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Announcer: Welcome to Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.
Angry Man: Is this some kind of joke.
Confused Woman: Biagio-WHO???
Biagio: This episode. It’s episode 58 and we’re breaking down how we went from idea to green light on our new TV series. Why the title of the show was so important and why changing it was even more important. The materials we used to pitch the show, what it took to get the network to finally say go, and the dreaded sound of crickets. Music courtesy Dave Pelman music Dave Pelman.com. Hey everybody! She’s joke he’s Biagio. We’re married would make unscripted film and television and want to help you do the same.
Joke: Hopefully by teaming up with us. Before we get started, I just want to say, in case you hear any wild animals, maybe some singing birds or the occasional island ambulance.
Biagio: We’re recording this episode in our backyard because we just put our kids to bed and they’re not asleep yet. And Lord knows, the last thing I wanted to do is keep them up for another hour recording this up. There’s a there’s a crow right on right on cue. I don’t know if you guys can actually hear that, but anyway, long story long, we are so excited to share with you a case study that I think is going to be chock full of takeaways. And that is our latest series, which has just been announced on oxygen. It’s a crime recreation show called snapped. She made me do it. What a title, honey. Snap, snap. So I wanted to do is take you a little bit through the journey of idea to Green light. Because to be completely honest, until you’ve been through it, it’s so hard to understand the ups and downs and the frustrations that you will encounter along the way, but in the end, it is so worth it.
Joke: Of course. Yeah. I mean, that’s why we’re in this game.
Biagio: It’s the game. It’s what we do. So let’s start with step one. The idea and this to me was one of the greatest things ever. Joe called me on the phone. You were in Cleveland shooting or Peavy, where were you? I was.
Joke: In the car on the way to LAX.
Biagio: Right.
Joke: It was, I don’t know, 530 in the morning. And I sent you an email saying, hey, I have this idea to do a show called She Made Me Do It. It’s a crime show all about women who make other people do the crimes.
Biagio: And I was like, brilliant.
Joke: Well, no, you were asleep.
Biagio: I was asleep, right? But when I woke up, I thought it was brilliant.
Joke: But then we did talk right before I got on the plane. Because you know what I got? I usually get to the airport early.
Biagio: When you were on your way to shoot our MTV show at that point, right?
Joke: Yeah. True life secrets, lies and sex.
Biagio: Right? Right.
Joke: Right, right. So I was at the airport right before I got on the plane, and I explained it, and you’re like, cool, that sounds awesome. And then I was. Then I was in communicator for like five hours.
Biagio: Yeah, that was it. She was on the plane. She was gone. But it was I thought that title was so crystal clear. Right? I mean, it tells you exactly what the show is. She made me do it. Just it was so dead on. So what we immediately did was we cut a really quick sizzle tape. It was about maybe a minute and a minute and a half. Yeah, it was really short and it was voiceover driven and it basically described the show, which is crimes committed by people who fell into basically a female masterminds web. And that was that was the idea. We did it as simply and as quickly as possible. And this was about a week before real screen.
Joke: Yeah. I mean, I was out of town shooting for, I think, about 4 or 5 days. And when I came back, you guys had already made the sizzle at the office. And then I think, I mean, a day or two days later we were on our way to real screen.
Biagio: So yeah, for those who don’t know what real screen is, it’s a large sort of unscripted TV convention. It takes place every year in Washington, D.C., and it’s where a lot of producers will get together and pitch shows to network executives. So we’re like, this is a great one to take with us. And it was a really fast tape. It was my my voice was the voiceover on the tape. I mean, it was nothing super fancy. It was just like, here’s the idea, we think it’s awesome. So and the other thing that we did really briefly and we probably should have done more of, was we did a quick web search just to find out, like, are there actual cases out there? And it was really quick web search.
Joke: Yeah, I mean, we’re all human beings. We figure somebody probably did this. So so yeah, we found a bunch of cases and just really kind of had them in our back pocket, but we hadn’t made a deck or anything. We all we had was the sizzle. And then, you know, kind of our verbal pitch and we, we pitched to, I think for five of the female networks and the crime networks out there, and everyone had a really great response to it. There was a lot of interest in it. And I believe our, our agents, I don’t think they closed the deal there, but they agreed to make the deal with a certain network there.
Biagio: That network was oxygen, and.
Joke: That got us step two.
Biagio: And that got us to step two.
Joke: The presentation.
Biagio: The presentation.
