Reality: Casting & Series Development-
The first “phase” of my internship began the day I arrived in LA, at the end of a three-day and two-hour cross-country road trip. It began, as I exited the freeway to scope out the office for Monday, with a phone call. It was my supervisor Craig, calling to touch base with me as he would not be in the office for the first few days of my internship. Curious, right? Oh no, Craig had a list of things for me to do and brought me up to speed on the two projects I’d be starting on the coming week. Instantly, work had begun as I discussed the project via Bluetooth and attempted to figure out my way to the office at Berman-Braun.
Though awkward when I picked up the phone, with Craig and my Garmin trying to speak at the same time, I seemed to click with Craig as we spoke and we discussed our backgrounds. Craig had come from the world of the documentary and currently works in casting for non-scripted TV. I found the way Craig liked to describe how he sees the work was docu-drama. Myself, heavily and happily sedated in the worlds of fiction and music video, never really thought to make any sort of distinction between types of reality TV programs other than contest oriented and not. The not usually consisted of how-to shows, biographies, educational programs or social experiments. However, letting go of the stigma of “reality TV” and thinking of the material as docu-drama intrigued me.
When I was in film school, the beast that is “reality TV” took over with shows like “Fear Factor,” “Survivor,” “The Bachelor,” and “Big Brother.” Prior to the late nineties and early two-thousands for me, the genre was really established with the series “The Real World.” It was a social experiment, albeit voyeuristic, that started much-needed social dialogues via the MTV generation. I didn’t see this in the new wave of millennial reality programming, they all boiled down to just be contests to me. I guess I was also a bit conflicted between the idea of the documentary film and “reality TV.”
However when Craig pitched me his idea of the docu-drama, drama centered around real people in similar situations but from different perspectives or walks of life, I started to see the genre through a different lens. I actually started to see the genre the way I had seen it when “The Real World” and some current programming getting back to initiating a dialogue. I also connected the dots, seeing how the social media aspect the programs have today to continue such that didn’t exist prior.
As the work week began, I found myself researching different communities and developing spreadsheets to track my progress via Google Docs. My phone calls were more effective in stating “new docu-series” followed by the topic rather than stating I was working on a “new reality show.” In addition to the cold calls, I explored different ways of outreach for casting the two sizzle reels to be used in pitches for two different major cable networks. Though I had enjoyed cold calling people, as I saw it both as chatting and a race against time to find interesting stories from total strangers, I wondered what other ways were available for me to do the same apart from the phone. I pitched an idea to Rob that, in addition to Craigslist postings on the internet, that it may be worth while to explore Facebook and Twitter as tools as well. I mean, think of the number of people who have turned internet presence into a dream job or career! Perez Hilton blogged from free internet provided by Starbucks. There was that kid who made a mint out of YouTube clip bought by a car company and made into a commercial, as noted and put on trial for comedy’s sake on Tosh.0, not to mention Justin Bieber. “Shit My Dad Says” were tweets before a show and “Julie & Julia” was originally a blog before a book and film.
SOLD! And thus my little social media experiment began with Facebook and Twitter for LaPlanet Casting. Mind you it takes time and luck to build a buzz or a following but, other than my peers I threatened to join, I did get a few followers for both sites and did have contact with one user about one of the projects. In addition, others users responded to my posts and tweets with other resources, specific to the subject and helped hone my outreach search efforts. I began with general posts, employed the # approach for certain areas I was casting and followed that by putting a # for trends and re-tweeting such in my own tweets. Though I didn’t find anyone that worked directly from those social media sites, I was pointed in the direction to potentials for other projects and generated other ideas via the interactions as well. I am no social media genus, starting a big or profitable buzz nor do I have any idea how to. However, I found great potential in research and outreach for casting via social media. (Plus, I got a chance to create and manage social media sites for a new entertainment company in LA.) After this experiment and outreach were over, the next stage of the project began.
Once a cast was in place for one show’s sizzle reel, quick sketch of characters and stories to pitch the idea, I was introduced to process of getting this sizzle reel and materials ready for the network. I was able to see a cut of the sizzle reel before the network and Rob asked me for my opinion. The footage was mostly footage acquired by video interviews, recorded by subjects and uploaded to a secure server, and Avid generated title cards with some emotional pop music that fit. The message was clear and I was interested in the characters. It was effective but it was, in fact, a critique so I put in my two cents about a few edits and such. Rob took my feedback and I later learned from Lori, one of the development heads at Berman-Braun working on the deal with LaPlanet, that I was actually spot on. She also told me about her experience with pitching to networks and the different networks around town. Most of it was not new from being in Newhouse and class with Dr. Wright, but I didn’t know how important the supplemental materials were. According to Lori and Rob, the log of outreach and research was just as important and those documents would be available to the network for review. One of the other documents to be distributed to the network during the pitch meeting are one sheets. As I discovered from Craig, there is an art to writing a character synopsis that sells to a network, otherwise known as a one sheet. Craig let me write them for the cast potentials that I had contact with, follow-up interviewed, and then reviewed them, giving me feedback as I learned on the fly. After a few tweaks, the one sheets, Google Docs and sizzle reel were ready to go. Armed with these materials, Rob and Lori went go to the network to pitch the show and if all went well the partnership will get the go-ahead to produce the pilot.