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Posts tagged as “Pilots”

TV Books are back from the future (and the past)

Following on the steps of previous book posts, it seems that everyday I discover more and more books about screenwriting and especially, surprinsingly, TV writing.

On television writing I have found several other books that, according to the Amazon peeps’ reviews, seem worthwhile:

Marilyn Webber‘s Gardner’s Guide to Television Scriptwriting. Webber has written other writing books on other specific subjects (such as Sitcom writing, TV Animation, Feature Animation, etc). The book seems to be hands-on although not updated in its examples (West Wing, 24, and Gilmore Girls among others).

Martie Cook’s Write to TV: Out of Your Head and onto the Screen. Cook has dedicated writing sections for each of the areas of TV shows (Comedy, Prime-time Drama, TV-Movies, Reality TV and even TV News Magazines Shows and Kid Shows). The book also contains sections on writing characters, dialogs, pilots, as well as tons of pitch/business advices. An extended preview of the book can be found here.

Ellen Sandler‘s The TV Writer’s Workbook. Sandler has written for shows such as Everybody Loves Raymond (where she was co-exec). Her TV writing book is therefore more focused on sitcom writing, although still touches on drama writing as well as networking.

Also, just for giggles, I’ve found out that there’s a TV Writing book that came out way back in…1990. Notice the high-tech computer on the cover.
The accuracy of the information provided in this bok vis-à-vis contemporary television landscape cannot be guaranteed.

Last but not least, there’s a “how-to” television writing book with the brits in mind. That’s right, a book that covers everything you need to know if you want to write for the BBC. It was written by William Smethurst. And let’s not forget that the BBC is probably the only “serious” television option opened to anyone.

More and more TV Writing books seem to come out every year, which begs the question: Is television writing becoming popular and hype?

You're leaking coolant at an alarming rate

While we’re on the Wired subject, or not, as well as Internet, here is another small article about leaked pilots on the Interweb.
What interested me in this article is that, as usual, the people behind the article like to hide behind “torrent-tracking sites” to speak of illegal file sharing, when it’s obvious that they have, like all of us, downloaded shows at least once in their lives. After all, the article is from Wired!
I mean if you go to any torrent website, you’ve known damn well for over a month now that pilots, like Fringe, have been leaked; hell, there’s even some talk that J.J. himself leaked the pilot!
“The number of leaked pilots and shows is always increasing”
Thank you mister obvious. I don’t need a torrent expert to tell me that, I’ll just open my eyes.
Let’s not pretend that we’re all good little boy scouts that have never ever illegally downloaded something and also never heard of torrent websites.
Yes, “society” (and suits) frown upon downloading but if you go download illegal stuff on the net, at least have the guts to admit it instead of pretending you don’t know pilots have been leaked for over a month.

And also, let’s be honest, if it was not for pirating and Internet, Lost and Heroes would not have been huge phenomenon.
Last year, months before TF1 premiered Heroes in France, there was something called the Heroes World Tour, where the cast travelled through several cities to promote the show.
One of those stop was Paris.
I wanted to meet Jack Coleman and I knew that Heroes was very popular here in France. Keep in mind that the HWT was months before the show even premiered for the first time ever on French TV. Despite that, hundreds (if not thousands?) of people formed a giant queue in front of where the cast was supposed to show up. Long story short, I unfortunately was not able to meet Coleman (too much people in line, despite me having arrived with friends at 8AM – the signing was during the evening).
Obviously everyone of them had downloaded and watched the show beforehand.

So yes, downloading greatly helps a show nowadays and helps build its reputation.
Let’s face the future and acknowledge that the illegal leaking of shows helps build a fanbase instead of destroying one.

Tauron trip

Since I’m going off on a month-long vacation in a couple of days I’m starting to pack my suitcase. I won’t have Internet there since it’s the middle of nowhere.
That means hopefully no procrastination…Although there’s gonna be family there so who knows.
Anyway I’m packing a couple of books because I want to study and write whilst I’m under the sun. I also want to try out the 7-day screenplay method.
I’ll have loads of time to think in the car, 7-hour trip!

In other news I read last night the Caprica pilot, and I’ve got to say it’s looking pretty good.
Going on Jill Gollick‘s footsteps, the structure of the (2-hour) Caprica pilot was:

Act One – 23 pages
Act Two – 13 pages
Act Three – 18 pages
Act Four – 15 pages
Act Five – 12 pages
Act Six – 6 pages
Act Seven – 6 pages
Act Eight – 9 pages

I was a huge Battlestar Galactica fan, and then season 3 happened, so I wasn’t really excited about Caprica, especially when I heard it was going to be Dallas in space. I read a couple of months ago what the basic story was going to be about, but I forgot about it.
Then last night I read the script and was completely blown away by the end of act one. Suffice to say if you don’t really know the story of the show, it’s going to blow you away too.
Anyway, the technology is also very advanced in Caprica, nothing like BSG, so I’m waiting to see what’s up with the CGI (although I’m sure it’s going to be good given what we have on BSG).
The basic mythology is well set-up but don’t expect to see much tie-ins with BSG.
Only a year to wait…