Art of Starting: Your Big Picture Guide to Making Film & TV

Biagio: Hey, everybody. She’s joke. He’s Biagio. We’re married. We make unscripted film and television and want to help you do the same.

Joke: Hopefully by teaming up with us.

Biagio: Well, happy new year. Happy 2016.

Joke: Yay! Happy New Year everybody.

Biagio: Super excited to be kicking off the year with our 67th podcast episode, which is pretty amazing because joke thought we’d never make it past four.

Joke: I mean, I had a little more faith since you made me record five to begin with.

Biagio: Well, that’s true, that’s true. But you didn’t think we’d make it to 67, I bet.

Joke: No, I didn’t think we would make it to 20.

Biagio: So anyways, we wanted to kick off the new year with an episode called the Art of starting. Now, before we get too far in today’s episode, a couple of quick things. Real screen 2016 is coming up. We won’t be there this year. We were there last year. We met with a handful of you there, but as luck would have it, we are filming two productions at the exact same time and it would be sheer malpractice on our part to depart for Washington, DC at this point.

Joke: Yeah, we’re actually in physical production, so we are planning on getting to the East Coast later this winter or around springtime, and meet up with all of our executive friends over there at that time, rather than leave our productions unattended.

Biagio: Yeah. So if any of you East Coasters, you know, we’ll let you know on a podcast when we’re coming out that way. And maybe if there’s time to say hello, we’d love to see you. Also, in between our last podcast and this one. Adobe actually did a large blog post on how we used Adobe Premiere to make our last television series. I’ll go ahead and post a link to it in today’s show notes, that’s going to be at Producing Unscripted six seven, but it kind of breaks down the how and the why of us going Adobe Premiere, which we talked about in a past podcast. I’ll link to that as well. But the article is really concise and I think it hits. It hits a lot of the key points that let us, as a company to switch to Adobe to start using Adobe. Speaking of starting, honey, what an awful segue that was. But let’s let’s.

Joke: I’m not gonna.

Biagio: Lie, I’ve had I’ve had way better. That was just that was. I was barely trying.

Joke: But you’re coming out of a cold and, you know, we’ll we’ll give you a break.

Biagio: Thank you. I’m also going to let you do most of the talking today because I am coming out of a cold. Okay. The art of starting. It’s something we found ourselves thinking about a lot, is we, as we kick the new year off and what we want. Today’s episode to be is sort of a big picture guide to going from idea to finished project, whether that’s a TV show or a movie looked at from the point of view of exciting beginnings or starts.

Joke: Yeah. And let’s be honest, this came from us trying to give ourselves a pep talk.

Biagio: Give us pep talks all the time. But yes.

Joke: Because sometimes you’re in this process and you’re like, oh, this is ever going to get done. Can we ever move on to the next stage? When are we getting through this part of the process? So we’re like.

Unidentified Voice: Well, you know, how do we.

Joke: It’s a new start. Yay! Let’s look forward to the next start. So so here we are.

Biagio: So here we are. Here it is. Production broken down from you. Broken down for you as we like to see it a series of exciting beginnings.

Joke: So many so many so many starts. And again like I said, that’s not counting so many of the false starts that we encounter, because those are definitely par for the course. So, well, we’ll start from the beginning, right? First there is the start of an idea. You know, you know, there’s something nagging at your brain or you see an article that sparks something. You know, it’s fun, you get inspired, you get thinking there’s that fire burning totally makes sense to you. And then you run it by someone or some people and they just don’t see what you see.

Biagio: What do you mean.

Joke: Happens to us all the time? He’ll pitch me something. I was like, I don’t get it, or I’ll be. I’ll wake up. I was like, I have the greatest idea for duty. Show me. I was like, oh yeah, maybe.

Biagio: And then I go brush my teeth and I feel really bad about it.

Joke: But either way, whether it is because you just didn’t verbalize it right, you didn’t use the right words, or you didn’t paint the right picture with what you were trying to say, or you know, that person just can’t relate. Whatever it is, a lot of projects stop right there, right? The starts, stops. And like I said, we’ve done it ourselves. The important part is to figure out, you know, maybe deserve to be stopped. And it really, you know, was just a crazy dream rather than an actual idea. But if it won’t leave you, if it keeps kind of nagging at you or it keeps coming back, you know you need to get to the next stage, which is the start of initial development. And this is where you just do some research. You dove in, you contact some folks, figure out whether this idea is even unique. Has it been done before? Is it viable as in, you know, can I actually produce this thing? Is there talent that might be right for it, etc., etc., etc.. So just kind of you get to start fleshing it out a little bit and see if there’s something to the seed, to the spark. And this requires work on your end. And as such, this start also often comes to an end. It’s just sometimes you don’t get the initial positive feedback you want and you’re like, I don’t love this idea so much, I’m going to let it go. But with tenacity and positive feedback. If those steps do, you know, produce results, this step leads you to.

