Typed by hand. It may still contain mistakes; the recording is the original.
Biagio: Hey, everybody. She is Joke.
Joke: He’s Biagio.
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: Okay, so true confession: There’s actually three of us on this podcast today. There is me, there is Joke, and…
Joke: There’s Toren, our son. We are sitting in a baby room which is dark. We are doing this by the light of Biagio’s computer, on which he has typed some notes. And I’m in the middle of his evening feeding.
Biagio: Yes. And well, let’s be honest. A podcast is due first thing in the morning, we promise to deliver you another one in two weeks, so we’re making good on this promise even if it means Toren Jagger needs to sit here and listen to us blather on. So, we’re not going to blather.
Joke: But they might have to listen to some of his burps.
Biagio: Yeah, so if you hear a loud burp or some other strange noises during the podcast, that is our four-week old son. Alright, before we get started a couple of quick announcements: First of all, if you’re listening to this on Tuesday, September 30th or really, really early, on Wednesday, October 1st, there’s still time to let us know if you’re going to be at the International Documentary Association’s Getting Real event. We’ll be speaking on the Facing Reality panel at the ArcLight Hollywood from 10:45 to 12 pm, October 1st.
So hit us up on Twitter or Facebook, let us know if you’re going to be around, you want to swing by and say hello. We’re on the panel with some people that we really looked up to over the years, including Jonathan Murray from Bunim/Murray who of course, famously has done the Real World for—what, they’re coming up on season 30, right?
Joke: Yeah close enough.
Biagio: Yeah, good for those guys. Another thing, the next eight episodes of season two of Ghost Inside My Child, a show that came from one of you, starts airing—When does it start airing the back eight, Joke?
Joke: They come back October 18th, we have a little bit of a hiatus now for the next couple of weeks and we will be launching eight continuous episodes starting Saturday, October 18th at 9 PM eastern. On the West Coast, they air at 6 and 10, I think? I don’t know. It’s very strange.
Biagio: The West Coast is really weird. Check your LMN listings. The West Coast is always a little wacky, right guys? But look for Ghost Inside My Child. It’s a really fun show, we’re actually still shooting episodes. A lot of really great stories this season and a lot of just really cool CG. We’re always making all these awesome historical recreations using green screen and visual effects. We’re going to have an upcoming podcasts about using visual effects on recreation shows just because I’m a geek and I love it. I think it’s awesome.
So anyways, check that out. And then as a reminder, if you want to learn how to pitch your own projects to us, I mean I think you know this entire podcast is about helping you succeed in the unscripted television world especially if you want to team up with us and pitch us shows.
So, you can always just go to ProducingUnscripted.com and click the link that says, Pitch us a show couldn’t be easier to find. And of course, you can also listen to episode 30 which breaks down into seven steps what you should do to pitch it to us if you’re going to pitch us a show. It’s that ProducingUnscripted.com/030.
Alright, so today, we want to talk about a phrase that we first uttered by an exec. I think it was at MTV, maybe five or six years ago. And one that since has been picked up by many other execs around town. And the phrase is: Best cast wins. Okay, so what does that mean and what actionable advice can we give you so that you can actually do something about it.
Joke: Yeah, so best cast wins and that may be kind of a-it is a fact in our business and it may be something that gets to be frustrating sometimes because you may be trying to play in a space, but there might already be a show on television that is also in that space. And so, you need to find in a cast that beats the current cast on television.
Biagio: Right or, a news article comes out about some really interesting job that no one’s ever heard of before and guess what, every single producer in town is now trying to create a show set in that business. So now there’s five, six, seven, eight pitched tapes all set around this really unique business. Well, which tape is going to get in the air? The one with the best cast.
Joke: So it’s very important that when putting a together a tape or show idea, a format, a docu series that you find the best cast. I mean, it sounds like a common sense advice but it’s very important in our business because literally other people are pitching the same things, so it’s all about the best cast winning.
Biagio: Yes. And because we’re always big on telling you guys, don’t waste your money, don’t waste your time on things that aren’t going to give you the best return for your investment, right? The advice that we can give you since that you can’t really say, well who—You don’t know what anyone else is making, so you’re not going to know until you go on pitcher show if someone else has already beat you to the punch, right?