Joke: So they ordered a presentation. So again, we had made a really short sizzle. So you know, very likely they take from a tiny short sizzle to a series. Because so much of these shows is the style and the storytelling and all of that stuff. So they they ordered a presentation really for us to show what we could do with the recreation style.
Biagio: Yeah. Presentation is basically a short tape. Depending on the network that’s ordering, it can be 3 to 15 minutes. It just depends. Presentations are different. You kind of negotiate that. But literally what we did was we picked the real case, we shot the recreation and was actually shot in our living room and our bedroom. I actually played with that guy, that guy. And so in addition to doing the tape, you know, and really showing what the style of the show had to be, we also had to put together an intense style guide. You want to talk a little bit about the style guide?
Joke: Yeah, I mean, we’ve done an entire podcast on Style Guide, so.
Biagio: That’s true. I forgot about that.
Joke: Yes. I don’t want to get into.
Biagio: Don’t listen to our Style Guide podcast. You’ll understand what it was we had to do. I’ll put a link to it in the show notes, which will be our producing unscripted com slash 058. It also included eight fleshed out episodes.
Joke: Yeah. So we had to figure out. Obviously a full format and how the show would work. And we were dealing with a five act structure, and then we also had to kind of flesh that out. For about eight cases. We had found eight cases that had enough story to them, and twists and turns in the investigation that it could hold an hour, because what we were selling was one story per hour. So they had to be meaty enough with enough characters for that to sustain.
Biagio: Yeah. Part of that style guide was also the format of the show, which was which has changed significantly since then, I believe. But it was sort of like breaking down how the show would work, act to act.
Joke: I don’t know how much does it changed, because obviously it’s a crime show, but we’ve definitely detailed it more and have come up with, you know, different ways in and out of act, you know, for for the series right now. But at the time, you know, we just kind of had to break it down so that, you know, you could see how it would stretch out over to five acts. And then, of course, you know, the always lovely part of these deliverables are the schedule and budget. Yeah, that’s just a lot of, you know, Tetris work and puzzling and figuring out, you know, you always have to try and hit a budget and and, you know, that’s always rough, especially because you haven’t made a pilot. So it’s hard to sometimes figure out what goes into these things.
Biagio: Yeah. But we finished it. And the great news was the network loved it. I mean, they were they were going on and on how good it looked, how excited they were about the creative. I mean, I mean, it seemed like a done deal.
Joke: And then we got to. Step three.
Biagio: Crickets.
Joke: Crickets.
Biagio: Crickets. Network. The networks mandates change. They didn’t want any more crime.
Joke: Yeah. It’s one of those things, you know, that’s just as frustrating for our development executives, you know, as it is for us producers. But you know, they’re told, hey, you know, our top rated show is snap. Let’s get some more crime shows in. You know, they develop them. You know, we were the lucky ones that they picked to develop it with and and then, you know, marketing and research and you know, ad sales and everybody else is like, hey, let’s let’s hold off on crime. And so then you’re like, great, awesome. Now, now here we are.
Biagio: And so we were I mean, listen, I’m not going to lie, we were we were bombed out. Wilson. We love that network. We love the executives. And we actually worked on other things in the interim with them. But, you know, we had I don’t want to say we’d written the show off. We always thought it was a great idea and someday we’d get to do it. That was over two years ago.
Joke: Yeah, yeah, it’s about two years ago that we ended up getting the the official past the crickets part. But then the good news is, is that last December, literally right before the holidays, our agent got a phone call from that executive and said, hey, I just came out of another network meeting and they said, hey, maybe we should get back into crime. And I said, well, how about she made me do it? That was the last one we were considering. We all loved it. Let’s bring that one back up. And that was a great, great news going into the holidays and then coming out of the holidays. They came through. She came through our executive, who we love very, very much at oxygen, you know, was was kind enough to have remembered our show and pushed for it. And so, so now it was January and that got us to step for our resurrection.
Biagio: The resurrection back from the dead. Yeah, we’re we were ecstatic because for them to come back around and say, hey, let’s try this again. We felt like there was a really good chance we were going to get to air with it. But of course, you know, contingencies. Yeah, there were there were quite a few contingencies as well. There should be, because they’re considering spending millions and millions of dollars to launch a new TV series. So some of those.
Joke: We don’t get those.
Biagio: Oh, yeah. Don’t know. Spending millions and millions on us. No. That’s like advertising. And, you know, everything it takes to launch a show that’s not fruit. That’s that’s not what we know.
