I have to admit I haven’t spent every second this week watching pilots. I took a little time out for Heroes. Here are a few little things I noticed:
The first commercial break didn’t come until 22 minutes in. Wasn’t that great? You’d really settled into the story by then. […]
What I like about Journeyman is the way writer creator, Kevin Falls — a veteran of Sports Night and West Wing, rolls out the premise, a little at a time. He doesn’t feel the need to spell out the story for you. He lets you come and get it. And […]
Chuck and Journeyman compare nicely.
Both are about men who get superpowers: Chuck gets national secrets downloaded into his brain and Journeyman’s Dan can time travel.
Both pilots take a familiar form: One storyline introduces the series premise or season arc (the A-story) and the second covers a mystery of the week (B-story).
Then again, […]
Welcome to the new site.
Many thanks to Mr. Amazing for his hard work and endless patience in making this happen. He’s my personal superhero. Which is interesting, because superheroes seem to be the week’s theme.
There’s a lot of superpower shows coming at us right now: Chuck, Journeyman, Bionic Woman and Reaper are all […]
The K-Ville pilot, written by creator/executive producer Jonathan Lisco, almost looks like a front-loader. But it isn’t. In fact the structure of this pilot is a thing of beauty which can only truly be appreciated in its deconstruction.
The basics: K-Ville is a cop series set in post Katrina New Orleans. The first episode is a […]
My objection to a lot of the pilots we’re going to watch over the next few weeks is that many of them front load their series premise. You’ll see soon enough; shows in which there’s a voice over to tell you how things came to be this way or the teaser is a vignette […]
I’ve made a few decisions about the new season and which pilots I’m going to breakdown. I’m going to start with K-Ville. It airs Monday Sept 17, 2007 at 9 pm on E! and Fox if you want to catch it before I post.
Mondays may be a problem night for me, because I also like […]
I am getting prepped for the fall launch. That means watching as many pilots as I can get my hands on (thank you to my new best friends at CanWest Global who have supplied me with screeners) and figuring out which ones I’m prepared to watch 4 or 5 more times, so I can post […]
This post is dedicated to my agent, Glenn, who love The Shield and always points to it as an example of a great television pilot. And I agree.
I’m all about first acts these days, so most of my comments will be about the first act structure and scene construction. (Which leads to a fair […]
Murderati has a fun two-part post about the pitching process in LA.
Included is a checklist of things required before you can even get the meeting:
Item 1 – You must have a place of residence in Southern California. You may be able to swing a NY residence, but if you are truly starting out, it’s SoCal […]
