Wanna' read along? Here’s a machine-generated transcript you can use. Yes...expect a few mistakes, especially with funky industry terms, interesting names and tagging whoever's talking. If something sounds weird, trust your ears. But...sometimes that really is what we said!
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 56 and we’re talking pilots. Should you shoot your own TV pilot? Best reason to shoot a TV pilot and the best reasons not to. What you learn from filming a TV pilot. What happens when a network wants to buy your series without a pilot? And what the heck happened to me and joke two weeks ago? Music courtesy Dave Pelman. Music Dave Pelman.com. Hey everybody! She’s joked 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. Well.
Biagio: Several of you reached out to us on Twitter and I got a couple emails asking why no podcast last time. I mean, after all, we said two weeks later what happened?
Joke: I think it was about Tuesday at 1 p.m. when you went, oh no, we forgot to do a podcast.
Biagio: Forgot to do the podcast. Now, I don’t want anybody to think that this podcast is not important to us. It’s extremely important to us, as evidenced by the fact that we’ve done over 50 of these things.
Joke: We just got busy. We got really busy.
Biagio: We are in the middle of delivering series and pilots and doing a ton of development. In fact, working on several projects with some of you listeners to this podcast. And in the midst of doing network notes and getting cuts out and getting ready to for a big announcement for an upcoming series we have going on and cutting a series trailer for that. We forgot to do the podcast and we we realized too late and rather write an email and tell you all, oh, sorry, we’re so busy. We just decided to wait.
Joke: And we were hoping no one would notice.
Biagio: We were hoping no one would notice. Apparently a lot of you notice, so thanks. I’m very flattered. I’m happy to know that that we were missed two weeks ago. So now that the set of policies are out of the way, I want to talk about something that we get asked a lot and it has implications whether you are just starting out or whether you’re an established production company selling shows. And that question is to pilot and not to pilot. That is the question of this week’s podcast. How about that joke? You like how I snuck that in there? So pilots.
Joke: Or not to pilot.
Biagio: Or not to pilot? So let’s start out with what many of you are both that many of you are in no doubt, which is you’re starting out, you’re starting your career, you’ve got an idea for a show, and you’re wondering, should I shoot a pilot? This is not a simple yes or no question, but there are some simple guidelines I think we can give so that you can decide.
Joke: Well, I mean, the simple yes or no would be no, don’t.
Biagio: Don’t ever do it. Never never never, never. That’s a simple answer.
Joke: And the main reason is that, you know, one, a pilot can, you know, run you a nice chunk of money and you may not if you’re working in a bubble, you may not know whether or not it’s a good investment or not. And also, the truth of the matter is, is that once you actually present it to a buyer, if it’s already all done and pilot it, or some people even shoot a couple episodes, you know, it’s hard for them to put their fingerprint on it. It’s hard for them to to tailor it just right for their network. Every network wants to believe that their unique. And so the idea of getting something that’s finished, that they can’t put their fingerprints all over it just doesn’t quite fit with how things work. So even if you’re already working in the business and you’re a producer and you’re like, oh, I can go make my own little pilot, I just again, the simple answer is no. There is one exception. Why? What is the one and only reason you should make a pilot yourself?
Biagio: Yes. And since this is the more complicated answer, I’ll take that. And I usually speak in circles and sound confusing. The reason to shoot a pilot is for the experience. I got to tell you, nothing gave my wife joked. And I more confidence. Gave my wife a joke and me more confidence. Whatever. This is an English course. Nothing gave the two of us more confidence than having finished several full length pilots all on the road. And when I say on our own. I mean we wrote, shot, directed, edited. Did the graphics sound mixed online, color corrected all of it?
Joke: Yes. But mind you, we did that at a time when we didn’t know it was a bad idea to do it.
Biagio: Well, that’s true, that’s true. Back then we didn’t know. Although I will say there were a couple times when having those finished pilots in our back pocket helped just to prove that we could do it, but but far and away, the benefit of shooting a pilot is just the confidence that comes from knowing you can and actually seeing firsthand A through Z all the things that go wrong when you set out to make a pilot, because it’s a lot and nothing can replace that hands on experience.
