40 years worth of TV writing experience and info, yours for the taking.
by Peggy BechkoIt’s about time we talked about the kids.
Kids write too. Some quite well, others just trying their hand at the craft.
Sometimes we forget. I don’t know how many of you out there began writing at an early age, but I was about 12. Managed to write an entire novella without describing hardly a thing! Quite an accomplishment that. Thank heavens for a Godmother who read my work and pointed out that little failing.
In my first article on the making of On The Rocks, I wrote about the creation of the show and how the staff came together. For this article, I’ll focus on writing the pilot episode.
With the staff, The Grinders, in place and the basic premise of the show agreed upon, executive producer/writer Sam Miller and producer/writer Chris Wu began work on the pilot.
Unlike the rest of the staff, who had never worked together before, Miller and Wu knew each other through industry connections and a pilot writing course they both took at IO West in 2009. Miller worked in comedy development at ABC Studios and Wu was then an assistant at William Morris.
It seems like audio books (audiobooks[?]) are a burgeoning market.
Again. Still?
The Wall Street Journal wrote a whole article about it.
How did the geniuses of old write? Like this (or so they claimed):
How many people die with their best work still inside them?
It all began January of this year, with an email chain in a Yahoo group dedicated to TV writing. The question was simple, “How long would you go on with your writing career before you gave up?” The question got over 300 responses and started a lot of conversations. One of those responses was from Sam Miller, a writers assistant for Desperate Housewives. He had an idea, what if a small, but dedicated team of writers and industry professionals from the Yahoo group worked together on their own Web series? What would the results be? Five months later, the results were in and On the Rocks, a new Web series from a crowd sourced creative team, The Grinders, was born.
So, how did this happen? How did a band of near total strangers come together to create and shot a full-length, multi-camera, comedy Web series pilot? Over the next few weeks, leading up to the taping of the second episode, I’ll take you behind the scenes and give you an in-depth look at the creation of On the Rocks.