Running With My Eyes Closed

New York TV Fest: Comedy 3

Sunday, September 11, 2011

The pilots in Comedy 3 are all comedy takes on dramatic formats: a cop show, a doctor show and family drama. Catch them on Thursday Sept 22 at 9:00 pm and Saturday Sept 24 at 4:30 P.M.

OB/GY Anne is a comedy about a romantically challenged gynaecologist from writers Joseph Saroufim and Debbie Singer (who also stars).

Two Jasperjohns is about the ridiculous trials and quasi-tribulations of nine gay brothers from writer Vinny Lopez.

MID: Murder Investigation Unit created by Dirk Voetberg is a comedy about an elite police squad.

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Comedy 2 offers up three pilots on Tuesday Sep 20 at 8:45 pm and again on Thursday Sept 22 at 7:30. These ones may have sketch or anthology feel to them, certainly two and perhaps Paid Programming — with its infomercials — does as well.

Bear Force One from award-winning writer Andy Mogren parodies a different movie every episode and is filmed entirely on green screen.

Paid Programming, created by John Mokate, is about the owners of a struggling video production company who dream of making the best infomercials around.

The Chris and Paul Show is sketch comedy - they describe it as Abbott & Costello on LSD which is pretty intriguing. Here’s the trailer:

Read more about the New York TV Festival: Comedy 1, Drama 1, the premiere of Prime Suspect and the keynote by the amazing Damon Lindelof. And don’t forget to reserve tickets to see Ruby Skye P.I. on Saturday Sept 24 at 3 p.m.!

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New York TV Fest: Prime Suspect!

Thursday, September 8, 2011

An American remake of the gritty and taut Brit TV thriller Prime Suspect? Colour me skeptical. The series premieres on Global and ABC on Sept 22 but I get to see it a day early. The new series — written by Alexandra Cunningham (Desperate Housewives, NYPD Blue), directed by Peter Berg (NBC’s Friday Night Lights) and starring Maria Bello (A History of Violence) in the role made famous by Helen Mirren — is being screened as part of the New York Television Festival’s PrimeTime progra. The screening is Wed Sept 21 at 7 p.m.at the SVA Theater (333 West 23rd)Tickets are free!

For comparison purposes:

If you’re going to be in New York for the New York TV Festival please come to one or both of the Ruby Skye P.I. screenings: Tuesday Sept. 19 at 6:30 and Saturday Sept 24 at 3 p.m. We’ll be there on Saturday giving out buttons and posters.Tickets are free! Please come out and see the shows.

The New York TV Festival’s Independent Pilot Competition screenings will be held at Tribeca Cinemas (54 Varick Street, Tribeca) in Theatre 1. Forty eight independently produced pilots will be screened over the course of the week. You can watch all the trailers on YouTube.

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New York TV Fest: Comedy 1

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

I’m headed to the New York Television Festival in a couple of weeks because Ruby Skye P.I. is an official selection in the Independent Pilot Competition.

Yesterday, I showed you the teasers of the pilots that will be screened as part of Drama 1. There are way more comedies on tap than dramas though; nine screening blocks made up of a whopping 28 shows!

Comedy 1 seems to be the sexy block! Check out Milf Money and Half-Share on Thursday Sept 22 at 7:45 pm and again Friday Sept 23 at 6:15pm at the New York TV Festival.

In Milf Money — written by Rene Ashton — three struggling single moms and the pastor’s wife embrace a new profession: prostitution.

Spend the summer on Fire Island in a Half-Share with Mac who is fresh out of a 14 year relationship and not quite ready for his five eccentric roommates. From writers Sean Hanley and Jesse Archer.

There’s a lot of other cool stuff going on the NYTV Fest including a keynote by Damon Lindelof and two screenings of Ruby Skye P.I: Tuesday Sept. 19 at 6:30 when the festival opens. And again, Saturday Sept 24 at 3 p.m. when we’ll be there giving out buttons and posters. Tickets are free! Please come out and see the shows.

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New York TV Fest: Drama 1

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

One of the unique parts of the New York Television Festival is the Independent Pilot Competition which is really why I’m going down for it. Let’s meet some of the official selections!

There are two screening blocks of drama at the festival with five pilots in all. Drama 1 screens Wed Sept 21 at 9:15 pm and again Friday Sept 23 at 7:30 pm. The shows are Finding and Powerless.

Finding Hope created by Diane Namm is about a teenage girl running away from an abusive home.

Powerless is from writers Thom Woodley and Johnny North who have collaborated on a bunch of web series: The All-For-Nots, The Burg and All’s Faire.

The New York TV Festival’s Independent Pilot Competition screenings will be held at Tribeca Cinemas (54 Varick Street, Tribeca). Forty eight independently produced pilots will be screened over the course of the week. You can watch all the trailers on YouTube.

The New York TV Festival is going to include other cool events: Damon Lindelhof’s keynote and more.

But wait. Are you in Philedelphia? You can attend a screening of Ruby Skye P.I. as part of First Glance Philadelphia in October 13-15. Deets very soon!

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Damon Lindelof at NY TV Fest!

Monday, September 5, 2011

Awesome things are happening at the New York TV Festival! Ruby Skye P.I. plays twice! Tuesday Sept. 19 at 6:30 when the festival opens. And again, Saturday Sept 24 at 3 p.m. when we’ll be there giving out buttons and posters. Tickets are free! Please come out and see the shows.

