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So I pitch my boxing club/organized crime script to her and she points out that her company prides themselves in specializing in non-violent content.
Box and organized crime.
Non-violent? Not so much, what with the fighting and the killing.
I had done fairly deep research into the companies but it was found wanting here. There wasn’t anything about it on their Expo form and Google hadn’t turned anything up. Well, the best intentions don’t mean that you’ll get it right every time so the best thing to do is to smile and apologize for not doing a better job of researching what they would be interested in.
She was good about it and joked that maybe if it was Kabala boxing… and then she says that she would still like me to send her a treatment, character bios and a breakdown of the first five episodes.
Either I’m better at this than I thought or she is feeling really sorry for me. Either way I’ll chalk it up in the win column… and against what should have been a tough sell.
Archive for the ‘Selling’ Category
SWE4: PitchXchange – S. From a Production Company
November 15th, 2005 
Clint 
Posted in 
SWE4: How to Sell Your TV Show – Marc and Elaine Zicree
November 13th, 2005 Clint This is the second session from the Zicrees and I am learning a fair bit from them. The first is here – but to recap, he has written over a hundred episodes of television, was a producer on Sliders… the man has been there, done that. They have a website called supermentors.com
Right off the bat, there are some ideas that would, deliver a value to people reading this site and help me make contacts in the industry while also building some recognition for brand Clint-Johnson. Foremost amongst those is conducting interviews for this website which would give me content other than my own drivel.
That ain’t to say that my own pearls of ignorance aren’t worthy readin’… just that the more worthwhile content there is on this site the better. I’d learn from this and hopefully it would be valuable to you the gentle reader as well. It should have that whole win-win thing goin’ for it.
Anyway, the Zicrees tell us that while it isn’t expected that a spec pilot will actually get made, it isn’t unheard of (wohoo!). While it is generally accepted that a spec pilot is a writing sample only, both Malcolm in the Middle and Veronica Mars were spec pilots – and he feels that the climate right now is better than it ever has been for original scripts and spec pilots.
Don’t get a spec pilot confused with spec episode; with a spec pilot you are creating something from scratch that will show your distinctive voice – the spec episode is written for an existing series and you are trying to show that you can write in a style that will fit in with someone else’s show.
Marc says that there are two kinds of series “bibles” – the pitching bible and the working bible. The pitching bible is what you use to get the show sold and the working bible is what you use to get new writers up to speed and keep track of show continuity.
The pitching bible should consist of ten to twelve pages of highlights and plot points that will catch the interest of a producer. The key things to note are; who is the audience and who are the characters? He felt that this should be what you are working your pitch off of and probably not something you would leave behind. He feels strongly that if you leave too much material behind, the executive you pitched to is not in turn pitching the show to their boss. They might not have the enthusiasm that they would otherwise bring. Plus, they know what their boss is looking for and what interests them, so they would know better how to slant the pitch to the final arbiter of the greenlight.
He then went into what sort of compensation you should be looking at as a writer for television. If I could afford it, I would actually pay to write for television. Not that I would turn down a paycheck – capitalist pig-dog remember? But I will go over his numbers here for those who would find them interesting.
A newly minted staff writer can look to start at about $200,000 a year while a story editor will start at $300,000. You progress through co-producer to producer to co-executive producer on up to executive producer/showrunner. By the time you make executive producer you can expect to be making about $1 million a year. Writing credit for an episodes will get you more money on top of that yearly salary with a pilot episode going for $60,000 to $100,000.
It is no surprise that there are people who get into the business just for the money… and I think we’ve all seen the shows that this results in.
What I would find more interesting than money is that once you hit the producer level, you can pitch series ideas to studios and networks… and be taken seriously. Looking at what I did on the Ragnarok pilot, I suppose that I can legitimately call myself an executive producer… the problem would be to get any “other” producer to take that seriously.
He also broke down the season for us so that we would know when most of the pitching, developing and pilot production periods fall.
March through early June is when the production companies are listening to pitches and it is June through September when they are in turn pitching those ideas to the networks. The networks deliberate over September and October and then give the go ahead to write pilots scripts through October and November. They look over the scripts in December and then in January they go into production on the pilots for those they like. They evaluate the pilots over the spring and this gives them a couple months to deliberate before the network upfronts where they tell the advertising world what will be in the fall schedule.
And then the cycle starts over again.
He didn’t talk about it but the pilot season is starting to diffuse out through the year with a spring or summer start for some shows in addition to the traditional fall and mid-season starts. I think that this will cause the whole thing to spread out over the year so that shows are pitched, piloted and picked up at any time throughout the year. But that’s just me so take it with a block of salt.
