Pitch Success Secret: Sell Film & TV by Crafting Your Second Hook

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 is episode 27 and we are giving you a top secret tip for pitch success. The magical second hook. How a second hook can help you pitch screenplays, scripted television, documentaries, unscripted television, and even reality TV. How the movie Armageddon, the television shows Elementary, 24, Duck Dynasty, and our own shows, Don’t Trust Andrew Mayne and Caged all make use of second hook.

Please do not pitch us a travel show unless you truly grasp the second hook concept. Oh and did we mention? Today’s episode is about second hooks.

Announcer: Music courtesy of Dave Pelman Music, davepelman.com

Biagio: Hey everybody, she is Joke.

Joke: He is Biagio.

Biagio: We are married and we make unscripted film and television and want to help you do the same hopefully by teaming up with us.

Well welcome to episode 27, an episode I am dubbing Pitch Success, Your Second Hook is Crucial. As a lot of you probably already know, Joke and I actually started out years ago as writers ourselves who wanted to learn more about the real world, meet more real characters and so we got into documentary and unscripted television.

Of course we fell in love with it and here we are today. However back then when we were still actively writing screenplays, we took a screenwriting seminar where we got one of the best pieces of advice I feel we have ever gotten in relation to storytelling. And this piece of advice works for screenplays. It works for scripted television. It works for documentaries. It works for unscripted television and reality shows, you name it.

I feel like this piece of advice will always make a pitch more sellable. And that teacher’s advice was, one hook is not enough you need two.

Law Student: I like totally feel myself getting smarter right now. Boo ya!

Joke: It is really one of the keys to great storytelling in our opinion it kind of elevates what could just be a kind of okay story to the next level. And it is something that when we are pitching our unscripted television, our documentaries or we are thinking about our stories. We always ask ourselves a question, what is the second hook?

Biagio: Yes and let me give you the example he gave in class because it is so crystal clear and whether or not you agree with his assessment of which film was better. I think that you will see the point illustrated perfectly here. In class, he compared Armageddon to Deep Impact.

Deep Impact is a movie about a meteor colliding with the Earth. Armageddon is a movie about a meteor colliding with the Earth. However, it has a big second hook and Joke can actually speak to this since years ago she worked on Armageddon with producer Gale Anne Hurd.

Joke: Yes I was working with Gale Anne Hurd while we were in the middle of production and post on Armageddon and the story of Armageddon is really interesting. She had a project in development for a long time called, I believe it was called Premonition. And it was same as Deep Impact, asteroids hitting Earth and is on its way to colliding with Earth and what does that do to people on the ground and the stories.

All the same stories that you would imagine when you think of an asteroids on its way to colliding with Earth. It was not really moving forward in the process. It was kind of languishing in development. And it was not until she and Jonathan Hensleigh, her husband, came up with a second hook of the only thing that could potentially save us is a bunch of blue collar, blue comedy cursing outlaws kind of throwaways of society oil drillers. If we send them up into space and they can drill into the asteroid and detonate a big bomb, I believe it was nuke or something in there, then maybe we have a chance as it would split the asteroid and miss Earth on both sides. Right?

So it is that second hook of taking the people that you’d absolutely never seen in a NASA spacesuit and putting them in there in the fate of the planet in their hands. So that is the second hook and Deep Impact might be a great movie and it definitely has a lot of emotional moments in it. But it is that second hook that kind of elevated that story for Armageddon where they were able to go much bigger blockbuster and Bruckheimer got involved and Bay and all that stuff.

Biagio: Yes, the second hook really makes it more commercial. I know that’s a dirty word sometimes but certainly in our business and television, commercial is a good thing if you want to sell shows. Again, Armageddon, first hook meteor going to collide with the Earth. Second hook, a bunch of crazy, wild, red-necked oil drillers are going to go up blow the meteor out of space and save the world.

Let us take a look really quick at a couple of examples from scripted television, I think a really easy one is 24. It is coming back, right because it is still popular. People still cannot get enough of it. 24, first hook the baddest counter-terrorism expert in the world Jack Bauer stops the baddest terrorist in the world from doing bad things. Right?

What is the second hook? The show takes place in real time over the course of 24 hours. Although we all know that in reality, you cannot drive from Hollywood to Valencia in six minutes but the second hook still works.

Joke: Yes absolutely, it is that extra little thing that probably helps sell that show.

Biagio: Yes. Another example of scripted television and we will get over with our side of the business but I think a really clean, clear example is the show Elementary. Right? I mean, what is the first hook? Hey, it is a modern day Sherlock Holmes. Well that is not even that creative, right?

I mean not only has that been done a bunch of times but there is a BBC show on right now which is basically a modern day Sherlock Holmes. What is the second hook? Watson is a woman. Whoa, you introduced that second hook, all of a sudden you got a brand new set of relationship dynamics to explore. A whole new way to tell these stories. Bam! Second hook, Watson is a woman. That show sells.

Joke: When it comes to unscripted television, what we are hearing a lot in some of the pitches that are coming our way is, “Oh it is just like this show,” or “Oh it is just like that show.” And for better or worse, a lot of the stuff we hear is like, “Oh it is just like Duck Dynasty.” And really what people mean by that is, “Oh, it is a family sitcom.” It is kind of family. It is kind of comedy and it is family centered. So therefore it is like Duck Dynasty.

But that is not all Duck Dynasty is. Duck Dynasty has a very powerful second hook which has both wish fulfilment and voyeurism to it which is really the fact that you have this multimillionaire, I guess Hillbillies, living in a swamp, living still off the land. The money has not changed them. They really are still going out and hunting for their food. They are still having family dinners together.

