Pitch Your Series

Name: Unnamed

Synopsis: Former cop gets transformed into hideous, bloodthirsty monster. However, the monster thirsts only for evil blood, and so he only kills villains. HOWEVER, if it collects enough evil blood it can go nuts and devour the world. During the show, the cop who was transformed is shown trapped in the monster's mind and spends his time trying to break bath through to tell everyone the monster's objective.

The monster's hailed as a hero, and in the season/series finale he collects enough evil blood to bring about the apocalypse. The overall theme would be how you shouldn't depend on something you know nothing about. Or something.

I COULD GO ON FOR HOURS ABOUT THIS MONSTER. A jaw that can stretch to swallow half a man! Blades on the back of his hands that vibrate an an extremely high speed, and can cut through almost anything! Lines of teeth that can rotate within the mouth, acting like a chainsaw and making a mess of his kills!

It'd be a Gorn filled funfest with a shoehorned moral story, running almost entirely on Rule of Cool and Black-and-Grey Morality.

Come sail your ships around me, and burn your bridges down.

Hmm. That actually sounds pretty cool, even if there seems to be a possibility your moral message might not agree with my personal philosophy.

My new idea (don't worry, I haven't stopped working on Chess or The Women In Black):

Title: Land of Enchantment

Concept: Can be considered either True Blood as a sitcom, or Friends with supernatural elements and Polyamory. Can also be considered the HBO or Cinemax equivalent of Animation Domination, since in live-action it'll go over-budget pretty fast.

Description: In the (fictional) city of Enchantment, Virginia, supernaturals outnumber ordinary humans by a nearly 5 to 1 ratio. However, great lengths are taken to avert supernaturals getting outside the city limits, because only the city of Enchantment has been unmasqued... the rest of the world is not ready to know that such things exist.

Characters:

• Jack: Token human and resident Meta Guy. Often the Only Sane Man as well. Since he's new to Enchantment, he has absolutely no idea what he's in for and is learning how the show's universe works as the viewers do.
• Katie: Friendly and attractive, but also extremely clumsy woman who lives in the apartment across from Jack, and despite their tendency to both hook up with the other characters serves as his primary Love Interest. Waitresses at Kieran's Tavern, Inn and Bloodbank, a bar and grill owned by a local vampire. Is protected from injuries caused by her clumsiness by a power to regenerate.
• Kieran: The cynical, jaded, Irish vampire who owns Kieran's. More of a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire than a threat to do actual violence, though you probably still shouldn't fuck with him just to stay on the safe side. Jack, in voiceover narration, informs us that "If sarcasm were weaponized, this guy could sink whole fleets of warships". When he's not busy being a smartass or being fiercely protective of Katie, he'll regale you with tales of the good old days... which will make you wonder how the hell anyone survived medieval Ireland.
• Elgar: Big Bad Wannabe wizard who Pokes The Poodle at least Once an Episode. He's intended to be more like Stewie Griffin than actually evil, but that doesn't mean he won't try to take over the world at the drop of a hat. Katie thinks there's good somewhere deep down inside him, and is therefore the only person in town who's ever really nice to him... however, he's mistaken the kindness for flirting and developed an obsession with her.
• Lucy: Elgar's familiar, a talking black cat. Emphasis on black: Her catchphrases include "Oh, hell no!", "Kiss my black ass!", "Oh No You Didn't!" and "Give a nigger a break!"
• Tiny: Bouncer at Kieran's bar. An Ogre, so definitely far from tiny. Ogres are smarter than they look, and it becomes apparent later on that he's a bit of a Genius Bruiser.
• Hilda: Jack and Katie's landlady. A female dwarf, which of course means she has a deep bass voice and full beard.
• Emily: The ghost that Jack finds out — too late to ask for a refund — is haunting his apartment. Isn't hostile, and in fact seems to want company and enjoy his presence. Talks about alcohol a lot, mostly in terms of how she misses being able to drink it.
• Rowena: Female werewolf Jack meets at Kieran's and hooks up with his first night in town. We'll find out how she became a werewolf eventually, but it wasn't a gypsy's curse... a gypsy's curse is just the reason she can never say no to sex. EVER.
• Ananke: Bartender at Kieran's. There's a betting pool going to see who can guess her country of origin... judging by her accent, she's either Northern or Eastern European. Jack informs us in a voiceover that she has "the biggest tits I've ever seen", and later seems more intrigued than disgusted when he finds out she's selling her milk at the bar.
• Jezebel: Evil fairy who runs a local brothel. Despite her diminutive size, even Kieran is afraid of her. She has numerous chances to put Elgar in his proper place, but he never seems to learn anything from her brutally elegant dismantling of every gambit he throws at her.
• The Spanish Fly: Incredibly Lame Pun who serves Jezebel as a literal fly on the wall, spying on people in town so she has something to blackmail everyone with. Refers to everyone else as "gringos" and says "X? We don' need no stinkin' X!" Once an Episode.