He feels that just up and calling the production companies isn’t a problem. Call and talk to the assistant – but keep in mind that they are usually very busy people and so don’t try and have a long chat with them. Courteously ask the question and then politely thank them for the answer you get.
My take is that you focus your question and be specific – “What is Mr. Producer looking for right now?” “Does she have a Sky Marshal drama in development?.. Would she be interested in one I’ve been developing?” Don’t bombard them with questions – sweet and short are the watchwords.
He feels that you should maximize the genre crossover right now… “Cross a cop show with a family drama.”
If you want to align yourself with an executive producer, keep track of the shows that are being canceled (or not picked up) and try to get hold of those people who produced the ones that mesh best with what you are trying to do. They often don’t have another project ready to go and are willing to jump into another if it looks like a solid bet. The Hollywood Creative Directory and IMDBpro give full credits for shows. He didn’t feel that agents or managers were necessary… but that they helped a lot.
He talked more about the series that he is trying to get made picked up- Magic Time. He originally created it as a series and only when it didn’t get picked up did he novelize it. It did well as a three novel series and was turned into a successful audio book as well. This success in turn allowed him to take it back to television where it had a much warmer reception as something that had been a moderate hit in another medium.
I’ve been wanting to tackle Ragnarok as a graphic novel and this might be the way to go. I could rough out one myself just to see how much work it is.
Even for other projects, producing a graphic novel would certainly be less expensive than a full pilot episode and might generate some income where a declined pilot will usually return zero on your investment. While I do dabble in the art side of things, I am too slow and I’d have to do more than dabble to make sure that my artwork is pretty enough –
Kerrim from my fantasy series The City
- so I’d have to find a real artist to render up the pictures. Even so, a graphic novel is a hell of a lot less time, money and work than it is for a full live action pilot.
If you are going to produce your own pilot or series, he was emphatic that you never stop asking for investors. Everyone and anyone you talk to is asked “Do you want to invest in a film? Do you know anyone who might be interested?” He has a standard finders fee of 5% for anyone who brings in an investor and that probably helps a lot. I think that would make me a little more comfortable with hitting people up for leads. I wouldn’t be asking for handouts, I’d be offering to pay for what they can do for me. I’ll have to keep that in mind for my next full length film or television project.
The “pattern budget” is the cost of the average episode with most of the big US networks running about $2 million and seeing anything under $1 million or over $3 million as dicey.
They feel that a rounded career is important and that you should have a few projects in development… I think I take that concept to its illogical conclusion.
SWE4: PitchXchange – For the Lack of a Synopsis – D. at a Production Company
November 13th, 2005 Clint Well, I pitched my second series idea to D. at a newish production company. This series is a really near term, hard science fiction series set around the first steps to colonize space.
He was intrigued and wanted to read a synopsis.
You might want to re-read the last entry with ‘synopsis’ replacing ‘treatment’… I’d probably still go with a treatment since I’m sure that he would have accepted that in substitute for a synopsis.
At least he asked me to email it to him rather than taking my address with a “don’t email me, I’ll email you”.
D. had a lot of good questions and just five minutes of back and forth with him helped me settle some questions and had me chucking out ideas that I had liked. He helped focus the core of the series and tweaked a couple of new ideas for me. I think that the show will be the better for it.
So this series has gotten some interest as well as the other one. This isn’t helping me focus at all.
SWE4: PitchXchange – Yet Another No-Show with C. from a Production Co.
November 13th, 2005 Clint Another executive doesn’t show up for the pitch. In his defense, he did call in and he did have a reason (if not an excuse). His car broke down on the way here (what, you couldn’t call a taxi?).
But unlike a certain W.M. tenpercenter, he took steps to make good on it. He will not be able to make the pitch but he gave his personal email to Shelly and she gave everyone who was scheduled to pitch to him the option of sending him an email pitch or taking a make-up pitch with someone else. I didn’t really want to pitch anything to a random company who would probably not be wanting what I’m pitching… I prefer to know that they are at least looking for what I’m selling. I go with the email pitch.