Joke: That is not our budget.
Biagio: No, that’s not our budget.
Joke: One of the contingencies was actually hey, can you cut your budget.
Biagio: Yeah. So we had we had to be able to shrink the budget, which we when when I say we I mean joke works very hard. And and Peter, our head of production worked very hard to figure out how to squeeze all the numbers into it, into a tiny budget, but still be able to do a show that would be beautiful and we’d be proud of.
Joke: And another contingency was cast dependent. So while we had in our first past written of those eight episodes, now we had to see what or not they were cast. And that means, of course, you know, this is a true crime series, so you have to reach out to the prosecutor and the detectives and the the victim’s family. And, you know, sometimes even the perpetrators and their defense attorneys and anybody who may have known the perpetrator, who can testify to the manipulation or non manipulation, depending on if they were standing up for her defense or, you know, if they agreed with the prosecution. So, you know, that’s a lot of phone calls and a lot of research and reaching out.
Biagio: And this is a delicate topic like yes, we’re all excited. We get to make a, you know, a TV show, but you have to come back to, you know, why? Why do crime shows exist in the first place, you know, and what are you really doing by putting a crime show on? Because if it’s just loud and salacious, I mean, that wasn’t a show that we were interested in doing. We wanted to do something that always kept, you know, victim advocacy in mind. We wanted to include the families and the people affected as much as possible, because in my mind, a crime show is at its best when it’s morality tale of like, listen, you, you might be tempted to do A, B, and C, here’s what happens when you do. I mean, just like any good crime movie, right? Except that we’re dealing with real people who’ve had real pain in their lives. And honestly, if the families don’t want to tell their stories, if they don’t want to come and share what they’ve been through, it’s not necessarily an episode we want to do because their participation is very important to us.
Joke: So it took about a small step, you know, a casting step. That part of it included, you know, the budget revisions and also kind of more of a format fleshing out where, you know, now that we would find these stories that we had cast approved, you know, really fleshed those stories out specifically for how we would tell them and how it would lay out across. And we went back and forth with the network quite a bit to figure out, you know, the storytelling format that would work for them that felt new and exciting, but that still, you know, made sense for a true crime show.
Biagio: Yeah. And the other thing was the style, and it was something where, you know, oxygen. Well, I’m going to digress for one second because there was another conversation that was had that I thought was the for me, it was the greatest conversation ever, but it was with the sort of the big chief over there. And we were meeting with him in New York about the show, and he was like. And he said very delicately, as if he was worried that he might possibly offend us. He said, listen, if it’s okay, you know, I would really like to put this under the snapped banner. So instead of she made me do what we would call it snapped. She made me do it. And I was like, hell yeah. I was like, if you want to call it snap bad girls, preacher. She made me do it. That’s fine with me. I mean, there’s I mean, there’s no better vote of confidence in our abilities as producers and their belief in the show than to stick it underneath the banner of their most successful series. And I don’t know, maybe not all producers would feel that way, but I sure did. I would much rather be CSI Miami than some random Miami crime show that nobody ever watched.
Joke: Yeah, and by the way, like kudos to Jupiter Entertainment, who’s produced, you know, snapped and snapped killer couples for years now and you know is getting fantastic ratings. So I guess we have to thank the network for letting us ride their coattails a little bit. And hopefully some of that magic rubs off on us. And, you know, maybe we could bring some new viewers to them. So. Yeah, absolutely. Listen, this is a network decision. There’s not really anything that we could have done to stop it if we didn’t like it. We just thought it was a really smart way because. So it’s so hard to break out with a new show in this landscape where there’s so many channels and so many new shows launching that, you know, if you can have a bit that is recognizable, you know, that really helps. As proven by the press release that had gone out last week. You know, Ian Line picked it up right away and was like, you know, guilty pleasure alert. There’s a new snapped. And, you know, there were a lot of great hits that came off of that press release because of the snap name. So so yeah. So we’re super excited about that.
Biagio: And anyway, is that led to step five.
Unidentified Voice: The green light, that green light.
Biagio: So where were we officially Greenland? I mean it was all kind of a blur.
Joke: Well, I mean here’s the thing. Ultimately, I don’t know when it exactly happened. We were so far into the casting and it was kind of like a rolling green light. It wasn’t like we stopped and went down and then waited for the call for the show. We were still kind of casting and going, and finally we were like, so.
Biagio: So can we shoot something?