edited 21st Nov '11 11:26:07 AM by EnemyMayan

Jesus saves. Gretzky steals, he scores!

My Show Pitch

Name: Film School

Plot: A satire/parody of the film industry and anything related as a group of students in a film school go through many adventures.

Format: Each episode focuses on a film genre which will get Lampshaded and sometimes Deconstructed / Reconstructed. I can't decide on whether it should be half hour (which I feel is too short becuase of ads) or an hour (which could bore people taking too much time) running time. Each season has 12-13 episodes. Occaisonally characters will make a short film related to the genre the episode focuses on.

Charcters:

• Jon: Second year student. A Deadpan Snarker and Genre Savvy Movie buff/Gamer who likes to play around with tropes, genres and conventions. His snarky and deadpan attitude is attributed to being tired of the world and believing his only future in life is making and acting in movies and not having a girlfriend, family etc.. His idol is Steven Spielberg. His motto in acting in a bad film is to "HAM IT UP". Pretty much based on me and is the only Meta Guy.

• Penny: An enthusiastic first year student at the school who has the intention of making chick flicks and teen comedies with twists that will make them a lot more interesting and non generic. She wanted to this since growing up on old John Hughes films and other teen comedies. The Chick of the group and is very much a Moe Naïve Newcomer.

• Mike: A snobbish Jerkass with a heart of gold first year student whose ideas for films are very non linear and mind-bending comparing them to that of Christopher Nolan or Terrence Malick. He is disliked by most people because of his large ego. He sees himself as a ladies man and constantly picks up girls. He eventually comes out as gay upon realising his womanising was more of a mask for ego.

• Hayley: A second year student with a dream of going to Hollywood and making adventurous and epic style movies. Idolises directors like Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick. She has an inferiority complex which has her see herself in a clichéd life of winning Oscars and getting 100% reviews on Rotten Tomatoes which is something which the group tries to help her stop with.

• Andrew: A third year animation student with a dream of working at Pixar and directing his own film there. He and Jon are good friends having fun together and have similar views on the film industry. He believes the most important things for a film to work is story and cast. He studies hand drawn and CGI animation wanting to be part of both kinds. He does not believe animation is a genre but simply another medium to tell a story in.

• Kathryn: A tomboyish third year student with the intention of making action packed films full of guns, car chases... and sport films. But suffers writers block while thinking of ways to make sure her films are different and non generic. She's very sporty, Does Not Like Men and is a feminist (maybe Straw Feminist). Later comes out as a Lesbian.

Secondary Students:

• Porn Guy: Nicknamed as such because he intends to do pornos. His real name is Jack. The idea of this character came from the absurdity of the idea that someone would go to film school just to make porn films.

• Lauren: A red headed animation student who goes out with Andrew for a short bit but breaks up with him to end up with Craig.

• Craig: Another animation student with an unrequited crush on Lauren. He has fluffed up messy hair.

No points for guessing who the last two characters are based on. There are more characters I'll put later. You may notice some names are Shout-Out s to specific people involved in the film industry and such.

Story Arcs: Season 1 doesn't really follow an arc but S2 has a plot revolving around a film festival. Characters got through Character Development and so forth.

Only two members of the group get together and Mike and Kathryn have Belligerent Sexual Tension but don't end up together because they're both gay. I made that decision to piss off all the shippers and fans of this pairing.