SWE4: Shooting a Demo Reel for TV Pilot/Feature Film – Marc and Elaine Zicree
November 13th, 2005 Clint Are you seeing a pattern in the sessions I signed up for? Look closely now, it is a subtle one… it is an emphasis on pushing past the writing part. Like Mr. Stefanik said, 70,000 scripts are written every year- and even if that is an exaggeration, and even if most are pretty crappy… that is still a lot of straw to hide your needle. Producing something yourself is one way to stand out from the crowd. On top of that it will make you a better writer. When you have to take your words and shoot them, you yourself will find a lot of the problems in your script that would glare out at those who have made a film. Your next film will be all the better for it, I know mine will be.
It is one when a teacher or book tells you that something should be avoided when writing a script, it is another thing entirely to be sitting on set at three in the morning with a cast and crew waiting for you to fix that “something” you should have avoided. You won’t make that mistake again.
Now on to the session in question – to which I was eight minutes late. Bad form Mr. Johnson.
Marc and Elaine Zicree have a website for their own projects and another at Supermentors for their consulting services. In this session, Marc does most of the talking and he starts us off with an example of how to do it right. The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne was a shoe string self starter where Gavin Scott got $40 million dollars after showing the demo tape that they had shot.
He talked about Chis (Wyatt I’m guessing), a friend of his, who originated Napoleon Dynamite as a short film which he used to raise $350,000 to make the feature which went on to make over $100 million. While there is no arguing with the bottom line, I gotta say that I wasn’t particularly a fan of this film. A few jokes worked for me but most of it fell pretty flat. It would probably be a lot funnier if I had watched it while wasted but that doesn’t interest me. I would like to see the short though, just to see what talked people out of $350,000.
He then went into an example of how to do it wrong. A friend of his had made a short that got a lot of favorable coverage on the festival circuit. They had wanted to get some interest and use it to develop the short into a feature. They got the interest but didn’t have a full script ready for the push to the feature. The mistake was starting to push the short before they were ready to take advantage of any interest.
He also said that the time has past where people are impressed with you just for having done something, it has to be done well.
I feel that I didn’t give my actors enough direction during my shoot and it suffered for that. Then again we may have different ideas of “done well”, he uses Startrek: New Voyages as an example. The first episode of this fan made series was downloaded six million times and the second episode was downloaded 20 million times. That is all well and good but I’ve seen the first episode and it was rather bad. The set decoration and special effects were as good as you would expect from a true fans dedicated efforts… but the content they originated was sorely lacking. The writing and acting just wasn’t good enough to get any attention if it weren’t for the Star Trek connection and the huge base of Trekkers out there.
This all adds up to the fact that “good” is a very relative assessment here and what some people see as hilarious will leave some others cold. While a technically illiterate person may see a particular special effect and find it acceptable, the guy sitting next to them who has actually done some work with special effects may find the show unwatchable. Humor is even tougher to pin down with some people thinking that My Name is Earl is nowhere near as funny as Joey… and me wondering “what kind of bad drugs did you ingest?”. So I’m thinking that whatever you do, some people will find it to be unmitigated crap while the guy down the hall might see it as untapped gold.
Another thing he had to say was that a trailer wasn’t as good a selling tool as it has been hyped to be. It may get some interest but it doesn’t show if you can tell a story or not. He suggested that you take two or three scenes from the completed script and rework them to have a beginning, middle and an end… make a short film out of it. This can be used as a selling tool, sent out to the festivals or even licensed to one of the few places that pay for short films.
But he is also adamant that the short can’t tell the whole story or people feel that they’ve seen it all and don’t have a strong desire to put money into making the full show.
He showed a bit of Some Folks Call it a Sling Blade, the short that got Billy Bob a greenlight for Sling Blade. That is all great but how many of us can get J.T. Walsh and Molly Ringwald to step up for our short film? That might give a person a slight little leg up on the competition. Yeah, maybe. (where is that sarcasm font, I know it’s here somewhere?)
He insists that it isn’t all that hard to attach a name actor and that even signings at conventions give you a chance to get the face time and talk to the people. Hand them a DVD of something that you’ve done and tell them that you would like to work with them… just make sure that it looks like Oscar bait if you want to up your odds.
I really think that James Marsters would be great as the lead in The Club, the boxing club/organized crime series I’m developing… I wonder how tough it would be to get the man’s interest? He is in Vancouver shooting on Smallville and there are rumors of him becoming a regular so he might be a “local” for another year or so. I suppose it shouldn’t do much harm to try eh?
Next up Marc showed us the long trailer/incomplete short film Grayson from John Fiorella‘s Untamed Cinema – and I actually hadn’t seen this one before. It was really well done for the limited personal resources the guy had… it was made that good because of the contacts he had and their resources. The acting was good enough and the cinematography was as good as anything from the previous Batman films. Another good fan film he didn’t show was Batman: Dead End.