Biagio: The start of packaging, putting together your package, putting something together. You know, I mean, we’ve all we’ve talked about this a lot of times in the podcast how an idea is just not enough. And this is where you start to take those ideas and you really start to put it together. You reach out to your talent. Maybe you go and you know, you shoot some stuff to see how it cuts together. You write up the materials. You know this step, you know it’s all on you. And you know many people. They like the idea of producing more than the work of producing. So I feel like a lot of projects fall apart in this stage. I’ve seen it happen. You know, people will pitch us a show, won’t be like, hey, great, bring us A, B and C, and we never hear from them again, you know? And this goes across all, all businesses and all areas of showbiz. You know, there’s many scripts, many independent films, many sizzle reels that get started for whatever reason, never get finished. I’m, you know, we have some of those ourselves. I’m sure you have some. You know, we’ve got a long file of ideas that died in this stage or are waiting to be revived with, you know, a little love and a little hard work, you know, and I think that if you’ve given the love and the work to something in this packaging stage, and you really do care about it and you stick with it, this start leads to the next start, honey, which is.

Joke: The start of pitching. And this is this is great, right? You just you start pitching. Everything is fantastic. You’re you’re think you’re sitting on the next hit. As many times we’ve been like how can this not sell. This is just brilliant. And then you start taking meetings. And as we’ve said before, this is a numbers game. More often than not, the idea or the project at this point dies for whatever reason.

Biagio: Usually with me cussing about why don’t they understand what a great show this is?

Joke: There’s a million reasons why project could die. A similar project could have just been out or or failed. An executive could have been trying to do this project for years, and just has given up on the idea of this kind of show. Whatever it is, maybe it’s just not good enough. Maybe you know the talents. Too old or too young or not, you know, whatever. There’s a million different reasons why your project can die. And sometimes, especially in reality TV and more particularly in format and driven format shows, the thing is that they can be revived and they can be pitched later if the TV landscape changes or the executives change, etc., etc.. We’ve had success with resurrection. I could tell you resurrection is a real thing, especially when it comes to shows human bodies. I’m not so sure, but TV shows, I can tell you they could be resurrected. And so whether it is through resurrection or from the first go around, if a deal is offered, you get to start negotiating.

Biagio: The start of the. Oh, and that’s always like the fastest part, right, honey? I mean, they can go. I mean, that’s great. Like that’s over like in like a week, right?

Joke: Yeah. No false starts there. Let me tell you. So we’ve talked about, you know, business show business being slow business and you know, the, the business affairs how whatever happens, hopefully you have an experienced production company behind you and have their experience team of agents and lawyers, etc.. But while this stage is so exciting at the beginning, it can quickly turn into feeling like, well, no one must really like this project. I mean, why are they taking forever? Maybe they’ve moved on. It’s just really important to remember that different departments at different networks have different mandates, so you just have to bear with it, stick with your creative executives and just get to the deal. Yes. Sometimes it’s the right thing to walk away from an offer. And then, you know, the project dies here in this stage. But more often than not, it’s smarter to just stick it out. And if you do, if you stick it out and you get through to negotiating and all of it, it is time to.

Biagio: Start development. Wait a minute. Didn’t we already start that? Didn’t we say something before about packaging our ideas and developing them? What? What’s this? Start development. Oh, now we start development for real?

Joke: Yeah. See, before you’re just doing research and you’re kind of developing your own idea. Now you’re developing for real, you’re developing for an audience. And so whether this is a paper development, a sizzle, a presentation, a pilot or and most likely all of the above, which is many starts in and of itself. This is where you talk with your buyer, your network, and you end up tailoring your project to give it honestly the best chance of success on that particular network. Sometimes this process is exhilarating. It’s really nice to get fresh perspective and ideas and people build on your idea and you’re like, oh my God, that’s even better than what I came up with. But sometimes it’s really hard to let parts of your vision go in order to compromise, to not necessarily a better or worse, but maybe just a different, perhaps more enjoyable show, perhaps just more right for their network. I could tell you this much. If you are set on fighting the idea of collaboration, your project will end here.

