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The "Creating for Television"
area of TVWritersVault.com
provides a brief and professional perspective
in how to conceive, create and sell your ideas
for TV shows in a marketable format. It will help
you learn how to think and formulate concepts
for today's thriving and competitive television
programming world, as well as understand the inner-workings
of the television industry to streamline your
creative efforts in the most viable directions.
The most valuable tool in learning
how and why companies will buy and produce certain
ideas is experience. Pitching your concepts to
executives in the industry will also build relationships
regardless of whether or not your idea for a tv
show is purchased. It is creating and building
those direct relations that enables the creator
of concepts to better understand how to pitch
a tv show, as well as what specifically the buyers
are looking for. Most importantly, you will learn
to refine your ideas into a language that the
executive can sell because they better understand
it's potential.
Having a completed TV or Movie
script can help a project along in development
and enable a producer to better see the projects
potential, but unless you are able to concentrate
your story or program format into a brief synopsis
with a highly marketable "logline",
a producer will never invest the time in reading
the entire script or treatment, and there is no
chance of the project being produced.
The foundation of any project's
success is built on the ability of the executives
and producers to communicate the project efficiently
throughout the development process, not to mention
the fact that if a busy executive isn't interested
in the basic concept or premise of your show they
will never invest the time in reading a full script.
The sale is in the originality
and power of the concept, and that is where an
executive will see it's potential entertainment
value. In the end, it is similar to the broadcasting
Network communicating that very basic and original
concept to the viewing audience in the advertising
and marketing of the TV show.
At the Television
Writers Vault we help the writer bring the
"idea power" of their project to this
form of presentation, and provide the industry
executives with exactly their preferred method
of reviewing materials for development and sale.
The following is a simple structure
(content not included) of presentation for any
project, and is similar to the registration/submission
form used for the Television
Writers Vault. Most project outlines describing
a show will be 1 to 5 pages in length:
TITLE OF
SHOW :
FORMAT OF SHOW
("Reality Series", "Game Show",
"Made-for-TV-Movie", "Drama Series"
etc.) :
Reg.Writers
Guild of America # or
www.CreatorsVault.com "CV Number" (Recommended,
but not mandatory):
AUTHOR NAME:
LOGLINE: (1 or 2 sentence
description of your concept. Similar to what you
might see in TV Guide or on a poster for a movie,
but a bit more descriptive of content).
TREATMENT: (Synopsis,
Outline) A detailed description of your show as
we would see it on TV. Usually 1 to 3 pages in
length. It's important to be efficient with your
descriptions, yet give enough information to provoke
interest of the reader. The golden rule: Show
the reader what we are watching-
There is no “right” way to
form a TV pitch for the various reality-based
and scripted genres in television. However, there
are philosophies and formats that will help the
buyer see more clearly what your TV show idea
is, and it’s potential.
Please refer to the additional
menu items within the "Creating for Television"
navigation bar to the left, for insight into creating
projects for all genres of TV.
or
Join a discussion about
creating for television at Scott Manville's blog
HERE.
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