The examples he showed and my work on Ragnarok… it all reinforces my thinking that it is the writing and the acting that defines success or failure. There was a few missteps I made in the writing, add that to me not give the actors good enough direction – and the show suffered for it. Since it was my first attempt and I really over-reached on it… let’s just say that my next project will be far better for the experience.
Marc Zucree has written Magic Time, a three book series about a young lawyer that he is bringing around to a television series. The lawyer is raising his twelve year old sister and at the beginning she is transformed into a magical creature and taken away from him. I gotta say that there would be some overlap between his Magic Time and my Ragnarok… what with the return of magic to the world. I knew nothing about the books or series until this session and he was working on it long before Ragnarok was developed so any overlap would be strictly due to a shared cultural mythology and coincidence. Maybe I should pitch myself to him as a staff writer?
I was impressed enough by this session that I’m thinking that I should get Supermentors to look over my rough cut for the Ragnarok pilot and try to get an impartial critique to see if it is worth the weeks of effort it would take to polish it… or if I should just cut my losses, upload the show as is, and move on to the next project. The folks that volunteered on the shoot really deserve their copy before too much more time has passed.
SWE4: Making a Movie for Less Than $2500 – Richard Michaels Stefanik
November 13th, 2005 Clint Richard Michaels Stefanik is the fellow who wrote the book – The Megahit Movies – which is used in some of the Writers Guild of America courses. I’m thinking that you can’t really get a better endorsement than that. I’m also thinking that $2500 ain’t gonna get you a Megahit… but maybe a microhit?
He starts off by pointing out that approximately 70,000 scripts poured out of printers in the last year and that it is tough to stand out from that deluge of paper. One way to stand out is to actually produce a movie since there are only about 5000 films made a year. You may still be a small fish but you are in a smaller pond.
He gave us the example of Chris Nolan who made Following with $6000 of his own money… which got him $5 million to make Momento… which got him $46 million to make Insomnia… which in turn got him $135 million to make Batman Begins. Nice career path if you can get it.
He talks about putting your finished movie up on a website that costs about $500 a year… but I wonder how much more expensive that will get if the film actually finds some interest? If you take a 90 minute film and encod it to a reasonable high quality, you end up with at least 250 megabytes – and if your hosting service only allows 200 gigabytes per month of bandwidth (not unusual) the movie can only be downloaded 800 times before you either get your site shut down or they send you a big bill.
He doesn’t mention it but you might want to look at putting it up on Google Video if you don’t want to get smacked for exceeding your bandwidth allotment. You can also look to iTunes… when they are ready for someone other than big networks and studios.
He is putting his money and time where his mouth is and has produced Henry Dodd for less than $2500. It has aired at least ten times on east coast television and he is now going to chunk it up and put it up on the Internet.
He looks at the overhead projection he is using for his presentation graphics and rethinks the numbers. He feels that $1900 could get you a 90 minute movie today and he will have to revise the numbers.
“Your first movie will be a throwaway.”
I never meant for the pilot for Ragnarok the Series to be the one that goes to air, it was to be a selling tool for the series and for my writing. It also cost about ten times what he is talking about… but then I went crazy with locations, actors, FX and action… I knew the error of my ways going in so that rule breaking was entirely deliberate. That said, I won’t be throwing out the pilot I shot, I want to put it up on the Internet some time in the next few months… when I get the time to edit it correctly. Everyone who volunteered their time deserves the best show that I can create… but they also shouldn’t have to wait two years to get it either.
Mr. Stafanik isn’t entirely up on the tech side of things and he should pay a visit to HD for Indies for an refresher course. He feels that you would need to spend over $2000 for a dual-core G5 even for editing miniDV… now I’m not a Mac guy but I’m pretty sure that anything they sell right now will handle miniDV… and Apple’s iLife comes with iMovie HD to edit it with. I’d put even money that a Mac mini will allow you to edit an HD feature with that same iMovie HD… just don’t expect to do any realtime work- I suspect that there will be a lot of waiting for it to render.
He didn’t mention AVID FreeDV which would be a good tool to get started with. Actually, you could put together a nice little suit with FreeDV for video editing and their subsidiary Digidesign Pro Tools Free for audio editing… their Softimage used to have a free 3D tool but that seems to have been discontinued in favour of a free game mod tool. Since they bought Pinnacle, they have a bunch of cheap editing tools to sell for under a hundred bucks and that leaves them with a decision to make – do they drop Pinnacle’s entry level tools or do they drop their free entry level software? My take is that they will orphan their two free tools off alongside the Softimage free edition.