Biagio: That is true.

Joke: But if you’re up for the ride, I would say strap in, get ready for the roller coaster of emotions and right on through this development stage and get ready to.

Biagio: Start pre-production. Wow. What? Have you actually made it after all these starts to the beginning? Honey.

Joke: I know right everyone, you go to film school and you’re like, how do we start? Well, you start with pre-production. No no no no no no no. You start with all of this stuff first and then you get to pre-production. What are you doing? Film or you’re doing television or commercials or whatever. All this, all the previous starts are absolutely part of the process. Pre-production is when it’s like, okay, you know, we talked about going to war and now we’re going to war. I would say to start a pre-production is really to start of staffing, and this is where you put the team together is by far the most important part of any show, in my humble opinion. There will be some people you will love, but they won’t be available or they can’t do it for the rate you have budgeted. Sometimes you’ll absolutely get your dream team and you’re like, yes, I got all my favorites working on this, but more often than not, you’ll end up taking chances on new people and hope that they become your new favorites. It’s just part of, you know, putting putting the band together. And you know what? Or not, you’ll get music at the end, the pens on the group of people you put together. You know, the next steps of pre-production, obviously, is discussing style, getting locations, cast depending on show, depending on the type of show you do. Obviously some of them will have challenges for contestants you have to come up with. You’ll look for specific stories to highlight in certain episodes or in a docu series. You’ll look at what does life have to offer? What future events can we document? Is Christmas coming up? Is there a birthday coming up and and things like that. So it’s like everything is still possible at this time, which is awesome. But you’re also dealing with a ticking clock and it’s just every day you just get closer and closer and closer to that bell ringing. And if you’re prepared well, you will gladly.

Biagio: Start production.

Joke: So this is where dreams are made. This is what people think it is like to make movies. So there’s actually only one step of this mini process, of this huge process that people actually think of when they think of making movies and television.

Biagio: Isn’t that funny? We’ve gone through like nine starting points already, just to get to the point that everybody thinks you jump right into.

Joke: So, but this is go time. Showtime. Whatever you want to name it. This is where you get your first glimpse as to how good your show slash movie will end up being. Sometimes you’re disappointed. Maybe it’s not quite playing out the way you envisioned or production. Nightmares are challenging. You know, maybe an already tired crew. It’s important for you to stay inspired and to keep inspiring those around you. It’s crucial to pivot one needed and chase story wherever it may present itself. You have to stay on your toes. You have to, you know, go through the ups and downs, the victories, the, you know, the the the losses, the you know, the okay, fine. We won’t shoot at that location because now we can’t afford it. Or fine, we will try and get this shot over here in less time than I thought we would. I would say some shows, you know, are definitely harder in casting or harder in production to shoot or just harder in post. But all shows, no matter what, depend on production above all else. Because obviously, if it’s not on tape or it’s not in the can, there’s not much to do since it’s a visual medium. So you kind of have to get your stuff done in production. But if you’ve done your job well and you get out of this, you know, battle that is production, you’d be very excited to.

Biagio: Start post-production. My favorite being being an editor for longer than the age of some of our listeners. That’s very sad to men out loud. You know, they say a movie is written three times, right? Once on the page, once on set, and once in the edit bay. That really goes for almost all, if not all, creative visual mediums, right? Joke?

Joke: Yeah, I believe so. I mean, I know we’ve seen that what we’re doing a, you know, an elimination style competition show or we’re doing a, you know, our crime series, She Made Me Do it or, or even a docu series. You know, it’s not quite written on the page, but, you know, you start out thinking it’s going to be one thing, and then you go on set and other things happen and you’re like, oh, well, it’s clearly turning into this kind of show. And then you end up in the edit bay and you discover, you discover different things, right? Often what feels like gold in the field isn’t quite as great in the bay as you remember, or moments that you didn’t think twice about end up stealing the spotlight, or things you don’t even remember getting and up saving the day. You know, like hello the jinx. So post-production to me is a is a magical place, and it’s also a heart wrenching one. Sometimes when notes come in or you have to cut it to a certain time or you know you’ll you’ll be losing some babies. We always say you got to cut the babies sometimes, and you’ll fight and you’ll win or you’ll lose sometimes, but you’re in the trenches and, you just got to make it through. You just. You just got to get to that. That picture lock.

Biagio: Picture lock. Picture lock. What is the picture ever locked?

Joke: When you have an air date?

Biagio: Yeah, that’s about it, right? I mean, literally sometimes the day of.

