Reality TV: An Insider's Guide to TV's Hottest Market (20 page)

Simple, simple, simple. So simple, it’s tough for an exec to pick apart. The more details you provide in a one-sheet, the less opportunity a potential buyer or production company has to fill in the blanks on their own. You wouldn’t think that’s a bad thing, but in this day and age, it can be.

I pitched a show to the Director of Development at a major cable network. The meeting ending with an enthusiastic proclamation that the show was “the best thing that ever came across [his] desk.” He could hardly wait to present it to his boss, sure it was a slam-dunk. The onesheet I left behind, however, had an odd image incorporated into it that led to the immediate dismissal of the show as “too dark” for the network
without even reading the material
. Would the big boss have been as interested in the show if I’d left that one piece of information (the photo) out of the leave-behind? Maybe. He certainly would have been left to his own imagination in interpreting what we’d presented.

While our too-slick, too-complex leave-behind got us in trouble, there’s a downside to going too far in the opposite direction and being too vague as well. I recently pitched to a production company that so jumped the gun and second-guessed my show from having read the logline alone that when my oral presentation didn’t jive with their preconceived (yet unexpressed) idea of what the show was about, it brought our meeting to a screeching halt.
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The only time you need more information in a one-sheet would be in the case of a competition/elimination Reality show or series, in which case you’ll need to explain the basics of game play and the metric by which players are eliminated, but in no more detail than this:

“Two homeowners will be given works of art by the same artist, then compete to see which of their art-inspired room makeovers will win the hearts and votes of three local designers we invite to judge.”

Some special advice specific to Reality-Competition/Elimination pitches and one-sheets:
Keep the rules of game play simple.
If Joe Viewer can’t follow along and understand how your show works, he’s going to flip that channel — and the execs know it.

Mark Burnett, the man behind the popular
Survivor
franchise and other hits, once created a show called
Pirate Master
in which he loaded a pirate ship with a bunch of contestants in search of treasure in a sort of
“Survivor
at sea.” It was a tasty premise in the wake of the first two
Pirates of the Carribbean
films, which had already raked in hundreds of millions at the box office.

On
Pirate Master
, contestants vied for booty in various challenges, which they could then use to strike deals with each other or try to ensure their long-term security in other ways. The booty also had an actual value, so trading it away was like spending your winnings. Castmembers up for elimination were marked with a “black spot,” and players who were eliminated each week were “cut adrift.” In the end, whoever found the largest stash of booty offered on the show would win $500,000.

The show, some speculate, ultimately sank under the weight of its complex game play. It was yanked from the CBS schedule before the end of its debut season, the final episodes appearing only online.
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Now, while I’ve just told you that your in-the-room pitch should be kept short, simple and a bit generalized, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t know everything there is to know about your show before you walk into a room. If the execs are engaged, there will be lots of questions like these:

“What happens in the event of a tie?”

“How do you see this playing out over a full season?”

“Is there an Internet component?”

Holy smoke! You didn’t write all
that
down on the back of the million-dollar napkin when you dreamed this up, did you?

Have your answers ready. Enlist a friend to bounce your pitch off of who can then ask you every tough question they can conjure up. Brace yourself for battle! The more complete your vision, the readier you’ll be to help spin it into existence in the minds of those who can make it happen.

Bolster your pitch with a treatment of three to five pages explaining the ins and outs of your show, including detailed game play, rules, a season’s worth of episode ideas, a breakdown of a sample episode, and/or whatever best illustrates your point and expands your idea into an understandable whole. Don’t offer the treatment unless you’re asked for it, but have it ready.

Another great way to get your idea across is to create a “sizzle reel,” a produced video that conveys the concept for your show. More often now than ever before, execs expect to see tape (video in DVD format, actually… the word “tape” is a quaint holdover from the days of VHS) for proof of concept.
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Sizzle reels can be as short as a promo (a fake “commercial” teasing your show) or as elaborate as a sample scene or two. With just a good quality camera and Final Cut Pro, it’s easier to produce these than ever before.

One thing to remember — keep sizzle reels brief. Typically three minutes or less. Many of my own are about half that. Don’t give an exec time to grow bored or they’ll turn on you.

The Osbournes
was sold based on a brief
MTV Cribs
walkthrough of one of Ozzy’s homes. The sizzle neatly conveyed an image of Ozzy at home that was vastly different than the onstage wild man that his fans had enjoyed for decades. A doting wife? Two funny kids? Who knew?!

Decide what’s most important to get across when you’re scripting your sizzle. If you’re building a show around a celebrity, fame alone isn’t enough — you need to convey what makes them special and what their stories and struggles are. If you’re pitching a dating show, you’d better be ready to show the powers that be what makes it different than the other ones already on air. As supplementary material supporting your pitch, the sizzle reel is your best weapon in selling a buyer on the unique nature of your show.

