Create Your Own TV Series for the Internet-2nd edition. Ross Brown
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the pit of despair and failure that awaits you if, no matter how slick your execution is, you start out with a flawed concept.
What makes a good web series premise? Although there is no formula for success, it makes sense to study what’s been done and take note of what has worked and what has flopped. As Mark Twain once said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” So let’s start by taking a look at some really bad rhymes and try not to repeat them.
FATALLY FLAWED SERIES CONCEPTS
I once asked a former ABC comedy development executive, who spent 5 years hearing thousands of concept pitches from writers, what was the single worst idea for a series that a writer ever brought in. She cocked her head, gave it a few seconds of serious consideration — perhaps trying to choose between hundreds of equally bad ideas — then nodded confidently and said, “Talking drapes.” I responded the only way I could: “Talking drapes? What the?” She said yes, a writer — not a newbie or one who had lost his mind, all evidence to the contrary, but a writer with a solid resume filled with major TV and feature film credits — came in and pitched a series about a man who buys a spooky fixer-upper of a house and soon discovers that the drapes are inhabited by a wise-cracking spirit that speaks to him in one-liners.
Like most writers, I relish all opportunities to mock the competition, so I repeated the talking drapes story to a friend who actually knew the writer who had pitched it. My friend called the writer and said, “You actually pitched a series to ABC about talking drapes?” The talking drapes writer shot back indignantly, “Look, that could have worked.”
When it comes to creativity and art, there’s no predicting what can or will work. And sometimes even the most unlikely notion, in the hands of gifted writers, directors, and performers, becomes successful, possibly even critically acclaimed. (Think Seinfeld, a show that proudly claimed to be about “nothing.”) But some ideas are just so wrong that they deserve to be thrown under the bus like disgraced politicians.
The most common mistake in formulating a pitch for a web series is thinking something is a series when it’s really just a one-shot (or three-shot at best) idea. As the word series implies, your idea must contain characters and a premise that can be mined for subsequent episodes over and over again. So if you attempt to make a series called Zippy and Skippy, about the hilarious things that occur when you smear peanut butter on your golden retriever Zippy’s genitals and he tries to lick it off, you may end up with a humorous 60 seconds of video, but you won’t have a series pilot. Why not? Because there’s no Episode 2. You’ve exhausted all the stories that the Skippy on Zippy premise can sustain. And no, smearing chunky instead of creamy or switching to cream cheese on the cat’s privates wouldn’t count as different stories any more than changing from Little Red to Little Blue Riding Hood would.
A good series concept must have legs — that is, the ability to be used for lots and lots of episodic stories based on that premise, regardless of whether the episodes are 60 minutes or 60 seconds long. The one exception to this rule is if you are doing, in essence, a soap opera or serialized version of a long story. In that case, your series will consist of one long, extended story that is broken up into chapters, each chapter being an episode. But if you go the serialized route, you should probably take a few minutes and jot down what you think the first dozen or so installments might cover, rather than just writing a pilot, then seeing your story run out of gas after Episode 3.
To illustrate the difference between a concept with legs and one without, let me once again cite an example from half-hour network television that most people will be familiar with: Seinfeld. The central premise of Seinfeld (despite its claim to be about “nothing”) is that of four neurotic, dysfunctional friends in New York City and the neurotic, dysfunctional adventures they get into dealing with the everyday minutiae of life — things like coping with your parents, the travails of dating, and the endless parade of bizarre New York characters they encounter, like the Close Talker or the Soup Nazi. Clearly, dozens of episodes or “installments” can be written based on Jerry, Elaine, Kramer, and George and this basic premise. NBC aired 180 of them over the show’s 9-year run, and they continue to rerun in syndication worldwide.
But let’s say, for the sake of illustration, that instead of focusing on Jerry and the gang, you decided that the Soup Nazi is the funniest character in all of New York City and therefore should be the center of the your show. Big mistake. As funny as the Soup Nazi was in one episode, his character and that premise — all the wacky people who come into his soup emporium — does not provide a good central premise for a series. Why not? Because there is basically only one story or episode that would be repeated over and over: The customer comes in, and the Soup Nazi cops an attitude and shouts, “You, no soup, two weeks!” There won’t be stories for Episodes 2, 3, 4, or 44. All you can do is write Episode 1, 1A, 1B, 1C, ad infinitum. And nobody will stick around for any of the subsequent episodes because after they watch your pilot, their reaction to each of the others will be, “I’ve already seen this.”
Another common mistake in choosing a premise is making it so personal and obscure that the only audience that can possibly be in on the joke is you. Even though one of the oldest adages about writing is to write what you know, if what you know is impossible for anyone else to understand or relate to, then what you write may have a potential audience of exactly one.
Let’s say you work at a plumbing supply store. Better yet, let’s say you work as a regional sales rep for a wholesale plumbing supply distributor that sells to the major hardware and big-box home improvement stores in the Mid-Atlantic states. You’ve done this for 20 years, have had a ton of laughs along the way with all the weird characters who have been your customers, and feel certain there’s a great Internet comedy with hundreds of hilarious episodes based on your daily work life. You’ve even got a great title: Flushed! Practically writes itself.
Unfortunately, Flushed! will probably go right down the drain because to understand most of the humor you and your fellow plumbing parts pals have shared, you need to be in the plumbing supply business, or at least be familiar with the names of all the major parts of a toilet. As hilarious as you think it is when Ernie from Ernie’s Hardware of Baltimore says, “Whatever floats your float rod,” or when Del from Home Depot of Dover, Delaware responds to your question about restocking his ballcock supply with a pithy, “That’s what she said,” you, Ernie, and Del may be the only ones laughing. Your series premise doesn’t have to appeal to everyone. But the comedy or drama must be accessible beyond your immediate circle of friends and coworkers if you hope to attract an audience of any significant size.
BE BOLD, FRESH, AND ORIGINAL
The above warning notwithstanding, you must also avoid the opposite temptation — namely to be so “universal” in appeal that all you are doing is recycling pale imitations of old concepts that have been successful. Today’s Internet video consumer has literally millions of options to choose from. If you want to grab his attention, you must begin with a concept that makes him say, “Oooh, that sounds interesting.” Clones and knock-offs don’t do that. “It’s like Cheers, but instead of a bar, it’s set in a Laundromat” won’t make anyone grab anything but his head.
So what has worked? Let’s take a look at a few successful Internet series and analyze what made each premise attractive. To make sure we’re focusing on premise rather than other factors, we’ll exclude series made by known Hollywood players like Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz (Quarterlife) or that include recognizable on-camera talent, like Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, starring Neil Patrick Harris. Because of their star power either in front of or behind the camera, these series get press coverage to help promote the show and draw an initial supply of viewers. Most of you won’t have access to that sort of publicity machine and will therefore have to come up with a concept that makes the video surfers of the world say, “I’ve gotta check that out.”
The Guild (www.watchtheguild.com)
Before Felicia Day became an Internet goddess, she was a fairly anonymous actress. She’d had some modest success, including a recurring part as Vi in the final season of