Frankly, I don’t know why they even bought Pinnacle since it would have cost a hell of a lot less to just code a couple new packages if they wanted to extend their line – and there has to be more cost effective ways to buy a potential customer list. I can’t really see where the purchase of Pinnacle will help anyone, customer or company. Kind of like how Adobe bought Macromedia rather than say- Newtek… why buy duplicates of what you already have rather than extend your line of products? I guess if you figure that the competition is too good, you could buy them out rather than try to make better products.
Mr. Stefanik barely touches on the most important part of making a $2500 movie – writing a script that can actually be made for that amount. This might be due to time constraints and the fact that it will be different for everyone depending on your resources.
The following is my thinking so don’t blame it on R.M. Stefanik.
My take on it is that you need to carefully look over what resources you have available and then write a script that makes the most out of that. First off, what can you do? What skills can you bring to the project for zero dollars? If you can act, do makeup, create wardrobe or props… this will all add value without adding to the bottom line. If you are a special fx guru then a monster or horror movie might be doable with what you have sitting around the house… while everyone else couldn’t touch it with five times the budget.
Then, what can your friends do? Can they run a camera? Can they show up with two dozen home baked muffins for craft service? Can they do computer graphics? Now be careful with this and don’t take advantage of people, make sure that they know exactly what you are doing and what they will be getting out of this.
What are their expectations? My late friend Derek Rama made sure that I knew the importance of that question. People sometimes hear what they want to hear… and it may not be what you meant to say. Ask them exactly and explicitly what they are expecting from the project. It may be your undying gratitude or it may be fame and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. One you can promise while the other you can’t… make absolutely clear which one it is.
And what about locations? Maybe all you have is a one bedroom apartment. Maybe you have a cabin on a lake with access to an abandoned shoe factory. To maximize production values you will want to write a film that makes as much use of the location(s) as you can. Keep in mind that careful camera blocking and set dressing can make one location into two, three or even four locations. Not only will this make the most use of one location, it means that you don’t have to move and that is something to avoid. On my pilot, we used the office of our lead actor‘s wife to stand in for three separate offices. Shane, our key grip/gaffer, let us use his house and it stood in for three separate houses. You wouldn’t believe how much trouble, time and money that saved.
How much time are you going to have to do all this? If you are trying to get it done in three shooting days over a long weekend you will have to minimize action, set decorating or relocations. If you will be doing it over the next eight months of weekends then you can use a different location every one of those weekends. Also keep in mind how much time you are asking people to dedicate to this project. It is one thing to ask someone for an eight month commitment when you are giving them a big fat paycheck- and an entirely different thing when you are offering cold muffins and your undying gratitude. The shorter the commitment, the easier it is to get people to sign on… and always keep in mind that even with the best of intentions, someone saying that they will be there for you over the next eight months doesn’t mean that they will be. Everything from a family crisis to simple loss of interest can cost you your lead actor or a primary location half way through your shoot leaving you with a movie that can’t be finished.
Okay, that ends my interlude and we go back to Mr. Stefanik.
He has a good idea about using your local high school. Most of them have a drama class that puts on a few plays through the year and he suggests that you go there and talk them into making a movie instead of a play. You offer to produce it and that will give you access to what should be an enthusiastic group of people, a longer term commitment from these people, a possible budget increase and at least a few locations.
I’ve been mulling over a spoof on creature-features and that would probably work perfectly with a high school cast and location. It is too late in the current year but if I were to go that route, I should probably contact the drama department at the Lakes District Secondary School and lay some groundwork for the next school year.
This was a good session, especially for those who haven’t dug into it as deeply as I have. I learned a few things and that is all I ask of a session.
He doesn’t really cover what happens once the shooting and editing is all done so once more I will jump in and add to what he has talked about. (you’ll notice that I do this a lot, everything on this website goes through a clint-filter)
So we end up with a $2500 feature length movie… and then run headlong into the distribution brick wall. Except for a vanishing small number of these micro budget movies, making money from them isn’t really in the cards (yet). This means we should be looking at the spectrum of free on through cheap distribution methods.
The first distribution method is one he did give cursory coverage to and that is to set up a website yourself and upload the finished project to it. This gives you full control of the aesthetics of the site but will work only as long as you don’t get hit with a lot of interest. Unless you are paying for some serious hosting, it is usually good for only a couple hundred downloads a month. You could easily run out of your allotted bandwidth and your hosting service will probably pull your site off the Internet and/or hit you with a big surcharge.