Joke: Can we start shooting? And then, you know, they had to talk internally, I guess, and have their meetings. And then finally we’re like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, go shoot. Why aren’t you.
Unidentified Voice: Choosing already?
Joke: And so it was all very, very fun and nice. And you know, we already felt like a family with our network executives at that point. So, so yeah. So we have been shooting since April. We wrapped principal photography on Friday. It’s Monday now. We may have a day or two of pickups here and there coming up, but but yeah, we’re super excited. We have eight episodes. Let’s start premiering September 6th. We we launch our premiere right after new episode of Snapped on Sunday and then moved to Wednesdays at ten. We’re we’re super excited. We have some great episodes in the can, some amazing stories, and yes, what you know, every crime story, every true crime story is different. You know, there’s different players, there’s different motives, there’s obviously different victims. There’s different ways the crimes were committed. You know, there’s there’s heartbreaking stories that there’s really moving stuff. There’s stories where you’re like, what were they thinking? You know, but we’ve gotten great access and everyone has been very happy to cooperate and give our interviews and be very open and honest. And we have some, some terrific stuff up our sleeves.
Biagio: We really do. And I and I got to give major props to our execs at oxygen rod, Erica, Terry and Corey, what they’ve done. And to be honest, it’s like it’s so wonderfully refreshing is they’ve completely encouraged us to take chances, to be a little bit more doc oriented, to to not be afraid, to slow things down, to to be a little bit more cinematic and to try some crazy stuff that they really liked. And I’m just I’m really appreciative of that, because it’s not every day you get to work with a network, especially under a banner of an existing franchise, and get to take so many creative risks. It’s just it’s been fantastic. So if you head on over to this episode, Show Notes at Producing Unscripted five eight, I’m going to I’m going to put up the trailer for the show, you know, and take a look, because I think what you can always learn from a promo and a trailer, I mean, essentially a good trailer for a TV show that’s sort of like what the pitch for that TV show was in the beginning. Like a good trailer is exactly how you should pitch a new concept. So while our initial sizzle was very different than the trailer, I still think that the trailer accomplishes the same thing, which is telling you what the show is in a brief amount of time and hopefully getting you excited to watch. So again, head on over to Producing Unscripted five eight. The show premieres Sunday, September 6th at 10:00 pm before it moves to its regular night Wednesday, September 9th, and it will be on Wednesdays after that at 10:00 pm. Definitely check it out for me. I would say this in our MTV show cage, probably the most beautiful work we’ve ever done. Very different shows, but just as far as camera style and having the time to really make it look unique, I’m really, really proud of how the show looks. It’s really different. Look for us.
Joke: Yeah, I mean, this is one of the reasons we wanted to get into space because we, you know, we wanted to try things and play with certain looks. And, you know, in a docuseries, you, you know, you you can’t always write because you’re literally following people in their everyday life. So you can’t be like, wait, stop, do that again. So so we did some fun stuff with this. Yeah. We’re we’re excited. Fingers crossed. Hopefully everybody likes it.
Biagio: Yeah. So so there you go. So we’ll be back in two weeks. We’re definitely going to do some more podcast episodes with some, some real hands on takeaways about the show. I would say at some point we’re going to talk about the insane interview setup that we created for this. We’ll talk a little bit more about the the gear and the cameras. We use to do some wild recreations that look a lot more expensive than they really are.
Joke: We also keep promising an episode to Brett, our audio supervisor.
Biagio: Brad, our audio supervisor, is going to come to do an app about gorilla sound and how to get great sound on any budget, so we’ve got some good things coming up in future weeks. We always try to do an episode every two weeks. We’re so excited that so many of you have been listening. And as always, if you would like to break into reality TV, I think you know there’s no easier way than to sign up for our newsletter and pitch a concept to us. Just head on over to Producing Unscripted. Com get the newsletter, follow the directions and it may take 4 or 6 or even eight weeks, but you’re going to hear back from us on your idea, and we’ll let you know if it’s something that we’re interested in. Always. As always, you can also check out our free book over at Producing Unscripted. Com How to Pitch a Reality Show. Actually, if you Google how to pitch a reality show right now, it’s the number one result and joke is looking at me like, would you please stop bragging? But I’m very proud of that. So check out that book if you get a chance. Anything else honey?
Joke: Yeah. That’s it. Thank you all for listening and I’ll see you two weeks.
Biagio: See you in two weeks by everybody.
Announcer: Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.