Along with that the show is VERY Troperiffic. In fact Jon knows what TV Tropes is and is a member. Oh and Jon is the Meta Guy in this. What I want make will be the MOST Meta show ever made as inspired by Community. My favourite show.

In fact I have already planned out the first two seasons (third is in development).

edited 24th Mar '12 10:52:53 PM by JRPictures

I'm on Youtube Reviewing Things Cause I can.

As a fan of not only Community but also Boston Legal, I can respect that. Just make sure you execute it well... poorly executed Meta stuff is just pretentious, but if done well it can be a very rewarding experience for a viewer.

Also, a nice original concept with them all being wannabe-filmmakers. I don't think I've ever heard of a show covering that particular ground before.

Jesus saves. Gretzky steals, he scores!

That could be interesting, but I'd like to see it focus on the trippy psychonaut aspect of the cop being locked in his own mind. A cool thing to do would be to make the cop's story and the monster's story coincide in each episode. For instance, in his mind, the cop gets lost in the woods with a little girl and almost eats her to survive (they barely make it out alive) but on the outside the monster eats a pedophile and saves 10 kidnapped children. The audience sees a monster save 10 lives by murder, and a hero almost eat a child. You've got a great set up for moral ambiguity there. Then, just as we're all getting warmed up to this monster being a good thing, he tries to destroy the Earth.

I'm getting a really bad Seth Mc Farlane vibe from this. I'm not going to start a fight about Mc Farlane, but his format rehashing is not the reason he succeeds. This is nothing against you, but I do think you should focus on Chess. That was a strong, original idea.

Since it looks like we're going to need a new Community soon, go right ahead. You've got a lot of potential for ShowWithinAShow, but don't make everyone the meta guy. The reason Abed is such a great character is that he's able to tear down the other characters with his genre-awareness. You'll get much better chemistry if most of the characters are totally oblivious to their own genre. (Bonus points for having the characters making movies set in whatever the genre-of-the-week is.)

I sure lurk this thread a lot. Maybe I should actually come up with a series...

NAAAH!

Thanks for the support and I agree with most of your statements. Jon will now be the only Meta Guy (The idea of everyone being it seemed well enough in my head but you had a point).

I edited in a couple more things and I hope to hear from other troper's thoughts.

I'm on Youtube Reviewing Things Cause I can.

Untitled Monster Show: That could be very interesting, though it might work better as a movie than a show. Unless you have some ideas for individual episodes?

Land of Enchantment: I like the idea. Classic/modern fantasy like that sounds like the kind of thing I would enjoy. But the number of blue links in that post is a serious problem. I'll be damned if I can find the source, but I heard somewhere that "If you start with a character, you get a type. If you start with a type, you get nothing." Write the characters; if they happen to fall into a trope, so be it.

Film School: That seems pretty good. I like where you're going with this. I recommend half-hour episodes and a slightly longer season. Comedies/satires are generally a half-hour, and I don't think that they suffer from time restraints.

And if I claim to be a wise man, well, it surely means that I don't know.

I guess YMMV at that. Mostly because I'm just bothered by the fact half hour shows run aroung 22 mins. I just feel that isn't enough but I'll take it into account. Also notably I won't rush into this show. I want to do some videos and stuff before starting this up.

I consider this a personal project and a bit of a love letter to TV tropes for all it's done to me.

I'm on Youtube Reviewing Things Cause I can.

Film School would probably would better with the British Brevity format. The problem with most shows is that they run too long (sure, one of the shows I pitched would have 52 episodes a season but still). I'd suggest making it 6-8 episodes of rapid-fire material instead of 22-26 episodes with a lot of padding.

More Buscemi at http://forum.reelsociety.com/

I see your point Buscemi but I already planned out the episodes for the first two seasons and I don't really wanna change that. Besides 10-11 eps is good enough for me.

I'm just glad so many people like this idea. But there better be NO COPYING or PLAIGERISM. Or I'll sue.

Kidding!! Maybe.

I'm on Youtube Reviewing Things Cause I can.

Shows without commercials run a bit longer than 22 minutes, sometimes as much as a full half-hour. Also, on those channels, you could show Porn Guy's porn.

