Typed by hand. It may still contain mistakes; the recording is the original.
Announcer: Welcome to Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.
Angry Man: Is this some kind of joke?
Confused Woman: Biagio-WHO???
Announcer: This episode…
Biagio: It’s episode 36 and you found a great character for Unscripted TV, so what’s next? What do you do with one great character? What’s the hook that makes your characters pop? How to know if your characters will sell to a network. And even though Joke is more pregnant than any human being can possible, she’s still at this week’s podcast because she loves you all.
Announcer: Music courtesy of Dave Pelman Music, davepelman.com
Biagio: Hey, everybody. She is Joke.
Joke: He’s Biagio.
Biagio: We’re married, we make unscripted film and television and want to help you do the same.
Joke: Hopefully by teaming up with us.
Biagio: So last time we brought you a broadcast, I was explaining how Joke was super pregnant. Now she is super duper pregnant.
Joke: No, I think last time we were super duper pregnant.
Biagio: So now we’re like super duper ultra pregnant. We’re like ready to pop here, people.
Joke: We’re at the stage that feels very much like show business, which is just hurry up and wait. And right now, we’re in the waiting period and just waiting for the call where it’s like, “Let’s go, let’s go. Hurry up, get to the hospital.”
Biagio: Yeah, yeah. I will say you are a super trooper. And by the way, I want everyone to know, I gave Joke the option of skipping the podcast this week. Don’t want anyone to think I’m the crazy husband who’s like cracking the whip over here. And she insisted that we do one. And I have to say, honey, I’m really, really proud of your work ethic.
Joke: I’m going to sit here and wait.
Biagio: Like we have anything better to do. Alright, well—
Joke: We’re producing TV shows, for crying out loud.
Biagio: That’s true, that’s true. So anyways, we’re going to talk about something this week. First of all, many of you have been submitting pitches and they’re getting better and better. And one thing that a lot of you have taken to heart and you’ve listened to our podcast episode about finding great characters, is you’ve been sending us some tape of great characters, which is terrific.
You can’t have a TV show these days without having some great characters, especially follow doc hybrid which is your highest chance of selling a show. Characters are extremely important. However that said, once you find a great character, you need to know that that’s not enough. And that’s fine, we’re happy to enter a conversation with you. But we thought in this week’s podcast, we can kind of give you a heads up about what comes next.
Once you find that great character, what are the things you really need to consider in order to turn that great character into a great TV show? And Joke, my lovely super duper pregnant wife, has come up with three things that I completely agree with and think are very important to consider.
So Joke, why don’t you back up a little bit Joke, and say some things that sound extraordinarily interesting and not too pregnant.
Joke: Oh, great. Well, scratch that. No, I just wanted to say that characters are the basis of what we do, so yeah there for everyone who’s been submitting characters. I guess we’re not saying, “Oh, we lied by saying characters are everything.” Character still is everything, it’s just we figured because all of you guys have been really nailing it, it’s time to graduate to the next level and give you the next round of things to think about when pitching a character show.
So yes, a character is the start but then, we really kind of narrowed it down to about three things right now that you should keep in mind when discovering a great character that will give you better chance at selling that character TV show.
Biagio: Great. So let’s start out with tip number one. Tip number one, Joke?
Joke: One character is not enough. Oh.
Biagio: Oh, snap. Okay, listen. Okay, one great character really isn’t enough. One A+ character and some other B+ character who add up to a good solid A all the way around, is probably good enough. But you’re never going to be able to sell a show just by having one cooky character.
Joke: You’re never going to be able to sell a docu-reality show with just one great character and everybody else being bad. If you just find that one great character and there’s nobody around them to really kind of give you that ensemble, then maybe you can salvage that by finding a format for them and then they become more of a host-driven character type format.
And those shows are, again, much harder to sell. The easier shows to sell when you’re breaking in is ensemble character-driven docu-reality shows. So, back to that like Biagio said, it’s important to figure out. Once you figure out a great character who’s around them, whether it’s in the business, in the family. Who are the other great characters? Who’s their antagonist? Who’s their second-in-command? Who is their buddy? Who’s the jokester? Who’s this? Who’s that?
You have to think about it as a TV show, because you’re trying to be a TV show producer, and think about all the pieces that the character puzzle pieces that go together in making that show work.