The two biggest name places that host and distribute your movie over the Internet are the aforementioned Google Video or iTunes.
Google Video is free up until you pass a certain bandwidth and then they start charging a fee to download it. It is a way to throttle the bandwidth without cost to you or having it completely offline. The complications will ensue as the lawyers and unions start arguing about commercial use and income. Someone is profiting from the work of the cast and crew so the unions will probably demand a percentage. I used UBCP actors on my shoot, it would have been far poorer if I hadn’t. They have a fair contract for volunteer acting gigs which stipulates that if the project makes any money they get ten percent. This is all fine and good but Google is a new and very gray area. If Google makes money and I don’t make a cent… do I owe the actors money? These questions have yet to be answered and unions don’t have a record for flexibility.
Apple on the other hand seems adamant that nobody from the indie community will make money… so they might be a safer choice in that respect. I don’t know how long Apple will allow you to keep your movie up there or how many times they will allow it to be downloaded. It probably depends on how well they can spin it to the artsy folk who are their key marketing demographic. The self congratulatory 16-34 artists with an inflated sense of their own opinion… they are Apple’s bitch. Oh, of course that doesn’t mean you… you are just a discriminating connoisseur of fine tools who groks that Apple is the greatest company ever and that their hardware and software is faster, easier, and more capable than Windoze… plus everyone knows that Bill Gates uses children in developing countries to make Microsoft products out of ground up puppies. And that Apple logo tattooed on the small of your back is just the normal expression of loyalty to the company that originated everything good in computers.
One thing about all this content becoming available online, I see a need for content programmers who scour the material out there and set up websites, a podcasts or RSS feeds that are analogous to TV Guide… it might even be TV Guide. If they know what is good for them they will be developing iTV Guide before someone else takes their lunch money.
SWE4: Breaking the Story with Tim Minear
November 12th, 2005 Clint This is the one that tipped the balance on whether I would take the time off work to come down to the Expo. This man can write and he can run a show. If you do carry on, be warned that the man drops the occasional swear word and I have quoted him and they are in a couple of the videos. I don’t have a problem with it but if you are one of those folk who do then consider yourself forewarned so if you continue on… well it’s your own {beeep} fault and so quick {beep} crying you {beep} {beeeeep} baby.
Continuing on to the main text for this entry and you will be treated to a blurry photo and a few short snippets of video I took with my cheap little digital camera. I have uploaded copies in Windows Media, Quicktime and one for the iPod Video. I don’t yet have the iPod Video yet so if you try that option give me a shout to let me know how it works.
Screenwriting Expo had video cameras set up so if you want a copy of this excellent session you will have to insist to them that they are made available. They have several of the sessions available here, but Tim ain’t one of them.
I’m just going to drop the video links in at random through the page. The best way to view them is to download them to your own computer (I simply detest streaming video but feel free to stream it if you can). For Windows, just right click and select "Save Link As…" or "Save Target As…". With the Mac, if memory serves, you option+click and select "Download to Disk…".
First off, Tim is one funny man. I’m sure that he has spoken in front of a crowd many times and has been able to hone his shtick, but he has really good stage presence and has a good repertoire of anecdotes, answers and comebacks. He has a lot to say and he says it rather quickly so a lot of this will just be bullets points to the session.
Since this is “Breaking the Story” session , he asks for a show of hands to find out which show we would break. There was only a smattering of hands for Wonderfalls, which I’m sure he was expecting, and about even for Firefly and Angel. He jokes that since Angel is immortal then it is possible to do a crossover of Angel and Firefly.
Too bad he was joking because that would be a fun episode. The way I would run it out is – we start the episode by introducing an Angel who has found peace within himself and is a happy, contented man. And then he crosses paths with the crew of a disreputable smuggling ship who put him in a world of trouble where he has to do some nasty, nasty things… and ends up the angst ridden Angel that we know and love.
But alas, it is not to be and he falls back on Angel. The first thing he establishes is that it will be set before the “mistake” of the Angel/Cordelia affair. It will be season two. He lets a few people pitch ideas and kindly shoots them down. Some of them don’t fit the series and some fit too well – “That is a really good idea and that is why we did it in season one.”.
I’m figuring that he had to come into this with a bag full of ideas that he could dip into as the situation warranted. He wouldn’t want to spend too much time just getting an idea for the session to break so he pulled a Dennis the ghost idea out of the bag. Denise sacrifices his quasi-corporeal existence to spend one day with Cordy as a flesh and blood man.
