The Sitcom Project Page 7

Please send me a message and let me know when you have set up the voting poll.

Does everyone just get one vote?

It would be good if in a while you can name the members who make up this writing project and get each to introduce themselves so we know a little more about who we are working with.

My name is Scott, I live in Torquay but grew up in Birmingham where I moved to the South West in 2000 when I was 18. Now 25 I co-run a character and creative design business. I have a wife and 19 month year old daughter and enjoy writing comedy. In 2002 I wrote my first comedy script though I have always been into creating and writing detailed stories and I tend to get quite obessive about creating good characters with rich backgrounds and history

I also enjoy bouts of acting and have appeared in Torchwood as a extra and also appeared as a shipwrecked sailor in The Last voyage of Columbus, filmed for the History channel (should be on in May/June time)where I had to fend off native Indians and many other things (such as throw myself into the freezing sea).

I also enjoy spending my time look at Leevil's duck

Late to the debate and haven't really got time to join in with the writing but I'll help SlagA with script editing as I could do with the practice!

Dan

So not to sure how this is going to work? I'm not going to open a new thread until a later stage because this is somewhat of a community project and if someone wants to join, it will confuse too much. Some joker(that was his name) PM's me the other day asking me if he could join, but I ain't seen him since?

Anyway, apologies if I miss any of the ideas...

You know what? I was going to list all the ideas but I'm too lazy. So you'll have to go back through the thread and quote the idea to vote for it.

When everyones voted. We'll move onto the next stage, whatever that is?

Here's some more voting options,

1. None of the ideas are any good, lets think of some more.

2. This is bollocks! I'm leaving the project!

3. What do we need Charley's input for? We're men who know women, we can write for them.

4. (The standard Brewster's Millions reference) None of the above!

swerytd it's fine with me, but I'll wait and see what SlagA says.

Can you add a poll to this thread now? That would be a neat (neat as in tody, not neat as a crappy alternative expression of the word cool/good)way of putting the ideas in a list and then everyone can see the percentage of people voting for what ideas. Maybe a moderator would be able to help create the poll if there are any difficulties.

Doesn't look like many people (anyone) are taking up the introduction idea

Introduction

I'm 24, look like a miserable Gorilla live in Wales working on 3 projects, Animated sitcom (In production), Comdey Drama(W.I.P) and a book. Started a Prodcution company last year with partner we split and now I set up on my own. 'm finding that I'm quite enjoying producing at the minute even if I do occasioanly slip into "Producer mode".
Other then that pretty relaxed and maybe a little Mad

Introduction.

My name is Lee, I'm 21 from Scruffy... I mean Skeggy in Lincolnshire. I started writing when I was about 8 after getting into good 'ole Ronald Dahl. Then when I was about 13 I saw Reservoir Dogs and got into writing scripts and then recently realising my scripts were more comedy and the fact that I watch a lot of sitcoms, I concentrated more on sitcom/sketches.

The only thing I produced are some animations (which I seemed to have lost) and some crappy attempt at a spoof radio chatshow podcast thing. And of course some written sketches and random sitcom episodes.

I'm okay with Swertyd, Leevil. No probs.

edit: husband/in law

There's my vote anyway.

Devil's Blurb

For me

I don't want to piss on anyone/everyone's bonfire here but how about treating this a bit more like the commissioning process amongst ourselves.

What I mean is start right from scratch. Write six pilots in twos/threes/groups and a synopsis for a six episode series. *Then* we vote on which one's the best and every partnership gets an episode to write.

Write a synopsis for each pilot (3-4 pages) detailing *exactly* what happens then me and SlagA (if he doesn't mind) will edit/review/suggest stuff at that stage so the story is a) funny and b) makes logical sense.

Then teams go away and write pilots.

Editors comment and rewrites (ad infinitum!)

