#pitching tv

LOGLINE

One to two sentences outlining the premise of your pilot. Think about the protagonist, conflict, and premise of the show. Your “elevator pitch.”

Examples:

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: A young woman abandons a choice job at a law firm and her life in New York in an attempt to find happiness in the unlikely locale of West Covina, California.

Rick And Morty: An animated series that follows the exploits of a super scientist and his not-so-bright grandson.

PRACTICE:

Write a logline for four of the six shows provided, or make up four of your own if you don’t watch any of these shows or movies.

30 Rock:

Friday Night Lights:

Scandal:

Harry Potter And The Sorcerer’s Stone:

The Simpsons:

Glee:

The Bachelor:

SUMMARY

A brief, ½-1 page summary of your show, main characters, and world. A step up from the logline, the summary should briefly expand on everything you set up in the logline, and everything you’ll go on to explain in the pitch. The bridge between your logline and more in depth parts of your pitch deck.

IE: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Summary:

To most looking in, Rebecca Bunch has a great life: a high powered job as an attorney in a prestigious New York law firm, great future prospects in her chosen profession, looks, brains, and money. But she has always suffered from anxiety and depression, for which she is on a plethora of pills. Those maladies are largely from being pushed by her overbearing Jewish mother, which also led to Rebecca's father abandoning the family when she was young.

When on the streets of New York Rebecca runs into Josh Chan, her boyfriend from summer camp ten years ago when they were sixteen, she remembers back to that time as the happiest time in her life, happiness which eludes her. When Josh mentions that he is imminently moving back to his hometown of West Covina, California, Rebecca decides to pursue happiness in moving to West Covina herself, telling people it's because she got a fabulous job there, where in reality it's to rekindle a relationship with Josh, which she believes is what will make her happy.

As Rebecca ekes out a life in West Covina with a wide array of new friends, colleagues, allies and enemies - within this collection being Josh and his friends - Rebecca may come to some realizations about her life and what she is trying to achieve. Does this all make her a crazy ex-girlfriend, or is it a little more nuanced than that?

(Thank you to “Huggo” on IMDB for this LOL)

So, if our logline was “A young woman abandons a choice job at a law firm and her life in New York in an attempt to find happiness in the unlikely locale of West Covina, California,” in our summary, we build out from each part. “A young woman,” becomes “Rachel Bloom” -- a hotshot lawyer with a serious depression problem. Her “finding happiness” we now know means following her ex-camp crush to West Covina, California. We’re given a brief intro to the supporting characters who will make up Rebecca’s world.

MOST IMPORTANTLY, and I’ll stress this over and over, everything you write about your show should connect back to your main character(s). If they are the sun of your show, then all the other parts must revolve around, and connect back, to them in some capacity. For instance, Rachel’s mother is introduced in the summary -- but only in how she affects Rachel. If you have a clear focal point for your show, it’ll be easier to build out the world around them.

PRACTICE:

Write a brief summary for one of the shows you’ve written a logline for.

TONE

Tone is what your show sounds, looks, and feels like. This should give the reader an idea of how you want your show to be.

Some words used to describe tone include: Surreal, single-cam, multi-cam, zany, serious, drama, comedy, ensemble, character-driven, situational, dark, light etc.etc.etc. The most important thing about tone is that you clarify it early on, and stick to it.

Ie.: The Mighty Boosh is a visually and situationally surreal comedy with realistic characters.

30 Rock is like an animated show come to life, with quick cutaways and exaggerated comedy balanced out by grounded protagonists.

An easy “tone” statement to help you -- and execs -- out is: It’s this meets this if you added/subtracted/multiplied it by this.

PRACTICE:

Identify the tone of 3 shows you watch, and write 1-2 sentences describing each. Try to brainstorm a word cloud of tonal adjectives for your own idea.

ABOUT ME

Remember how I said, “Write what you know?” This is your chance to prove why you should be the person to make this idea come to life. What in your personal history led you to this story, or what makes you the person uniquely qualified to tell it. Sort of like a college personal statement but you can say “dick” all you want (FINALLY)

PRACTICE:

Write 10 (or as many as you’d like) bullet points on what makes you uniquely fit to tell this story. Again, they don’t have to be extreme: “I’m a woman and this show looks at the dynamic between women” is enough for now.

THE WORLD

Set the scene for your pilot. List anything externally relevant to the pilot and our main characters. This means where and when your show takes place, and how your character(s) fit into it.

IE: Wunderkind, The World:

LOGLINE: A curmudgeonly college freshman happily drops out of school to accept her dream job writing for a tv show, before realizing she only got hired for “being young” in the first place. Now she must straddle both worlds, or risk winding up in neither.