Biagio: Yeah, and I mean, listen every show is different. But in general if you look at a cast of characters, I don’t want to say stereotype them but you can sort of archetype them. Every show is going to have different archetypes, there’s not one blueprint that works for every kind of show, but you need to look around and go, “Oh, could this person be the wise-cracking best friend? Is this person the motivator of the group, the person who drives our hero to higher and higher heights? Is this person a love interest?”
I mean, really look at the people in their lives and find a way to archetype them so that we as viewers can understand how the cast would work together.
Joke: Again, what we’re going to be doing ultimately as TV show producers is telling stories. So this goes to the basic storytelling principles, whether you’re unscripted or scripted, is you have to figure out who your characters are and who’s driving your main character to do the things that he or she does.
Biagio: So there you go. So one character’s not enough, figure out who this cast of characters is or could be. Alright, character tip number two.
Joke: I’m going to mix up metaphors here, but the idea being that if your characters are your engine, then what is going to be your fuel every week? And I know we’ve talked about the story engine every week, so that’s sort of my metaphors with engine and fuel are messing up here.
But the idea really is, it’s like okay now you have your group of characters, what is in place that can give us new fun story every week? If it’s just a family, there has to be some very intriguing specific family dynamic that will give us new story every week. If it’s a business type of family, then what is it that they do in their business that can give us good new story every week?
It can’t just be like, oh, they’re a family and they’re hilarious. And then what? I don’t know. So, it’s one of those things where when you look at the great success that is Duck Dynasty and now, it very much feels like, oh, it’s just a sitcom. It’s a family and look, they have fun together.
But what started that show for several seasons to really going, it was the hook of these are okay, this is the bad stereotype, I don’t believe that’s what these people are. But it had the image of okay, here’s some swamp hillbillies who happen to be multimillionaires.
Biagio: Sort of like a real life Beverly Hillbillies in the way.
Joke: Yeah, except they didn’t move. They still lived in their swamp, you know what I mean? They just happen to get rich because of these duck calls. And so, that is a story engine that will give you story week after week after week, because it’s like, yeah, even though we have tons of money, we still go hunt our supper. Even though we are swamp people, we have money and so we can splurge on a great decked-out RV or whatever.
So their world, their life had a hook to it that guaranteed you story every week, right? And so until people really got to know them and love them as people and as characters, the audience had something to come back to every week, which was those stories. They feel like now, the characters feel so much of the audience’s own family that they’ll tune in just to see what wacky things the Robertsons are up to this week.
But when the show sold, when it started, it really was based on that hook of hey, we’re just regular Joe schmoes who live in the swamp, who live off the land, who shoot our own supper, but we also happen to be millionaires.
Biagio: Yeah, and our own show Caged on MTV, we found these group of really, really interesting young adults in Louisiana who are going through things a lot of teens could relate to: Figuring out their life, dealing with their loved ones, dealing with family, dealing with boyfriends and girlfriends.
All that stuff is great but what tied them all together, what hooked them all together, was they were all involved in mixed martial arts. And every episode ended with a big, giant caged fight where basically their personal lives and their dreams of being MMA fighters collided in this colossal match. That was the extra hook that brought everybody together.
Joke: Yeah. And even when you think of the Jersey Shore, right? I mean, they cast a bunch of guidos and guidettes, as they call themselves, put them in a house for the summer in the Jersey Shore. But that was the hook. It’s like, hey, we summer on the Jersey Shore and we go nuts we live the loudest, craziest, most party lifestyle you can imagine, during those two months on the shore.
So, it has to have a hook. It has to have something to fuel your story with your characters every week. It can’t just be like, oh, they’re all hilarious and they just hang out together.
Biagio: Yeah. Alright, so that brings us to tip number three.
Joke: Tip number three is as in any business, you have to know your buyer. You have to know your client, you have to know what network this cast and this world, these stories, would be right for. And unfortunately, and we’re run into this ourselves on our way to where we are right now, is that you may find a great group of characters in a very fascinating world, but if the characters are male and the world tends to be female, we’re not going to find a buyer for it. It’s very hard at that point.
And same vice versa. If you find great female characters but the world is very male, it tends to be very hard for male networks to buy shows that have female character at the center or female networks to buy shows that have male characters at the center.