Here’s the loose script for a sizzle reel I worked on with Ric Viers, author of
The Sound Effects Bible
, for
Wild Tracks
, a show about his crazy professional adventures
.
As you read it, you’ll see what we felt was important in setting him up as an interesting, if not exactly “famous at a household level,” subject:

While we ended up adding to it a bit, this basic concept conveyed Ric’s on-camera charm, his place in the industry, and the notion that the world of sound effects can be entertaining. Sure, the one-sheet says the same thing, but it’s a lot more fun watching Ric scrape swords together in his studio or a montage of incredible film clips featuring his effects in action in major films, shows and videogames.

With
Launching Allee
, songwriter, artist, technologist and Hollywood party thrower Allee Willis and I undertook a far more complex production that not only related who she was and that she was entertaining, but also conveyed her fascination with process, the wonderfully out-there hook for the show being her day-to-day involvement in the making of her own show. Allee oversaw every creative detail of the promo, slaving over the effects and animations that brought it to life, imbuing it with her own inimitable style. The amount of work that went into that promo as opposed to any others I’d done to date was staggering… but you couldn’t deny that it was positively arresting. I may be as fond of that sizzle reel as I am of any finished program I’ve ever worked on… it’s a great character study and concept piece all in one.

Whether your sizzle reel is as mindbending as the one for
Launching Allee
or as simple as sharing an old clip of the Osbournes at home, all it has to do is the one thing it must not fail to do: Make people understand what you’re selling in an entertaining way. If anyone in the room is left thinking “I don’t get it,” you’re back to square one. Square zero, actually.

Worried that you don’t have much of a budget to produce your sizzle reel? Never fear. A sizzle reel isn’t for show or sale, so there’s no need to sweat clearance issues for music and borrowed images. Well, there is, but it’s unlikely you’ll have to worry about it as long as you’re not one of those folks who posts their sizzle reels online or circulates them willy-nilly.
Remember: Your sizzle only exists to illustrate your concept to a couple of people in a room
.

If I were pitching a series about tough-guy bikers who throw tea parties for kids, I might borrow a well-known rock track and some classical music to help push the idea over the top on the sizzle. If you get lucky and the show goes to series, then yes, that rock anthem or orchestra piece is going to have to be paid for. But for a sizzle reel, forget it.

Now here’s an odd turn. Say you’re in the room pitching a Reality show that you’ve been knocking around in your head for years. The exec has just heard your pitch, watched your sizzle reel, and is now folding his hands into the legendary “I’m thinking” triangular prayer position just under his chin. You can see your show getting sold. You’ve mentally wrapped your hands around the steering wheel of your new Mercedes.
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The exec seems to vanish into outer space for just a moment, then looks you deep in the eyes and says, “Could this be a game show?” It’s an interesting and terrifying question, because the show you just pitched is about the lives of a group of animal handlers at the local zoo.

You’ve got two options here. Explain to the exec that no, this isn’t a game show, it’s a Reality series, or roll with it and ask how he sees the game show working. It’s your call. Should you shut down the exec’s seemingly nutty idea or let the conversation roll?

I can think of at least one real-life instance where the result of letting the exec free-associate and fiddle around with a pitch resulted in the sale of a show that birthed a spinoff brand empire for the creators who brought it in. You’d know the show. You’d probably even know the producers. Scenarios like this happen
all the time
in Reality TV.

Of course, it’s your call to make. If you’ve created something deeply personal or have a particular celebrity attachment, you may decide not to entertain the exec’s spitball input and either gently reiterate your show’s concept or end the meeting. With
Launching Allee,
I had a brilliant creative mind at the heart of the show whose only real request was that we not be one more in a chain of hyper-manipulated Reality series about celebrities, as innovation and experimentation was such an integral part of her core philosophy. We made up our minds early on to not compromise the integrity of what we’d set out to produce. But when you’re pitching something that
isn’t
a piece of your soul and collaboration comes a-calling, my general advice is to let it ride.

So the executive is sold on your show about the animal handlers, except now it’s a game show for kids in which the animal handlers trot out different animals that families have to answer trivia questions about in order to win a vacation. Now what?

Well, the first thing that’ll happen is a lot of legal stuff that your agent and/or entertainment attorney will have to hammer out for you. I cannot express how important it is that you not navigate your own dealmaking, or how dangerous it is to proceed on a handshake or informal verbal agreement.

If you’re a creator who’s just pitched a production company to partner with in the name of gaining access and clout, each party’s attorneys will have to establish who will own how much of the show, what happens in the event of a sale, your probable on-screen credit, and (most importantly), how long the producer/production company has to try to sell the show to a buyer. Often, these kinds of agreements are for less than six months, sometimes as limited as ninety days. Why put a time limit on such an arrangement? While they can always be extended by mutual agreement, you don’t want your show tethered to a company that suddenly changes its mind and decides to stick your hard work in a drawer for all eternity, leaving you frustrated.