Deschanel's character were monstrously clumsy network pilot notes. You've got to give big props for the in media res drop into the character relationships, and were some nice bits of dialogue, so one more.
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Sorry Spec-Monkeys
Wound up doing a fairt bit of prep work for a miniseries pitch, so swamped. Next two days will be rough, then will pop back in with two essays -- the Pilot/Series Pitch, and Your Staffing Meeting. Chat amongst yourselves, and go hit up your friends in the Sidebar.
Monday, September 12, 2005
Writing: Sequence Approach
We've had our little spats between the Act-ivists and heretic Sequence-iators, but I believe it's primarily because of confusion between plot and story and their relationship. However, Warren Leonard has written convincingly, clearly and enthusiastically enough about the Eight Sequence Structure, I'm actually going to take a look at the source material. Again, you should never treat this stuff as catechism, but the more tools in the toolbox, the better off you'll be.
Writing quote for the week, from pulp great Jim Thompson: "There is only one story: nothing is what it seems."
Writing quote for the week, from pulp great Jim Thompson: "There is only one story: nothing is what it seems."
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