Guest Blog - Those Three Girls, Winners of The Sitcom Mission 2013
Sunday 12th January 2014
Competing in The Sitcom Mission 2013 was an invaluable experience for us as writers - we'd acted for a long time but were still pretty new when it came to writing, with only six months of training and a small repertoire of smutty innuendo between us. We were eager to learn, and the constant feedback from Simon and Declan, as we submitted countless drafts, really forced us to learn how to work quickly whilst still striving for excellence. This allowed us to have a small taste of how fast the required turnaround would be when working in the industry. In some ways, the experience of the competition itself was so great, winning was really just the cherry on the (already very tasty) cake!
Although we have been working on Girlband for almost two years now (first as a stage show, now for TV), working with Simon and Declan really gave us a better understanding of our characters and the story we hope to tell. As writer-performers, our experience of the competition probably differed from the other finalists slightly as we also performed our script (pictured) - we can tell you now, stage fright is really taken to a new level when you're being judged on your writing as well as wrestling with a tricky accent!
Basically, we lived, slept and breathed The Sitcom Mission for six months (with a tiny break in the middle for Susie to get hitched). Luckily, our hard work paid off - winning The Sitcom Mission 2013 has been instrumental in providing further opportunities to develop our sitcom for TV. Also, as Snez Naik, winner of The Sitcom Mission 2012, said last year, it's great to have something positive to talk about when people ask 'how's the writing going?'. There's no two ways about it, winning a competition like this one forces people to take you that little bit more seriously. Ironic really, when you're supposed to be funny...!
The positive feedback we received from the showcase has given us confidence in our idea and motivation to keep striving forward. Since winning in October, we have met with a production company who attended the live final, and are currently meeting with agents. We're confident that without The Sitcom Mission, we would have struggled to set up these meetings, so for that we are extremely grateful. At the moment, we're busily pulling together a Girlband treatment to present in the coming weeks, hopefully filming a pilot... (subject to funding), as well as developing new comedy projects for the New Year.
It's a long road we're starting out on, but given time, you just might see our show on the telly (if you're lucky). Watch this space... www.thosethreegirls.com
Carly, Lucy and Susie (Those Three Girls) x
The Sitcom Mission 2014 is now open for entries. More details