Post pilots on Critique forum with a voting process from those involved (perhaps those *not* involved voting will be a better indication of how funny/good they are and reduce 'my script is best' syndrome)

Work on best idea with original writers as head script/story editors (to encourage them to 'give up' their original work. You also get a 'Created by' credit and a yay/nay veto on each storyline) in order to develop six (or eight) storylines that, again, get edited at the 3-4 page synopsis and passed back to writers to write episodes.

[Ideas not used at this stage are free to be developed by the writers themselves (with any additional involvement from others on project) if they want to go that way.]

Editors comment and rewrites (ad infinitum again!)

Post episode on Critique forum with same mechanism as before to pick best episode to submit to production companies.

Possible development/filming if no-one production companies are interested using resources around here.

This way we at least have a plan. The main benefit I think is to not to think of it as a way of getting a sitcom commissioned, but thinking of this as an opportunity to develop writing partnerships and gain experience of the process (by gaining more feedback than you would ordinarily/praise/rejection) and who's best at what.

Another benefit is that when writing on your own, it's hard to edit, your jokes aren't funny the 50th time you read them, you lose a sense of purpose, don't adhere to self-set deadlines. This way we're using each other to be honest as to what is/isn't funny, adding perhaps a funnier one-liner than the original, ironing out logical difficulties.

Tell me to piss off if you think it's all bollocks but I think it may be a decent idea. Sorry, but it all seemed a bit 'woolly' up to this point.

Dan

swerytd I like the Idea, but I tihink in that case we will have to work to deadlines other wise it'll all just flop like a blomonge. The problem at the minute is we are a bit of an unorganised rabble

Sorry that I have been a bit late on this but I would like to contribute if that's okay with you main organising and originating guys.

In regards to Swerytd

I was under the impression that the spirit of this project was to build something together from scratch. As a group we would 1st decide the idea/theme

2nd we would then work together to polish the idea as a group

Then it would be a case of creating characters, history, put together episode and scene ideas and once we had all that we would decide who would write the pilot script using all the information we had developed as a group.

I think if we had too many ideas and too much for different teams to do the idea would fall apart, whereas if we act as a group and concerntrate on one idea the project has a better chance of standing.

An example of this is American Dad and Family Guy. A lot of people felt that the writers should have concerntrated on one strong show instead of creating two shows that became weaker

MY VOTE

Hope people don't mind but I vote for The husband/son-in-law idea as I can see alot of potential for rich characters and plot lines with that where as my idea about the rival pubs is a bit like Phoenix nights when I think more about it, though if we did go with that theme I am sure the premise is strong enough for some great ideas to be produced.

It is just with the below quoted idea I think there is a strong idea of story to work with whereas the pub one is a bit more of a vague idea to work from

Quote: Scott Evans @ April 12, 2007, 8:47 AM

There is this young man who works for his in-laws and really doesn’t want to be and he is married to their daughter but again he really doesn’t want to be but he is too nice, he either worries about letting people down or hurting their feelings so he suppresses his own, plus also he is a bit of a wimp and doesn’t want the fall out of telling his wife and her over controlling family that he is leaving her so each episode he hatches a plan to either get himself fired or get his wife to dump him but all of these plans generally backfire on himself. Why doesn’t he just quit his job, because both his wife and her family wouldn’t just let him without making his life hell so he needs them to want him to go! How? Well that what he tries to figure out each week.

View original

swerytd, I like that idea, but as Scott says this is a group project and I want us all to work together, all the way.

It would've still been a good idea to present ideas in somewhat the same way as you suggested though, this would've give us all practice at presenting work. But I can't expect people to go off an write pilots on their own or in small groups because they maybe doing this already anyway for themselves.

Each writer must come up with an idea, write about 10 pages with a synopsis and then present it to everyone for voting.

I'm willing to do this if everyone else is? Otherwise we'll carry on.

The problem with me is I have the tendency to ditch an idea and start a fresh once it starts getting to complicated. I know I'm a crap leader, quick pass me my shot gun I want out!