But there’s more! Damon Lindelof - co-creator of Lost - is giving a keynote address on on Thursday Sept 22nd, 8:30 p.m. at the 92nd Street Y. A mere $10 for tickets!

Here are some writing tips from Damon:

The New York TV Festival’s Independent Pilot Competition screenings will be held at Tribeca Cinemas (54 Varrick Street, Tribeca) in Theatre 1. Forty eight independently produced pilots will be screened over the course of the week. You can watch all the trailers on YouTube.

The New York TV Festival is going to other cool events. Stay tuned to this blog for more news.

But wait. Are you in Philedelphia? You can attend a screening of Ruby Skye P.I. as part of First Glance Philadelphia in October 13-15. Deets very soon!

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Eulogy for an iMac

Monday, August 29, 2011

iMac G5 My first Mac — it was (until very recently) a desktop — am iMac G5. Out of the box everything work. I was stunned. No techno-fiddling to get things to work. No days and days of effort to get everything transferred and setup. No learning curve.

A day or two after I plugged it in I was making stuff for the web.

The iMac G5 altered the course of my career.

It’s death was not so pretty.

A week ago Sunday, it would no longer turn on.

Last Monday, the guy at the genius bar pronounced the mother board fried. He also called the computer “vintage” and told me Apple no longer services it. In other words, they wouldn’t pull out the hard drive for me.

The iMac was no longer my main computer. I have a Power Book Pro that I use for most stuff. The iMac was however the computer on which I kept my iTunes library, one of my email accounts, my calendar and my address book, among other things. That’s a lot of essential info and I have spent the better part of the last week retrieving it.

First there was freeing the hard drive from the computer. No mean feat. If the idea of opening up what was never designed to be opened wasn’t daunting enough, the list of required tools was. T8 and T6 screwdrivers? FTW?! And some plastic card thing-y that you need to loosen the latches on the bezel (whatever that is).

It took three days. I did it. I borrowed the screw drivers from Bobby and MacGyvered the plastic card by gaffer taping one end of my hospital card.

Now I had the hard drive. Next came a trip to Canada Computers for a enclosure to put it in.

And then the really hard part, the part that’s kept me up all night trolling the forums and techno-tinkering. I’ve had to change permissions on hard drives and the names of files. I’ve moved so much stuff around from one hard drive to another and figured out how to start up my laptop from my desk top hard drive. System prefs and disk utilities are always open now.

I may finally be done. Maybe. I’ve said that at least 20 times in the last week.

So if I miss our appointment, don’t answer your email or can’t find your address, at least you know why.

Mean time, even though it is now defunct, the iMac is pointing out a new career for me: with the Geek Squad.

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Lucy Up Close and Personal

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

“Most of you are not going to make it in show business. Most of you aren’t that good.”

Those words spoken by Lucille Ball during an eight week comedy course Taylor Negron took from her in the 70s. His piece The Pink Gorilla (Tuesdays With Lucy) in Fresh Yarn is a great read.

On the death of Ginger Rodger’s mother, Lila:

“In the early ’30s when women came to Hollywood and they got off the train, they were met by men who impersonated agents and studio executives offering them rides. The men raped these women.” Lucille let the tears roll.

“Lila Rodgers created the Hollywood Studio Club, a place were young actresses could live, and be safe from these rapist-men. In those days, when you were raped, a girl never mentioned it.”

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My New Favourite Writing Tool

Monday, August 1, 2011

Working on season 2 of Ruby Skye P.I. I have discovered a new writing tool which I adore!

It’s an app for the iPad called Index Card and that’s pretty much what it is. It’s a terrific tool for breaking story with a really pleasing interface. From the second I started using it, I felt as if it was going to revolutionize the way I write. It might not be as significant a change as when I made the move from type writer to word processor… but close.

The Haunted Library — Season 2 of Ruby Skye P.I. — is a structural nightmare.

Breaking a mystery can be complicated. You have to track the villain’s story, the clues and the detective’s progress. The Haunted Library has three mystery story lines running through it. Plus a non-mystery sub-plot. Using Index Card, I beat out each of these threads on a series of cards each with its own colour.

I like to have big cliff-hanger endings at the end of every episode which means 11 cliff-hangers to track plus a satisfying episode ending. 12 more cards, again, colour-coded.

But wait, why make it easy on myself? I can include in every episode clues for the audience to solve. 12 more cards. These ones in pink.

Using Index Card I beat out all the plot lines, cliff-hangers and clues separately, coding them with colour. The app lets you move cards around, so once I had all the elements and was sure each story had all the necessary beats, I could move them around mingling the stories and working them into twelve episodes.

Once that was done, I pretty much has a treatment. And Index Card has a treatment or outline view that allows you to look at your project as a text and work on it that way as well

Index Card exports to Scrivener which I had never used before and downloaded just because of Index Card. It’s another interesting way to write and I’ll continue playing with it. The interface between the programs isn’t perfect… or at least I haven’t figured it out yet. Scrivener doesn’t seem to recognize projects initiated in Index Card. You might have to start the project in Scrivener and export to Index Card in order to be able to re-import with all the data. I’m not sure and if anyone wants to come over and teach me to do it, I’d really appreciate it.

But the big point is that what I really want to do is break more story because working with Index Card makes it so easy and fun! I highly recommend that you grab it for your iPad today.

By the way, Index Card is free.

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