BTW: Thanks to everyone who's given me feedback in this thread. I'm focusing on Chess for the time being, but still trying to figure out how to work out the problems that were pointed out with Land of Enchantment. If it sounds too much like a Seth Mac Farlane show, I definitely wasn't getting my point across properly... it's supposed to be a semi-serious fantasy story with silly comedic overtones and an extremely harsh Anti-Negative Continuity stance.

edited 25th Nov '11 8:41:13 AM by EnemyMayan

Jesus saves. Gretzky steals, he scores!

I'm looking at your post again, and now I'm thinking that my reaction was psychosomatic. Once you said "Animation Domination" I was locked into the Seth Mc Farlane thought, and it got worse when you threw in the gag animals, but besides that there really isn't anything that should have led me to that conclusion. I didn't even get that it was supposed to have a continuous plot.

I always thought the stakes for Lost and Found would come from the adventure of the week, but I guess I see your point. Would that be better suited for a movie or movie series?

And I always saw the overall loss if he fails to get something not so much that he doesn't get to put it in his museum, but that it would be LOST to HISTORY! (The museum is really more to have something to do with it once it's in the present) In the modern television landscape, would that only be high enough for educational programming?

Fresh-eyed movie blog

Okay, so I originally planned this as a series of movies but the more I think about it the more it works as a TV series.

Name: Power Surge (Title to be changed...?)

General plot: Alien abductions, everyone's heard of them, not everyone believes them. But what if they were true? For years now, aliens have been taking members of our kind seemingly at random, someone from every age, someone from every gender, from every race, but beyond the word of those who claim to have been 'abducted' there's been no proof as to them happening.

What if, one morning, roughly twenty percent of the population began to change?

The show follows five main characters, detailing each of them trying to adapt as the world changes around them, it also focuses on the political climate as at first the people are kept secret but as word gets out the governments slowly lose control of the situation.

Main characters:

• Logan Evans: An english professor who wakes up one morning to find that his brain has been supercharged, every statistic, every probable outcome, they all play out for him like a movie, a byproduct is that it gives him incredible reflexes, and his brain process information as quickly as a supercomputer. A serious downside is he gets migraines if he doesn't control it, and the migraines get worse the longer he has them, sometimes getting to the point where he can't walk.
• Natalie Michaels: A chemistry student who slowly starts to develop telepathy, it only works if she's in direct physical contact with a person. The aliens later use her as a mouthpiece when communicating with people. This gives her a strong mental connection to the species, as well as a working knowledge of their language and technology, the downside is that she has nearly no control over it. If she touches someone, she sees into their mind.
• Danny Jones: A high school student, his power takes a while to make itself known. He can shift matter on a molecular level, literally seeing the molecules and breaking them apart before reassembling them. The serious downside to this (at least in the beginning) is that the more complicated the change, the more it drains Danny and the longer it takes him to bounce back. Another drawback is that Danny is more than a bit of a slacker, and has no idea what any of what he's doing means (This is best evidenced when he first tries out his power and accidentally turns a glass of water into stomach acid).
• Lisa Ramsey: A blogger from Scotland, she frequently goes to interview the more public of the "Surged" and tries to get word of them out to the world. For the longest time it seems like she has no power, but one starts to manifest towards the end of the first season. Her power is to create a "dream" realm that she controls, which she can bring people into. Should the series last for a long time she would eventually become a major antagonist. She has an ongoing correspondence with Logan
• Adam Turner: A senator having to deal with the political fallout that "Power Surge" (As the media calls it) has brought about, he himself does not have any powers, but his five-year-old daughter Melody has the ability to see on every spectrum, which is amazing because she was born blind. Adam is a loving father and husband, but is overworked and extremely worried about the ability not just because of how people will react to his daughter but because he doesn't know what it could be doing to her.

Notes:

• Each person only gets one power to speak of, but the more creative people can adapt their powers for various situations.
• No one has the same power as anyone else, there may be some similarities, but every power is unique to the individual.
• Some people don't get powers, instead they wind up getting seriously sick. Some die almost instantly, others get gradually sicker. And some of them... Change. Lot of Body Horror involved in this part.
• Spoiler for a twist at the end (my mom loved this) the people getting powers? Yeah, completely accidental and unforeseen. The entire reason that the aliens have been abducting us is to use us as guinea pigs to test diseases that are killing their species on, the same way we do with animals.

edited 23rd Dec '11 7:12:39 AM by Fyrewyre

Yar har har har har...