Joke: Yeah. And also for you to learn, you know, the skills of every position and not meaning in a way that you become equally skilled, but in a way that you start appreciating the different skills that are involved in, you know, camerawork and audio and producing and storytelling and editing. I think as producers, sometimes, you know, it’s easy to be like, oh, sure, I can pick up a camera, or I could do that, or I could do that. And because you want you’re wanting to will your project in existence, but it’s actually doing it. And then objectively looking at the work you’ve done that you either learn new things about your own skills or really learn to appreciate the other people who are very skilled in those areas.
Biagio: Yeah, no. That said, if you’re thinking about doing your own pilot, I would not. And I really, really want to underline this. I would not be like, oh, I’m going to make my own pilot. So I’m going to go out and spend all my credit cards, and I’m going to hire a shooter at, hire an editor and hire an online. No, do not go and spend $100,000 making a pilot. It’s the worst thing you could do. When me and joke, when the two of us made our pilots out of pocket, we were finishing the entire thing for hundreds of dollars. Like low hundreds, like way under a thousand, because we were doing all the work ourselves. And so that that kind of made it worth it.
Joke: Right. But if we had gotten paid for every hour we spent on that.
Biagio: Oh my.
Joke: Gosh, it would have. Yeah. So we we spent it on our time and our energy rather than the money. And, and that’s the best way to learn, right. Because time is what you can spend without it hitting your ramen noodles budget.
Biagio: All right. So so so there you go. So for the first time, our podcast today just talking about should you wish Janette through a pilot, if you’re a newbie, if you’re a beginner, you know, don’t ever shoot a pilot because you think you’re going to sell your show. If you’re going to shoot a pilot, do it for the experience to get the hands on. Know how that comes with taking a project from beginning to end. If you then want to try and sell that, don’t ever show anyone to pilot. Cut a 2 to 3 minute sizzle tape. We talk about sizzle tapes elsewhere in other podcasts that shows off your idea and cut that from the footage you shot. Otherwise, the simple answer no, don’t you to pilot if you’re just starting out now, what about when you’re an established production company and you’re out wheeling and dealing and trying to sell shows and, you know, the agents are like, let’s see if we can get this straight to series. Maybe we can skip the pilot altogether. Boy, that sounds good, doesn’t it? Joke.
Joke: I mean, listen, the truth of the matter is, yes, whenever you you know, you’re negotiating and there are. Listen, if you have more than one buyer interested, that’s when the negotiating starts, right? If there’s only one network who’s interested in your show, you know, there’s there’s a little bit of wiggle room, but not a ton. So the negotiating really happens. Excuse me. If you have a project that you can get multiple buyers, hopefully from different conglomerates interested in. But so straight to series is great because you know, you’re going to, you know, get X amount of episodes and some shows just really allow for that much better than other shows. So the idea being that sure series is great. However, while none of us love making pilots because you don’t really make any money on pilots, you want to put as much of the money on the screen as possible during the pilot process so you can get picked up. The series pilots do have their benefits. I mean, you really get a chance to develop the show as you’re going. You get to try things, you really get to hone it in the edit. There’s many times at the show that we sold, and the show that came out of the pilot were somewhat different, and then there were other times they were exactly the same, and both versions could go to series or both versions could not go to series. It just really depends. Each project is different, but I think the one thing that we have learned is that if you do end up going straight to series, always think of your first episode as your pilot and try and schedule time in between of you shooting your first episode to shooting your second episode so you can learn from it. That works obviously much better on a format show that is self-contained. If you’re doing an Arc kind of format show and you’re, let’s say, shooting a Big Brother type show, you’re in a house you can’t necessarily shut down for a couple of weeks after your first episode. You kind of have to just keep going at that point. But if you can, if it’s a self-contained, try to schedule a few more weeks between your first episode and then the rest of your series shooting. And the same goes with edit. Add a few extra edit weeks to that first episode because you will, as we’ve learned, be going through this process with the network, who will also be trying to figure out what is the best way you know, how can they kind of make it their own and make it just right for the network? And there’s a lot of pilot conversations you have, even on a first episode that then goes to series.
