Mixed Marriage

And here's our cheesy two-minute sitcom, "Mixed Marriage," about a slice of processed cheese married to a sexy Brie. What happens when he comes home early from the Dairy Convention?

Casting Workbook

Actors, there is this thing called Casting Workbook. Some actors have demo reels in it. Some don't. Guess who gets considered first?

Tartine!

And here's the second of our Grilled Cheese films, TARTINE, in which three cheeses vie for the affections of a toast:

Grilled Cheese

Here's a very short film we made in March, 2012, in which a slice of Canadian processed cheese struggles to keep his identity when confronted by an American cheese.

Write a Pitch or Shoot a Pilot?

Q. Traditionally, established writers in Hollywood pitch a series to a network and receive money to make a pilot. 

However, as technology continues to enable more people everywhere to produce their own films, some people make their own pilots. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia was picked up in this way. The creator had a manager who got him meetings with networks, but he also wrote/filmed/edited his own pilot ep with some actor friends. They went into the pitch, played the tape and got offers. 

Let's say that I actually did have an industry connection that could get me these kind of meetings. Then let's say I made a KILLER pilot episode on my own dime. If I was able to set up a pitch meeting, would there be any benefit to keeping the produced pilot a secret before going into the meeting? Let me rephrase it another way. Is there any reason this produced pilot should not be published on the web first, in an attempt to build interest from the general public?

Or do networks want to feel they are getting something "exclusive"? I suppose it is possible that something could have support online and for them not to have seen it going into the meeting.

It is extremely unlikely that someone outside a network could shoot a pilot that a network loved so much they bought it. Networks like to have a lot of input on a TV show. Script, showrunner, casting, director, they want to be involved in everything. They have very specific needs that you don't know about, and your pilot, even if it was a really good pilot in some abstract sense, probably won't satisfy them. It is also extremely unlikely that you would get a show set up, as an outsider, any other way. The advantage to shooting your own pilot, assuming it is great, which is a huge assumption, is that someone will certainly watch a few seconds of something that's shot. If it's amazing, they'll keep watching, and if it stays amazing all the way through, people will pass it around.

If you can bring a show with a proven audience to a network, then a lot of gates will open for you. If you can make episodes of a webseries and get a big audience, then suddenly you don't have a naked idea. You have a proven product with a proven team. That's what Jane Espenson is trying to do with HUSBANDS. Of course you're competing with the mountain of product that gets uploaded to YouTube every minute of the day, but that's not necessarily a bigger obstacle than a network's portcullis. And on YouTube, no one cares that you're unknown, they just care if you're funny.

Making something is an unlikely way in the door, but so is every other way in the door. SOUTH PARK was essentially a pilot (actually a video Christmas card) that got picked up and turned into a series. These days it would probably go on YouTube, become a hit, and get picked up.
So, to your question: if you shoot a pilot and it's great, of course you're going to tell everyone you know. Great things get passed around. If it's not good, then throw it away and shoot something better.

I've become a great believer in actually shooting things, if you can put together a team with the right skills. Sure, it is much, much easier to write something than to write it and produce and direct it, or to write something than to write something and then find a great producer and director who'll put it on film for free. But if you can actually make something, you can get it out there tomorrow and see if anyone's interested. If enough people are, then you will have no trouble getting in the door.

Let's put it this way. I directed a vampire short that now has over 200,000 views. If it was part of a series pitch, how much stronger would my pitch be than the usual 6-8 pages of promises?

Prognostication

The New York Times has an article about how Netflix execs supposed knew before they launched House of Cards that it would be a hit. I think it's easy in hindsight, but just because people stream lots of David Fincher movies is no guarantee they'll like a David Fincher-helmed series, or even the next David Fincher movie.

But what is interesting about Netflix's model for HOUSE OF CARDS is that they have metrics. In the video game industry, we have rather elaborate metrics. On a given level of a multiplayer game, we can build a "heat map" of where players are spending most of their time -- every player, not just playtesters. That's because every player of a multiplayer game is on the game company's server, so the game company is getting a firehose of information which a smart designer with the right data miners can use to improve the gamer's experience.

Film doesn't have that yet. It's a lot of work to gauge audience demographics, let along which part of the screen they're looking at. You have to bring in focus groups, and some movies that focus test well flop, and some that focus test great soar, probably because people behave differently in focus groups than they do in real life.

Netflix knows a lot about its audience. It knows how long it takes for someone to stream the next movie, and what sort of movie that next movie is. Do people watch a slew of comedies, or do they watch a comedy and then an action movie? When do they stop watching certain movies or tv series?

Smart execs will be able to mine those data and discover truths about the audience experience. It will influence filmmakers and tv creators. There is a tendency among artists to dismiss whatever the execs have to say ("bean counters!"), but just because the interpretation of the data have in the past been wrong does not mean that new methods of mining data will be just as flakey. Technology gets better.

It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future, but there ought to be an interesting synergy between how easy it is becoming to make a cheap movie, and how much better systems are becoming available to match the audience with just the product they want.

What Else Is There?

First thirty seconds:

Oscar Ballot

THR has an insightful conversation with an Oscar voter. What I find interesting is all the factors that go into the votes. I've often noticed the Academy giving the envelope to an an actor for a less than brilliant performance, and figured it's because they feel he or she has earned an Oscar in general. (Often it's a brilliant comedian turning in an okay performance in a drama. Comedies almost never win.) Between an aging actor and a young one they'll tend to give the envelope to the aging actor because (a) the young actor will be back and (b) the Academy is a bunch of alter kockers. And after a few Oscars they'll raise the bar for an actor -- they can't be giving Jack Nicholson an Oscar every time, now, can they? (They don't do that for composers. How many Oscars does John Williams have, now?)

Anyway, the THR article pretty much confirms everything I've suspected about your basic Academy voter. Including that they take the voting pretty seriously, and have seen a surprising percentage of the material.