Guest Blog: Upfront and Behind, Part I

As part of the ongoing series of guest blogs, the Wave-inatrix is very proud to present part one of a three part guest blog: Upfront and Behind - written by a very dear friend who just happens to be the assistant of one of the most talented, respected and dynastic showrunners in television. Interested in writing for television? It is a lucrative, competitive and intense world. Curious about just what the pilot process is like from beginning to end? Wavers are priviledged to be able to get this inside look:

Upfront and Behind
by M.

As a kid, movies were my life. I used to reenact the dance scenes from MARY POPPINS in front of the TV. I know all words to the SOUND OF MUSIC, the entire movie, not just the songs. All the girls left my house in tears at my 10th birthday slumber party when I tried to show my best friends the joy in WEST SIDE STORY. (Ignore the knife fights and beatings, girls, it’s really a love story.)

Eighteen years later………movies, and now television are still my life. Film school and a few years of industry gigs under my belt, now I work for a television producer on a studio lot. I see television shows and movies getting shot on different sound stages, even run into a few famous actors in the commissary. A bad day at work is when my parking space is blocked off by a hit show using the parking lot for an additional scene location. On a good day, I get to be a part of a team that makes a great television show.

I took this job to work with my boss, a well-established (Emmy-winning) television producer, in order to go through making a pilot with her, and to sneak in my own writing time in the off season. I’ve spent the last few years focusing on writing feature scripts, but figured if I was going to learn the ins and outs of television, might as well do it with the best. And it was quite an educational experience.

One month ago, the network executives gathered in New York to announce the Television Upfronts, a week of presentations by networks announcing to their advertisers, and the rest of town, their fall line-up. New shows are showcased, and returning shows glam up the event with celebrities, and the networks hopefully yield the promise of the great advertising dollar. What you don’t hear about are the shows that aren’t mentioned at the Upfronts. The shows biting their nails in Los Angeles, hoping for a last minute change in schedule or a late mid-season pick-up. In the short month since the Upfront Presentations, the ground has shifted dramatically for hundreds of people.

With each show that a network promises to air in the coming year, writers must be staffed, actors booked, and the production machine quickly starts buzzing into action to deliver shows for the Fall season.

However, there are also the shows that are brushed under the rug. Each network shoots almost four times as many pilots as they pick-up, and each of those pilots involves just as many people and just as much effort as the ones that make it to the Fall schedule. I had the pleasure, and stress-filled months working on one of those pilots.

My boss, known in television as a showrunner, after a decade of writing and producing hit television shows, finally earned a coveted development deal. She has the opportunity to create her own shows rather than write for someone else’s. This year, she created a new show, which she sold on a pitch to that network last fall. I was told by a network friend that somewhere around 80 pitches were bought, just in their comedy division. It is easy to assume they bought an equal number of drama pitches too. (Imagine how many pitches they heard if 80 is the final number.)

The next step was to get the chance to actually shoot a pilot. Since December my boss had been hard at work writing and rewriting the pilot script. In late January the network culled through the 80 scripts that should have been delivered and picked 18 to shoot as pilots, which was, by comparison to other networks, a large number of comedy pilots for one season. We were off and running onto the next stage by mid-February.

We started casting as soon as we could in order to get a jump start on every other show in town also vying for the same actors. The casting process is another world worth its own column, but suffice it to say, I have a whole new respect for actors. And also, hearing hundreds of actors in the same age group read the same few minutes worth of lines, I learned how important it is for a writer to be clear and concise with your words. Actors might have many interpretations, but if the writing is solid, there shouldn’t be too much room for deviation, even in comedy. Some of the best jokes in a scene remained funny fifty or one hundred times after I’d heard them, while some lines stuck out like sore thumbs at every single read. And the actors, they basically get 3 minutes to impress the room (made up of one or two casting directors, a casting assistant working a video camera, the showrunner, and me, the lucky assistant who gets to witness this process). Just as writers often only have a few pages to make an impression on a reader, a casting director will often know in moments whether an actor is right for a part or not.

I had quite a few personal thrills from some of the actors that walked through the casting office doors. Oh, I loved him in that movie. Or, wow, I grew up with a major crush on him and boy, he aged badly. Many of the girls seemed to think more cleavage would guarantee them a job, which I found pretty horrifying. And, what job do these people have that allows them to show up at a random office in Hollywood at 11:30am on a Tuesday morning looking like a slutty nurse? (which was not the role they were auditioning for, by the way.) A few up-and-coming actors and actresses blew me away and I knew they were just one right role away from a Vanity Fair cover. But, averaging about 30 actors a day is also completely exhausting. Even when a few tried to be different and stand out from the pack, often it just bothered us as we waited for them to get on with the audition. Some just inhabited the role the second they walked in the room. First impressions are powerful indeed.

This process went on for a solid month. And even with casting still going on for one of our lead roles, and another rewrite still in the works, our production team built the sets, designed the costumes, and even began sampling title music from the last week of February to mid-March. I was busy trying to keep track of all the different departments, and more importantly, keeping my boss sane and productive. If that was keeping phone calls away from her while she was rewriting, or buying time with vigilant agents, she was the engine keeping everything running, and I had to keep her running.

...to be continued

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