Biagio: Yeah. And I think, you know, listen, we’re fortunate right now to be doing a series where there was no pilot. It’s wonderful. It’s awesome because we know we’re going to be on the air in a few months. But as Joe Underlining pointed out, the key was in those early discussions with the network and figuring out our budget and schedule, making sure that that we had plenty of time to do that first episode.
Joke: Well, and to be fully honest, we didn’t schedule enough time.
Biagio: We still didn’t schedule enough time.
Joke: We scheduled Sam and we scheduled some extra weeks. And it’s never enough, you know? So. So I guess that’s what we’re saying. Is the pilot or not the pilot, you know, depends on the show. But even if there’s no pilot and you go straight to series, just try. If at all possible, give that first episode the time and attention that you would give a pilot.
Biagio: Yeah, because you’re learning. We’re all learning, right? You want your show to be different. The network’s going to have notes. You’re going to have notes, you’re going to try things. Some things are going to work phenomenally well. Something is going to crash and burn. That’s the creative process. And you don’t want to be afraid of that just because you’re short on time. So while you know selling pilots is fantastic and we’re never going to turn out a pilot if someone you don’t want sort of a pilot from us, you get to get it right that first time because you’re only focusing on an episode one, you’re not doing episodes two through whatever at the same time. Whereas when you go straight to series, you got to spend all the time to get that episode one right, but it ripples through the rest of your episode. So if you’re still fixing your episode one when you’re midway through editing episodes two through five, all those decisions that you now make about the structure and content of episode one are going to affect those other episodes. And it gets a little, it gets a little nuts. But as we like to say in the business, we call that a champagne problem, right, honey? Champagne problem. Champagne problem. I mean, come on, if if your problem is that you just have to much work, you just you just do it to the next, you can’t complain.
Joke: There’s one other thing.
Biagio: Oh, one bonus tip.
Joke: Well, it’s not so much a tip as it is a question. What happens with the presentation? So sometimes in the negotiation, if you’re selling a show and a lot of networks have started to do this is day four go pilot and instead they do presentation, which is really just a cheaper version of a pilot. They still kind of want a pilot, but they don’t want to pay for a pilot, or it’s just an like they want to pay you a little bit more money to extend the sizzle reel you’ve already made. And so where this sometimes works well could be possibly in series. You know, oh, you have a sizzle tape. But we really want to make sure that these people can hold seen work, etc.. And so they give you some more money to go get a few of those that are, you know, not necessarily enough for a whole episode or a whole pilot or whole A, B and C story with beginning, middle and end, but enough to give their test audience and to give their, you know, department heads a chance to see what the show could look like. But that’s been a recent trend, I would say in the last couple of years, more and more networks have gone the presentation route. Sometimes they do a presentation, then they go to a pilot, sometimes they go presentation straight to series or dies in presentation. But that’s just, you know, again, as the producer, I think the key is to look at any step as, as a learning step to really figure out what is your show, what works for your show, to not try and cram your show in a in a preconceived, you know, space if it doesn’t quite fit in there, you know, figuring out what the best version of your show is for the network that you’re working with.
Biagio: Yeah. So there you have it. To pilot or not to pilot, your question answered. Hopefully, for those of you who are new to the podcast or don’t already know, we’ve we’ve been around for a while. You know, our first eight episodes, which really give you a firm grounding in the business of reality TV, are available on YouTube at youtube.com with a clickable table of contents. We’re also, I’m proud to say, at least at the moment of this recording, if you Google how to pitch a reality show, we are number one in Google our free e-book and download downloadable guide, How to Pitch a reality show will pop up if you Google ads. And I mean, we really just tried to give you a soup to nuts, top to bottom explanation of what it takes to pitch a show and the ins and outs that go along with developing and pitching your concepts. So I think we are going to be back in two weeks. This time we’ll do our best. Hopefully we’ll see you all in two weeks. Thank you to everybody who tunes in regularly. We love you all. And as you know, if you would like to team up with us, it’s as easy as signing up for our newsletter and submitting your concept through our portal. So until next time.
Unidentified Voice: Bye bye! Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagioagile.