#COLLEGELYFE:

Shelby understands why she’d stay in school to be a doctor or teacher, but doesn’t get why people say college is the best four years of your life. Cuz, in reality, College is like a mediocre pasta dish — but when it’s served between an appetizer that called you “fag” for 17 years and a dessert made of mortgages and your own mortality, it starts to taste pretty good to people.

College life is a nonstop carousel of nightmares that everyone else seems to be enjoying. It’s weird that somebody else makes your food, dehumanizing to get water from a fountain in the hallway, and fucking sociopathic to get drunk during the daytime. Shelby doesn’t feel disdain for all of it, so much as feels guilty and like a nuisance for not enjoying any of it. Same with Katy Perry and Gummi Bears. But ~yung lyfe~ proves inescapable — like when she’s out on script for a week and audits a class for fun, only to get way too into it, or when she’s chosen by Vanessa to “moderate” a conflict resolution session at Vanessa’s sorority (you know, because she’s empathetic but doesn’t take bullshit and also not pretty enough to be threatening to the other girls. Like a big sweatshirt of a human! You know you should throw it out, but you love it and sometimes you still need it!) The one draw from college is the improv team she’s on and the fact that housing has already been paid for the year.

#WORKLIFE:

Staffing to Shelby is like Jerusalem to the Jews: the promised Holy Land where everyone comes together to worship the one true god, Television.

But just because her coworkers are older, it doesn’t mean they’re not still people, and Shelby’s not still Shelby. Alternately viewed as too young, too mean, too smart, or too dumb — depending on who you ask — Shelby has to deal with not just being a 17 year old girl in a tv writers’ room, but a lame 17 year old girl in a tv writers’ room.

Wanting to feel valued and useful, she learns to carve out a niche for herself in the room as an “expert” on young, fun people... despite definitely not being one. Suddenly, the healthiest thing for her professionally is to embrace her youth — and all the embarrassing, horrifying, drug-fueled experiences that entails.

PRACTICE:

Write a one page summary detailing “The World” of your show.

CHARACTER BIOS

A brief description of your main and side characters.

WHEN WRITING A CHARACTER BIO, CONSIDER:

Who is this person? What are their motives? What is the best thing about them? What’s the worst thing about them? What do they love? What do they hate? How would they describe themselves? How would other people describe them? Where do they begin their story, emotionally? Where will they end it? If this is not your main character, how do their traits reflect on and connect to the main character? Are they a foil? A friend? What do they add to the world, and how do they interact with it?

Ie: JOSH, “THE FRENEMY”:

This fucking guy, you know? This whitebread, Harvard-educated, National-Lampoon-staffing, The Onion-reading motherfucker who’s just tan enough to think he’s not racist. Shelby’s antagonist-turned-frenemy at work, Josh can’t stand anything about Shelby (the feeling’s mutual, bruh). An early 30-something writer and the guy who somehow ends up doing most of the show runner’s physical work, he’s technically a very “accomplished” adult who disdains anybody or anything he doesn’t think is “on his level.” If he were into videogames, he’d never believe that a chick really knows what she’s talking about (but, like, he’d never be into videogames).

At least, this is the snap judgement Shelby makes after an antagonistic first couple days — as Vanessa points out to Shelby, wouldn’t she rather Josh “haze” her than ignore her, like the other writers? And does she REALLY dislike Josh, or just dislike the fact that Josh dislikes her? As hard as this new environment is on Shelby, can she imagine what it’s like for the 31 year old writer who has never had to deal with a teen girl in the room? Not in a sexist way, but in a “teacher floundering because he’s not sure how to handle a new student” way? He had a hand in hiring her, after all (Shelby reluctantly understands Vanessa’s points, but with BIG caveats.) And Josh isn’t necessarily wrong when he criticizes Shelby: she’s young; she’s inexperienced; she wore pants backwards to work twice in row — but who does he think he is to point that out?? The one thing Josh has going for him is that he’s honest. He’ll make life hard for Shelby, and won’t pretend to like her when he doesn’t, but he’s not gonna sabotage her career — why bother when she’ll probably manage to do that herself? A big brother/little sister dynamic will prevail, without either of them realizing they care about each other until it’s too late.

PRACTICE:

Write brief character bios for your main and side characters.

**TIP** If you’re struggling, try to answer “How would this character order coffee?” It sounds silly, but knowing, without a doubt, how each of your players would act in seemingly innocuous situations will lead to fully developed characters (and make your life way easier in scripting).

THEME/WRAP UP

The theme part of your pitch should be sprinkled throughout the deck, but here’s your chance to make it loud and clear to the reader. The “theme” of any story is like the lynchpin: remove it, and the wheels fly off completely. If you’re struggling to think of the theme for your show, there’s a good chance you’re not ready yet.

PRACTICE: