Research, social media, and your face.
As you research television shows that are in a similar genre to yours it’s not uncommon that you’ll have to watch some shows that you consider to be utter crap. Some of them probably ARE crap. Yet you still have to watch them so that you know the ins and outs of what’s on TV.
Doing this for hours on end can be frustrating. And isn’t one of the reasons you want to make your own show because you have a better idea than the crap that’s on TV?
Well if you want to be in the TV game you have to watch TV. And you have to take the good with the bad.
Eventually you might get fed up and decide you want to vent a little. And one of the ways some people vent these days is to tweet or write about their feelings on their social media sites.
“I just watched the “Insert Name Here” show and it was the stupidest thing I have ever seen.” (I think that’s less than 140 characters)
Tweeting or Facebook about your opinions on a show is never going to do you any good. In fact, about the only thing it can do with certainty is bring you harm.
Once you put it online it is out there. Even if you see the err of your ways and delete it later if someone has copied it, re-posted or re-tweeted it (is re-tweet seriously a word?) it’s out there, and people have a way of finding the exact thing you hope they’ll never find.
I was watching a show a while ago and it was horrible. There wasn’t a true thing to this episode. Every single scene was obviously set up, and set up poorly. It was clunky, unbelievable, and it wasn’t even shot well. And it pissed me off. I’d had some wine with dinner that night and it occurred to me to write something about it on my Facebook page.
Well I’d no sooner had the thought than I realized that the EP of that show is a “friend” (friend in quotations means facebook friend). I realized I was pissed because I have pitched so many shows to this guy and his company and he has never produced any of my shows (mind you he did want one but I took it elsewhere – but that’s not the point right now).
Yet I still felt the urge to share my disdain publicly. Even with all my years in the business I felt the need to “share”.
It was a wake up call to me, and I wanted to share this reminder with you.
The business we work in may seem vast, but it is small. And as impersonal as some people may say it is, it is still a business based on relationships. And you need these relationships to get your shows seen.
So if you are short-sighted enough to act without thinking (like I almost was) you just might find that when the time comes to pitch your show that the venting you did is blowing up in your face.