So it’s not that it’s not solvable, but that’s why when you pitch us a group of characters, it’s keep the buyers in mind. If the world feels female, make sure you’ve already done the research and found a few stronger female characters that can help out your own ensemble or that could shift the point of view of your story.
Biagio: Just so people who don’t know what that means, female on a male world, male on a female world. For instance…
Joke: For instance, we had these great male characters but they were—They booked celebrities at parties and one like Kim Kardashian makes $50,000 to show up for an hour at a nightclub, right? So they were the deal-makers that made that happen. Well, they’re showing up at nightclubs, to parties, the cutting off the ribbons where Paris Hilton gets flown to Dubai for a million bucks to open up a car dealership.
That world is a very pop culture world. And a pop culture world is a very female world. And so, the female networks just couldn’t wrap their head around three guys at the center of that show. We tried to add a female character in it, but it still wasn’t enough because it was clear that the heart of the business were those three guys.
At the same time, we had these great rough and tumble Boston type characters, except they lived in the barbershop world. And for some of the male networks, hair felt very female even though it’s a barbershop and there’s other things, very manly things going on in a barbershop and it feels very kind of male world that women aren’t really privy to. The idea of, well, we’re just cutting hair, felt too female for the male networks.
And so we tried to shift it. I mean, we actually ended up selling that show a couple of times to different networks and tried to always find what is their angle that maybe lessen the focus on the barbershop and more on these characters. But the end, people still couldn’t get away from the fact that it is what it is.
And so, keep that in mind. Keep in mind, the world, where do you see those kinds of shows on television? And if they’re on predominantly male networks like Nat Geo and Discovery and History, just know it’s going to be about the male characters. If you see these kind of shows primarily on the Bravo’s, Lifetime, TLC is ease of the world, then just know it’s going to be mostly about the female characters.
Biagio: Yeah, and by the way, this is all stuff that you can pick up, going back to episode one of this podcast or the first eight episodes which you can find on our YouTube channel at YouTube.com/JokeAndBiaggio. The first eight episodes are up there now with a clickable table of contents. And so, a lot of this basic information that we’re assuming that you know, that you might not know, you can pick up by checking out those first eight episodes, so…
Joke: And again, we’re giving you this information because you guys have been finding great characters, but these are really the first three things that we d then talk about. Like, oh, I found this great character. Great, who’s around them? What’s going to fuel the story every week? And who’s the buyer?
So, we’re deciding to do a podcast about it so that maybe you guys already figured out these answers before you pitch them to us next time.
Biagio: Yeah, or we’re going to point you to this podcast episode and say, “Hey, you’ve got some great characters. Now go listen to episode 36 of the Producing Unscripted podcast and come back with those answers.”
So I think Joke really just did a nice natural recap there, but just to recap the recap the three things that you consider when you’re putting together when you find a great character. Number one: Who are your other characters around them? Number two: What is going to fuel stories every single week? And number three: Who is the buyer for that show?
Now I really think we’re going to have a baby before our next episode. What do you think, Joke?
Joke: I don’t think that doctor will let this baby stay in for another two weeks.
Biagio: As a matter of fact, by the time we’re recording this on a Monday, this is going to go live on a Tuesday. For all I know, by the time you’re hearing this we have welcomed our son into the world. But I think that timing is going to work out and we’re just going to have another podcast episode in two weeks.
So anyways, I hope this was helpful for all of you. I will include some very useful links in the notes for this episode, which you’ll be able to find at ProducingUnscripted.com/036. I’ll list some links to some other podcast episodes that support things we talked about here today.
And for those of you haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet and have any intention of pitching to us, by all means, sign up for the newsletter. You’ll be able to do that right on any page at ProducingUnscripted.com. So…
Joke: What he said.
Biagio: Yeah. Alright, we’re going to have a baby. See you guys next time.
Joke: Wait. I mean, like today? No. We don’t know.
Biagio: We don’t know.
Joke: That’s the magic of childbirth, right? You just don’t know when and that’s like show business. Hurry up and wait.
Biagio: Yeah, it’s kind of like TV ratings. You just don’t know what they’re going to be.
Joke: Well, waiting for the network’s green light, at which point they say, “Okay, can we have the show yesterday.”
Biagio: Lot of waiting, just like having a baby. Alright, enough baby talk. We’re out, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in.
Joke: See you later.
Biagio: Bye-bye.
Announcer: Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.