He said that Mutant Enemy liked to start the show with a fake ‘A’ story in the teaser and put the heart of the episode into what seems to be the ‘B’ story. A few people make suggestions and a couple of his stock responses are “That’s good… I don’t love it yet” and “I like it… I don’t love it.”
One woman wants to work the story around a vampire wedding and Tim runs with that. After taking it in a few different directions and then discarding them, the teaser starts to take form. He sees Cordy getting ready for a big date, when they are called out to break up a gathering of vampires. Cordy and the rest of the fang gang barge in on a wedding and they mostly stand in shock as Cordy slams her way through the wedding party with single minded purpose until she gets to the bride – and catches the bouquet as it flies from the brides dusted fingers.
After all that, she still fails to make the date and with resignation she heads back to her apartment where she laments not having a normal man in her life. She realizes she is still carrying the wedding bouquet and tosses it aside. Dennis, her personal poltergeist, catches it out of the air and carefully places it into a vase.
One person from the crowd suggests a curse that causes Angel and Cordy to switch bodies as the ‘A’ story. Tim grins and shakes his head – “Cause Angel isn’t gay enough. Maybe we should do the Angel Firefly crossover where Angel fucks Mel.”
He talks a bit about the reason behind some episodes being based on budget and actor availability. ‘Out of Gas’ was done because Gina Torez was only available for a limited time due to the getting married thing. He had to get he out of the story quickly and keep her out of it until the very end. That writing to restrictions resulted in what I consider the best of the Firefly episodes. Damn fine televisioin.
To help hear the feedback and questions from the crowd, there is a young guy with a mic and Tim is sending him from one side of the room to the other just to see him run. When Tim sends him on one particularly long jaunt from the front right side of the seating all the way to the left back, the young man whispers into the mic “I hate you.” and got a laugh.
Tim starts setting down the parameters of the show. Cordelia must give up something by the end of the episode without knowing it and Dennis has to give up his new corporeal state AND his ghost state to save Cordelia.
Tim talks about working the room on Angel and Firefly and any time they’d hit a stumbling block they would look around and ask themselves “Where’s Joss?”
Anyway, back to the story we’re breaking here. Coming back in from the teaser, we conclude that Xander shows up with Anya, looking all happy and in love. Cordelia makes up a story about how great her new boyfriend is and how happy she is.
Tim seems to be enjoying himself and wistfully says that he wishes they could start up Angel again. Someone yells from the crowd that he should try to get a Cordelia show on the air. Tim nods sagely and laments “But then I would have to use Charisma.” He paused at the ohhh that comment draws from the crowd. “Who I love of course.” He looked back at the video camera covering the event and mouths the words “Cut that part out.” to the videographer. Like I said, funny man.
So back to the story, where he figures that the point where Cordy is lying about her boyfriend is where the newly corporeal Dennis should make his appearance and be very much the man Cordy has just finished describing. He reiterates that we are breaking the story out and that the particulars would be figured out by the writer who get the assignment to take the story to script.
I’m thinking there will be a rash of bad fan scripts turned out over the next six months, all based on what is done here tonight. It might even make for an interesting contest if it weren’t for Fox and its legions of lawyers.
Someone comes out with a less than stellar idea and Tim responds “That’s not stupid…” and this pronouncement seems to be Tim’s stock no. Some of the ideas are getting rather complex and he tries to shut that down by saying he likes to concentrate on servicing the six plus two actors with a simple story.
We move on to act two where Xander/Anya and Cordy/Dennis go on a double date. The act out on this one is Angel coming in to pull Cordy aside and tell her that her date isn’t perfect… unless her definition of perfect includes dead. I figure that is a good place for her to slip in a jab at dead boy himself.
Falling back to how Dennis gains his day of life, Tim bandies about the idea of Xander bringing a “phleboten” to Angel which covers his own appearance and brings in the means of reanimation to Los Angeles. Phleboton is their made up word for any device that is used to get things moving or introduce some event or person. The item itself isn’t important, it is just there to move the story. I don’t know if that is the correct spelling for their word but that is what I’m going with.
I figure it should be the Monkey’s Paw and it interprets Cordelia’s lies (correctly) as a wish and grants it by way of bringing Dennis back to life. I’d go with dropping hints that Dennis follows her that morning and then have him amazed to find himself becoming physical. He learns about what price would have to be paid for him to stay real – Cordy’s happiness would be something that he would have to sacrifice for himself to stay alive.
