Wednesday, October 05, 2005

This week we've been working up breakdowns for a conference call with the network at the end of the week. Scary and exciting: if things go the right way, we may have a show in development at the network shortly. Moreover, the direction in which the brave and encouraging network people have asked us to take the show is much more challenging, both for us and the audience, than what we'd first pitched. That makes it harder to write, and much more exciting to work on. We're really pushing the envelope here.

As we're getting down into the acts and act outs of the stories, we're discovering all sorts of things about our pitch. Some stories turn out to be smaller and shorter than we'd hoped; they become B stories. Some core cast generate stories less well than we'd thought, and others more so. That's why the pitch bible -- even the show bible -- is no more than a battle plan. Once the enemy starts shooting at you, you have to improvise. Doesn't mean it's not worthwhile having a plan; without a plan it's all just confusion. But it does mean you have to be willing to go with what's working and drop what's not.

Now that we've got our stories broken down, we're writing them up into a leave-behind for the conference call. I never like to send paper before a call. Nothing on paper reads as exciting -- or as emotionally clear -- as an oral pitch. So we'll hold the leave-behind till after the meeting. That way we can also edit it based on the conference call...

4:53 PM

3 Comments:

Just out of curiosity, is this one of the pitches you made at the Toronto Film Festival?

By  Anonymous, at 11:27 PM  

This all sounds very intriguing, Alex. I look forward to hearing more about the project in the weeks and months ahead.

May the Force be with you.

By  Kelly J. Crawford, at 11:44 PM  

Jutratest: No, this is a pitch we did last year. We've been working with a production company since. They sent it to nets over the summer, and now we're closing in.

By  Alex Epstein, at 1:00 PM  

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