Writing a TV Pilot

Tom Benedek with a few words about his upcoming Screenwriting Master Class TV pilot workshop:

I just completed a feature script. My agents seem to like it. My producer is very happy. Surveying our list of prospective submissions, as I raise a glass and pinch myself, the “What next?” of things feels quite daunting. It has always been that way. There is a difference now though. The vision of a golden road for my script is blurred and indistinct. I always anticipate bumps. Yet I always have had some vision of that probably illusory pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. In the land of feature films, there are obviously prospects, the potential for triumph. Currently, more so than ever, it is an intense and massively arid battlefield — empty of fluid and simple ways forward. This will get better. Maybe my script is good or great enough to makes its own path. I will persevere and we will see. Onward…!

Which leads me to my own personal “What next?” — I have been working on a TV pilot idea with another writer. I took a deep breath after finishing the feature and now have plunged in. The other writer has completed some pages off conceptual notes. Now I am melding it all together into an outline.

We already have 30 pages. (The other writer kept at it while I worked on my feature.) So now it feels like it is just a matter of structuring a complete outline, focusing the coordinates of what the show really is(never easy), and then writing those pages.

That original TV pilot script will enter a different battlefield. TV’s new golden age is in full swing. It is still hard to sell things, to get scripts into production. However, there is a vibrancy that is worth venturing toward — if you can embrace TV and its formats. Who is in favor of the mini-series? One hour shows? Half hour shows? 12 episode cable seasons which arrive quickly announced after months of waiting? Homeland, Mad Men, Americans, Portlandia, Parks and Rec, etc.?

Whether or not you love it, TV matters for screenwriters — as an aesthetic standard and as a marketplace. It. TV changed movies in the fifties, TV on demand, cable, entire series on DVD(in those box sets — as long as that continues) force cinema to evolve again.

It isn’t just competition for eyeballs. It is how the eyeballs are conditioned to respond to filmed entertainment. The bar has been raised. The character detail in cable series schools viewers to eventually expect a bit more in theatrical films. Stupid, simple, fun movie-movies, need to be better, more precise, a bit more complex perhaps. Old school movie-movies may win out sometimes. But long-term, the influences of cable, of quality TV, have to influence audiences.

So, understanding TV, how script structure, plot, character differs from features is a worthwhile thing. (I am having some fun mapping out ours.)

Next week, as I work through my own TV pilot script, I will be presiding over a workshop: TV: PILOT CREATION WORKSHOP at Screenwritingmasterclass.com. It’s an 8 week class to outline and write an original 30 or 60 minute pilot. Weekly Writing Workshop Skype teleconferences. Weekly Lectures with TV script fundamentals defined and explored. Online Forum Discussions.

Do consider joining me. It will be interesting.

For more information, go here.

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