But back to Tim and our really big writing room. He moves on to act three and says that this is where we find out the who, what and why of the dead guy… who isn’t Angel. He figures that it should come as somewhat of a surprise midway through act three that the new guy is Dennis… which means that I would have to revise my idea from the paragraph above.
Act four would need Dennis to solve the ‘A’ story, which we haven’t actually decided on yet. He would solve it and sacrifice himself to save Cordy. Tim figures that Angel should almost kill Dennis at this point as well. He points out that “We need to find the Angel of it since – show not called Cordelia.” but we are running out of time and he figures that we could wrap it up here. The established theme of the show is love and sacrifice so the Angel storyline should reflect that as well.
He takes a slew of questions from the crowd.
- He says that it is usually better to know the end of the story before it is assigned to the writer.
- Out of Gas was written over the weekend.
- Inside cost about $2.4 million per episode.
- A writer to watch is Craig Silverstein, he is going to be big.
- He has a new show in development with Fox that he can’t talk about yet but it is a big, sprawling show and he is hoping to announce something soon.
- An outline from breaking a story is usually 5-10 pages of sluglines with descriptions and five to seven scenes per act.
- What show would be a good spec right now? Not one more Sopranos, he is sick of reading Sopranos scripts. Something different, a one hour spec of I Love Lucy where she has an abortion… he’d read that.
- On how he learned that Wonderfalls was canceled – “You know how it says your show is on the air tonight? Well it’s not.”
When asked for an embarrassing story about Joss Whedon, he thinks for a second.
“Embarrassing story about Joss? Let’s see, well we would come into the writing room and find him fucking the couch.”
And I think I will just leave there… how can I top that?
SWE4: The Producer Cocktail
November 12th, 2005 Clint This was such a bust yesterday, I didn’t even bother writing anything down about it. Full disclosure means that I should admit it might have a lot to do with me not being that great at the schmooze but the thing is, I’ve pre-paid for it and I figured that I might as well show up and drink my two $50 drinks… or try for four $25 drinks… I wouldn’t want to drink fast enough to make it cost effective only to end up passing out in a puddle of my own vomit. That probably wouldn’t leave a good impression on anyone. It would be memorable though.
Probably a little under a hundred people showed up and I talked to six people… all writers. This is interesting and enjoyable but I’m pretty sure that isn’t what the Producer Cocktail was set up for. I’m not sure how Screenwriting Expo can fix it on their end but the only thing that we can do on our end is to move through the crowd faster – and that is just plain rude.
“Hello, you are…? Oh, another writer… um… bye.”
I think the free parties are good for meeting other writers and the Producer Cocktail isn’t where I’ll be spending time/money if I’m back here next year.
It may not be the best use of my time and money but if you can memorize what the producers, managers and agents all look like… and can remember what work they do and where… and can remember what they are looking for… then this would probably be more useful for you.
SWE4: Passing on Pitching
November 12th, 2005 Clint The Scr(i)pt folk are offering me a chance to pitch to an executive from Richard Donner‘s company as a makeup for Mark from William Morris not show up. Since I’m not prepared to pitch either of my big shows and there is only five minutes to get prepared… I’m gonna pass on it. I don’t want to take that five minutes from someone who has a real chance at making a connection.
SWE4: PitchXchange with A. from a Production Company
November 12th, 2005 Clint I pitched my idea for a series set in a boxing club and he seemed really interested. This interest grew when he learned that I had shot my own pilot for another series as a learning experience. The pitch went quickly and he asked me to get the script to him when I had finished it. The thing I learned at this pitch was to really know what is going to happen in the pilot and how that was going to play out in the second episode. He asked me some focused questions about the subsequent episodes and it was a good thing that I had really thought about it. My time was only half up and I had time to pitch the sitcom set on a gambling boat on the Mississippi but I haven’t worked that out well enough and so I thought I should quit while ahead. The moral of the story is not to go in there with just an idea and hope that the idea is good enough, they’ll want to know how you will execute that idea and how you will follow it up.
So for those keeping track, it was one pitch that I missed, one that wanted more material, one that the executive missed, one that passed and now another that asked for more material. I can live with that average, I was actually expecting worse.
I’m getting more comfortable with this and it is probably because I’m learning not to take it personally. While one person might like everything about an idea, another may find nothing there to like. That doesn’t mean one person is right and the other is wrong, it means that different people like different things. I think that I can mold my ideas into something that enough people will watch to make it financially viable. There will also be people who can’t stand it… and some of those will be producing shows that I can’t stand.