In the previous blog, Give Me Control!, I wrote, “remember to make your show as thorough as possible, not leaving anything to the imagination”.
I’ve spoken about this before, but it was in the last 2 months that I realized even more how vital it is to know and understand why your show is like it is. If something is a certain way, you need to know the reasons for it, and the reasons why doing it differently would change thescope of the show.
And I know I’ve touched on this previously as well, but, these reasons are not part of your pitch, but you need to know the answer to the question, “Why is this like this?” before you take your show to market. Because the question will get asked later.
With the demo for my show in post-production there have been a number of times I have spoken with the Post-Production Supervisor about some questions she had. For each question she had for me, I had pages of answers for her.
You need to know the story lines and why they matter. You need to know your characters inside and out. You need to know how your show compares to other shows out there, past and present. And of course, you absolutely must know what it is you want to communicate to your viewer.
I have so many pages written about “why this is like this”, and “why this can’t be like that”, that when I first started talking about this with the Post-Super it was a little daunting trying to decide what to tell her. I knew if I emailed her 5 pages of notes to answer“why I prefer a seedy café as opposed to a nice family restaurant” she wouldn’t have time to read it.
So I had to take all the info I had compiled and turn it into digestible points. Which leads us to the next point…
Having all these answers isn’t good enough – you need to be able to communicate them to the Execs or Post-Production Supervisors in nice little bite-sized sound-bites. You need to be as clear and succinct with these answers as you are with the Logline for your show.
The better your answers are about why your show is constructed like it is, the less likely it is that someone else will make up their own answers – answers you know are not going to be the same as yours.
For every aspect of your show you need to know how that particular point communicates to your prospective viewer, and how doing it differently would change the outcome.
It’s pretty simple really.
This = This. And That = That.
And if you take the time to know and write down the process of how you got to the This’s and That’s of your show, you’ll have a better show and thus, a better chance of seeing your vision become reality.