Joke: So you just you just get to that, you get through your mix, your color, your online, and then you deliver and you’re waiting for the QC sign off. And you know, you’ve made it through post-production. Once you’ve got that QC sign off.

Biagio: QCs quality control. And that’s the people. The higher that the network hires to pour over every single frame of your footage and see if anything is gone wrong. And if it has, they send it back to you and say, fix it over and over and over again. We actually did. Really. I’ve done really good. We haven’t had too many QC issues on our shows.

Joke: But anyway, once you get to QC sign off, it’s time to start airing. We wrote a blog post right before we before caged aired actually, that really described how we felt before we launched that show.

Biagio: And by we she means joke, she wrote the most beautiful, most beautiful blog post I’ve ever read. You know, it was funny because we blog. I had blog for a lot of years, and that one blog post probably got more attention than anything I’d ever written, and it should have. It was so good that to this day, I feel like that blog post defined really who we are as TV producers, and it’s such a beautiful post. I’ll link to it in today’s notes, which again will be producing unscripted com slash six seven. But joke, that was the most wonderful blog post and it was about that trepidation we feel before a show airs.

Joke: Yeah I mean it just I mean, it really, for me, encapsulated how I felt at that moment where it’s like you’ve labored, you’ve battled, you survived, you, you know, you just so proud of what you put together at the end. You know, it’s teamwork. You all put in blood, sweat and tears. And that show in particular was so personal to me because of the connections we made with the cast. But but here’s the thing. Like, no matter how much time you’ve put on it or on the show or the movie or your TV show, or how many people you got involved to give you feedback, at the end of the day, you can never be prepared for what an audience reaction will be. You have no idea. You really don’t. And so much of this is completely out of your control. And that’s how I felt before the show aired, where it was like, oh, here’s my baby, and now I’m sending it off to college, and I have no idea what the world will do with my child, but I did the best that I could. So, you know, it’s one of those moments where, you know, hopefully the viewers will embrace the show and you can keep it going. But sometimes, and again, unfortunately, more often than not, you either end up being the great show nobody saw or the one that no one likes. So either way, if you find yourself in a no pickup or cancellation mode, well, you know what’s next.

Biagio: You start right back at the top. We start all over again.

Joke: That’s right. So there’s more starts. So happy. Starts to everyone. Well, you made resolutions or set goals or just want to keep on rolling. Remember, please remember that every process has many, many, many starts. So don’t let obstacles stop you from completing what you set out to do. And if bad news or a setback made you quit one day. Sometimes we call those need a mental health day. Remember that you can start right up again tomorrow so you can always start there. There’s enough starts to keep. Keep everything going.

Biagio: That’s right. So to all of you who know that part of the reason we started this podcast is because we’d love to start a project with some of you. You know, you can learn about how to pitch us shows or team up with us over at Producing Unscripted. Just sign up for the newsletter and follow the directions. For those of you who’ve pitched those shows and you know and heard a know back from us, heard it wasn’t quite right for us, it’s time just to start again. Just every, you know, every stage of your creative career is about starting. And as long as you don’t look at at all of these starts as a mountain of obstacles that are impossible to overcome and instead look at them as like, hey, every stage is a new, exciting start. World excited with beginnings, right? I think if you try to look at it as, as you know, every single stage is a new beginning. It keeps you saying, it keeps you going. And in the end, you know, you end up, you end up a lot more mentally sound, to say the least.

Joke: Yeah, it’s one of these. We all work in a business or this business, if you work in it, is one of those where you can’t quite set your clock to the end because you don’t know when that end is, like you don’t know when that air or that you know the success or the whatever comes. So you just have to enjoy the adventure. You have to enjoy the roller coaster, and you have to enjoy the many starts and and find something to celebrate within each of these steps, within each of these starts.

Biagio: You know, I think it’s kind of cool because because really, when it comes down to it, it’s almost like there are no endings, but there’s always new beginnings.

Joke: Oh.

Biagio: And then that note, we’ll. See you all in two weeks, everybody.

Joke: Yeah, this this actually is the ending of this podcast.

Biagio: This. Yeah. Believe it or not.

Joke: Yeah. If you want a beginning, just restart it. Just right. Rewind. I think we don’t rewind anymore.

Biagio: No.

Joke: It’s technology now, babe. It’s digital to say replay. Boop boop boop boop.

Biagio: Goodbye, everybody.

Joke: Goodbye. Have a good night. And happy 2016..

Announcer: Happy 2016. Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.