That might work for me if I can convince such a channel to take my show plus Porn Guy's movie's would be hilarious to show on screen.

Also I like the concept of Power Surge. Plus the twist for the end sounds like genius.

edited 25th Nov '11 3:22:19 PM by JRPictures

I'm on Youtube Reviewing Things Cause I can.

Agreed, Power Surge sounds good. Although if everything is going to be like that stomach acid scene, it might be too heavy on the Squick for mainstream audiences... maybe make that glass of water turn into something slightly less disgusting?

Jesus saves. Gretzky steals, he scores!

Stomach acid was the first thing that came to mind and I haven't had time to look up corrosive acids to replace it with. The scene is basically supposed to have him accidentally melt his desk. :/

Yar har har har har...

Oh, I see. I Read That As you having him drink a glass of puke.

Jesus saves. Gretzky steals, he scores!

Oh. Ohhhhhh. No. Sorry, Mistyping on my part. :|

Yar har har har har...

I like Power Surge. The powers seem pretty cool, and as long as the alien bit is done well it'll work. Hydrochloric acid is a pretty typical corrosive acid, for what it's worth. Dangerous stuff. It's in stomach acid.

And if I claim to be a wise man, well, it surely means that I don't know.

Ooh, thank you. :)

So if I were to type up a prospective pilot script for it and post it online would you guys want me to link it when it's up?

edited 25th Nov '11 6:59:24 PM by Fyrewyre

Yar har har har har...

I would, yes, definitely.

And if I claim to be a wise man, well, it surely means that I don't know.

Does anyone want me to reveal the genres being parodied in Season 1, 2 or 3 Cause I just want to show you guys how much I'm putting into this.

I'm on Youtube Reviewing Things Cause I can.

Title: Redshirts

Logline: A space cadet goes for an undecided major in a world of the Omnidisciplinary Scientist, and hilarity ensues when their ideals meet his pragmatism.

Characters:

• Andy Mason: Getting into the premiere school for Void Mechanics and Engineering (VME) on a scholarship was quite the break for Mason, his brain profile tripping all sorts of switches that apparently made for a good candidate for studying the sciences of the universe. He only wants to go to VME to write his own ticket anywhere else, and would rather not deal with anything space at all.

• Johnny Spacekid: Third generation spacer from his dad all the way to Grandpa Admiral Spacekid, Johnny is the big man on campus and the local nerd. Too nice to despise, but too charismatic to completely trust.

• Rath'lu: A hominid fungus that exchanged to VME from the other side of the galaxy, she's(?) a fish out of water and has her heart set on Andy, an idea he isn't opposed to if they can figure out a way to make love without her body trying to consume his flesh.

• Other Minor characters would include the Alpha Bitch and her alleged Mirror Universe twin, who may or may not be the school's power couple, a dolphin roommate with Translator Microbes confined to an aquarium section of the school who doesn't quite get human culture, the old and busted M.O.L.L.Y. probe he has from his old job at an AI bug testing psych ward, and the guy from a Planet of Hats where the hat is Vaudeville.

• Arcs may include a part time job of giving AI's psych evals to see if they are fit for duty, Andy having just the right mental frequency to play host to non-corporeal beings, a space-time disturbance in a locker leading to a room outside of space and time, the group fudging their way through Matter and Energy Economics, and the ever present question that is if new toys are meant to be used to reach even greater heights or to make life even easier.

While it be great if it was a TV show, I'm thinking about bootstraping an audiodrama together with Skype and maybe start something up in Troper Covens if it receives well. What do you guys think?

edited 25th Nov '11 9:28:50 PM by moocow1452

My webzone.

Fyre Wyre's "Power Surge" is almost exactly the same idea as Moocow's "The Incidentals" only with aliens. The fact that it's made very clear the Power Surge is an alien scifi thing makes it more attractive to me, but I still think they're very close to Heroes. I never watched that show, but in its day the fans were absolutely rabid. I guess either show would do well to pick those poor, orphaned fans back up.