But here’s some things that you can do to at least make sure that when you’re putting together a cast, you’re giving yourself the best possible chance. So, one of the things we talk about and I’ll link to it again in the podcast episode for this episode. And this episode, you’ll be able to find at ProducingUnscripted.com/038 is what is it that networks are really looking for, right?
Every network, they program certain kinds of shows, they also program certain cast, right? So look at shows like on History, Nat Geo, and Discovery. If you want to do a show set in the world of crab-fishing or men who live in the mountains or any kind of big action-oriented show, well look at the casts for those shows. Right, Joke?
Joke: Yeah, what do they look for? You’re not going to see a bunch of metrosexuals frosting the tips of hair. You’re looking for real rugged men, you’re looking for people who are living off the grid, you’re looking for people who are testing themselves, who are facing high stakes. Yes, they are articulate but they’re not using the big words. They’re characters, they’re really salt of the earth of characters.
Biagio: And listen, for better or worse these shows tend to live off of characters people can easily indentify as archetypes. I don’t want you to think that our business is devoid of originality or creativity, I’m not saying that. But the fact of the matters is, if you have some really manly man show that stars a really hot-looking 18-yeard old girl, while some people might think that’s an out-of-the-box character and an interesting choice. There’s probably not a whole lot of networks that are going to buy that show because the networks that program the big action type shows aren’t putting on 18-year old girls in the places that are putting on 18-year old girls on programming shows that feature that kind of big action.
The flip side of that is a lot of times, and we talked about this in another podcast, but you’ll see pitches that are primarily aimed at the female networks but star men. So if you’re going to put a show on Lifetime or TLC, they’re going to be looking for shows that star women but maybe you’ve got an incredible show that would work great for them, it stars men. You’re making it much harder on yourself to sell that show. Right, Joke?
Joke: Yeah, I think at the end of the day, what we’re saying is, know your buyer, right? What network would your show your world live on and then really look around and see what characters that they’re programming on television and do you match.
And that includes demographic. It includes ages, it includes the way they look, it includes how they live. You want to have a show on Bravo, you need to have a certain sense of wealth associated with it. They have an affluence that they program. So if you have characters living in the sticks, probably not a Bravo show.
So really know the demographics and know what’s on television, who do they put on the posters? Think about it that way.
Biagio: Yeah. Again, the easiest way to figure this out watch TV something Joke talked about in the very first episode of this podcast.
Joke: And go to their websites. Go to the network’s websites and see which shows they’re promoting heavily on their front page. And they’ll take cast shots and see how are the cast members dressed in those shots and what are they doing with them. So understand your buyers and that will definitely help you find a great cast or at least pitch your cast to the best possible buyer.
Biagio: Yeah. So to wrap up, we want you to understand a couple of things. One, for your long-term mental health and just for dealing in this business in a little bit more of a long-term professional manner, understand that best cast will always win.
So you’re up against six, seven, eight, nine other producers who are pitching a show set in a certain world, the best cast is going to get on TV. There’s nothing you can do other than discover your best cast.
But what you can do is you can understand that networks are buying certain kinds of shows that star certain kind of people. So don’t waste your time putting together a certain kind of show that has a cast that’s completely different from the shows that are currently on TV.
Joke: And I think we also had a podcast early on talking about what makes a great character, and I think it might be good to listen to that again to really make sure that your cast isn’t self-aware and is open and honest and all the things we talked about in that episode.
Biagio: Yeah, and I’ll link to that as well from today’s podcast. But again, you can find that ProducingUnscripted.com/038. Alright, well we have now moved beyond the bottle phase and my wife is effectively burping our child, so we’re going to call it a night, but this podcast will be up.
Hopefully, we’ll see some of you at Getting Real at our Facing Reality panel. Be sure to stop by and say hello, and we’ll be back in another two weeks even if it means that we’re locked in a tiny little baby room, feeding a small little guy. Right, honey?
Joke: Well, he’ll be two weeks older by then.
Biagio: That’s true, that’s true.
Joke: He will have-what is it 50% of his life again from four to six weeks, that’s pretty big.
Biagio: Yeah, who knows by then, he may be chiming in. He might be giving his own opinions.
Joke: Don’t give him any ideas.
Biagio: Alright. Hey listen, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in. As always, we really hope that we get to find a project to team up together on, you could always swing by ProducingUnscripted.com and just click on “Pitch us a show.” So, until next time.
Joke: Bye-bye.
Biagio: Bye-bye.
