Last Tuesday I headed west again, onto UCLA's campus. Yes, I left early and no, there wasn't traffic so I ended up sitting in the classroom with a good forty minutes to spare before class started. But I didn't care. I was excited. I was ready. And I was terrified.
See this fall I'm taking a course on "Writing the One-Hour Television Drama". For the last year and change I've been studying feature film screenplays and using television for my escapism, purely for fun. I study every movie I watch for the three act breaks, the cute meet, the big gloom, the characters, the everything. I can't turn it off. I read screenplays so I know what happens in most movies before I pay to see them. I watch them over to understand how they work. And now I get to do that with TV.
It must be the same though, right? you say. A little bit so but then completely different. Four one thing TV has a whole extra act in it, and the thing at the beginning, the teaser. Also, each week (at least for most non-premium cable shows) you have to reintroduce the characters and the main idea of the show for the new viewers. Because you pray each week you have new viewers. So it's different.
What else? Oh, let's see, the fact that I have to write in someone else's voice. I have to use already well established characters and plot devices and settings. It's a little more like mimicry than actual creation. It's basically a whole new skill set.
So back to class. I found out that we'll be dissecting shows each week, writing our own beat sheets (detailed outlines) of them, and then working on our own spec scripts. A spec script is a TV writer's calling card. It's what's used to say, "Hey, I can write X on CBS just as well as their writers and I could do the same for you at NBC." A spec will never be read by the show it's written for but it'll hopefully be read by agents and others who could give me a job. So it needs to be good. And written as if it could be shot which means it has to sound just like a X script and has to be something they've never done. No small feat. Especially when some of the shows we're looking at specing are 80 shows in.
In class we've started breaking down The Mentalist. I've never seen it but don't worry, soon enough I'll be an expert in all things Simon Baker and company. Then we had to pick our show to spec from a list. I chose Bones for two reasons. One, I've seen every episode, many times over in repeats, and two, I like that it mixes comedy and relationships with the crime procedural format.
So what's next? Well, I've spent the last week brainstorming ideas. And this is where I start to freak out. What do I know about crimes and murder and forensic anthropology? Not much. And that I do know? I've learned from Bones and CSI and NCIS and all those other crime shows.
So yesterday Angela and I spent a few hours in Barnes & Noble pouring through the true crime and criminology section. (Patrons walking by were probably very scared, especially when I got all excited about what fire does to a person's cranium!) I made a lot of notes, things I hadn't heard of before, and started formulating ideas.
My teacher told the story last week about how he pitched over 100 ideas to two producers before getting his first writing assignment on a television show. Tomorrow night I have to pitch 4 and then pick one. Right now I have 2 very loose ideas. They're basically sentences. But they're mine. And they're what I've got so far so I'll forge ahead.
What I'm noticing already is how much I like the brainstorming process, the idea of learning about new things. I've always said I wanted to be a writer so I could do a million jobs: be a politician, a movie star, a lawyer, a cook, a parent, anything and everything. And right now I'm getting to be a forensic anthropologist and a special agent in the FBI.
Also, if you have any ideas you wouldn't mind me stealing, send away. By tomorrow at 6:30 nothing will seem to out there!
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