Today was the first day of my fourth term of VFS. It went fine for the most part.
In the morning, I had Production For Writers – Story. Got the skinny on what we’ll be doing. Turns out, we were also supposed to have come up with a short pitch for the little five minute movie we will be writing.
I’d felt like we had something like that due, but when I asked about it on my class’ Facebook page, people said there was no pitch due today.
No big whoop. I’d already figured out what I was going to do. It’s a distillation of an idea I had not too long ago which Felicity helped me elaborate.
The basic idea is that our protagonists are a producer and a director, both young and very ambitious but extremely low on the totem pole, who have been sent by The Studio to a small film festival with orders to find the next indie darling screenwriter… or else.
This means setting up one of those open pitching sessions, where anyone can come pitch their script to people in The Biz.
That’s just the setup, though. The meat of the comedy is all the truly horrible and/or crazy and/or completely horrifying pitches they get, plus their reactions to them. The whole thing is a springboard for getting people to go in and do a little improv if I can. Also, to get ideas from my fellow writing students for bits for it, preferably ones whose scripts are NOT being produced so they can get a little bit of something produced anyway.
One idea : A guy who keeps showing up pitching “Die Hard…” concepts, like “Die Hard… with Dinosaurs!” or “Die Hard… with carnies!”.
Another : A character who starts off normal but their pitch rapidly devolves into an incomprehensible series of sound effects and silly voices.
These would be intercut with one another to keep things moving quickly. The object is to create five minutes of fast, funny, high density rapid-fire comedy that I can use to wow people with my awesome comedy skills.
Of course, I might have a better idea before this is done. My pitch today did not go over great and I realized that it’s something that would be easy to understand if you saw it, but which is very hard to get across in words because it’s very low on plot.
The plot is basically :
- Setup protags and situation
- Midpoint : Protags get close to quitting in frustation but carry on
- Protags find script they are looking for
- Script is huge success (done with fake headlines)
The rest is the wackiness. So while I am sure the end product will be hilarious, I am not sure that matters, because based on the pitch alone, it won’t get made.
Unless I act the whole thing out myself…. hmmmm….
Anyhow, wherever I end up, I know I will have a lot to offer my group. I can write, direct, compose music, organizes things, handle the money, and even edit the darn thing.
Mental note : make sure to present those as possible jobs as opposed to giving people the impression that I don’t even need them. Quite the opposite. I need people to fill in the blanks both in the production sense and in the sense of the blanks in my mind where I forget what the heck I am supposed to be doing.
Of course, getting this idea of mine produced could also be a way of sneakily recruiting people for the skit comedy troupe I want to form. Find the funny people!
But like I said, I might come up with a better, more sure-fire to get made idea. I still don’t have a clue how to make something the millennials will like. Something about the virtues of being a quiet nerdy type, I suppose.
Or, as came up in class today, just go full Wes Anderson.
Between classes came lunch, and that did not go well. First, the morning class ran late and we didn’t get out of there until 12:10. Then I had to go down to the computer lab in the basement to do the course evaluations for the previous term. That involved the usual struggle between my strong drive to be objective and truthful and my personal feelings about the professors involved. So that took me to 12:35.
Then I just barely had time to get the Subway and get my sub before my second class, TV Pilot, started. Note that I have not included the time it took me to eat. That would be because I had no time to eat. So all I could do is stick the sub in the kitchenette’s fridge and get my ass to class.
Only to find all my fellow students eating right there in the classroom, which is something I rejected as being too gauche,
TV Pilot class seems cool. We’re going to learn to write a series proposal, which is somewhere between 10 and 15 pages of info on my original series.
Presumably, by the time I write it three weeks from now, I will have an idea for one.
I exaggerate. I actually have two ideas, which is good, because I have to pitch two ideas next class, which is Friday. Yes, I will actually be doing TV Pilot twice a week!
This means that I am actually only taking 3 classes this semester. Harsh. Luckily, there will be a pilot to write and then there’s all the production stuff. Otherwise, quite frankly, I would get bored and restless pretty darn quick.
And feel just a little bit like I was getting short changed, education-wise.
Had supper at Bob’s on the way home. Club Sandwich, fries, can o’ pop : $7.05. And it was a pretty good Club. The bacon in it was especially good. I am going to have to try their breakfast menu some time.
And then I came home, took a nap, got up, had some dessert (sugar free marble cake, awesome), and then sat done to type to you nice people.
As for the rest, well…. you were here!
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.