They are still trying to teach their kids how to live off the land and that is actually where some of the drama comes in with grandpa trying to teach the grandkids to get them away from their iPads and their Nintendos and stuff to get them back to the land. There is that extra something that is actually really powerful. When you compare yourself to a certain show, you cannot just take the success of it without also creating a good second hook.

Biagio: Yes. I mean Duck Dynasty first hook is really a crazy, wacky family business about people who make duck calls and the second hook is they are super filthy rich. I mean, these are millionaires living in a swamp. It has got a touch of Beverly Hillbillies and even though they are in a swamp, because they have so much money, the family sitcom takes on and other stories of immense size from being able to play king-sized pranks on each other to seeing supersized versions of what life in a swamp could be like if you are loaded.

That is a great second hook and it lets you tell stories in a different way. Why don’t we talk about some of our own shows, Joke?

Joke: Yes, Caged is a perfect example where first hook is a coming of age story about young, 20-somethings living in small town Louisiana. The second hook which really gets you in there is that for them, the only way out of this small town life is possibly inside of a cage, literally.

So while they might feel emotionally and physically caged by a small town feel, the way out is by going into an even tinier cage and fighting in the world of amateur MMA to try and get scouted and maybe make it to the big time and get out and see other places.

Biagio: For those who have never seen this show, it was not like we were taking kids in Louisiana and locking them in a cage to see what would happen. They were cage fighting.

So another show, our show, we recently did on A&E, Don’t Trust Andrew Mayne. Right? It is a magic show. Do you know how hard to sell a magic show? And here is why. Because a magic show is a magician doing magic. Right? So our first hook, we have got Andrew Mayne, one of the greatest undiscovered magicians in the world who has designed magic for Penn and Teller, David Copperfield, David Blaine, Chris Angel, you name it he is getting his own show. Great, that is the first hook.

What is the second hook? And along the way, he is helping everyday people prank people in their lives by using huge magic illusions. So now we are using magic in a way it has not really been used on television before by helping people get revenge on people in their lives. Right? Second hook. Andrew is an amazing talent. He had to be amazing for us to sell the show but it was the second hook that really closed the deal for us.

I also want to mention our documentary Dying to Do Letterman, right? Now on his face, the first hook is a comedian chases his lifelong dream of appearing on the David Letterman Show. Okay, great. First hook whatever guy wants to be on Letterman.

Second hook, what was the second hook? He finds out he might only have five years to live and so he dedicates what is left of his life chasing that dream. Now it becomes a story that has a lot of universal tones of how important is a dream. What would you give up to chase a dream? What would you do if you only had X amount of time left?

That second hook is what made the documentary special. That second hook was baked into the movie from the beginning but you just have to realize what that second hook is when you are putting together your own shows. Now as a lot of you know, we now have a list on our website of shows we are looking for right now. For those who have not already looked, I am going to give you a little sneak peek here. One of the sections we have listed is travel with a twist and we have started to get a slew of travel shows and most of them are not good.

Joke: Yes and I think the main thing is and I hate to be so blunt about it but a lot of people are pushing travel shows starring themselves. And trust me, I will gladly go on camera if someone wants to pay for me to fly around the world and visit really cool, awesome places, and stay in nice hotels but that is not the kind of shows that we are looking for, for the Travel Channel.

So stop thinking of the Miss Travel shows because if in your pitch it is clear that the piece of talent that we would be following would otherwise be sitting on their couch, then it is probably not the show we are looking for.

Biagio: Yes I want to use an example here of a show that is on Travel Channel right now and I literally pulled this blurb which by the way if I got this blurb I would be like okay I want to see what this pitch is about. I pulled this blurb right out off of their website.

It is for a show they are doing called Gem Hunt and their blurb is, “Follow a team of modern treasure hunters on their high stakes quest for the world’s most precious stone. Their global journey takes them to some of the planet’s busiest and riskiest trading regions.” Now noticed in that pitch, really travel is the second hook. It is not the first hook. Travel is almost the least important part of that pitch, yes they are traveling the world. Yes you are going to see other customs and cultures.

Joke: But they are only travelling because they have to for their job. Their main goal in this show is to find amazing gems that then they can sell to the market and make a profit, right? That is their business. So for them to find these amazing gems, they happen to have to travel to exotic locales and risky trading post and all of that stuff.

But again, they are not going to travel and then happen to buy some gems. That is kind of where the difference is, right? It is about really figuring out who are the pieces of talent that kind of do this, to have to travel anyway like their mission is something else and it just happens to require them to travel.

Biagio: Yes and it needs to be something where they are already traveling. It is not like “Oh hey this business is going to start to travel,” like you want to find people where the travel is the integral part of what they do. Another similar show to this on Travel Channel which plays kind of like in the same space is called Dangerous Grounds.

It is a guy traveling around the world because he is trying to find the best coffee beans, Dangerous Grounds. Not a bad title, for a show about coffee. They managed to somehow make that title exciting but a different and I want to give you another version of a travel show and Joke can speak to this which is Man v. Food. Right, Joke?

Joke: Yes, Man v. Food. To be quite honest I am not sure Man v. Food could sell today.

Biagio: Yes I agree.

Joke: It sold, what is this now, four or five years ago but again, at the time it was the second hook allowed it to be the twist on the show that has already been out there. Right? It is just a guy who is very charismatic and is a good piece of talent but he is traveling towns all across America to eat in cool places and discover new things, the best barbeque here and the best tacos there and all of that stuff.

However, the second hook being at every episode he tries to get himself on the local restaurants Hall of Fame type of thing by eating the craziest, biggest burger or whatever the specialty is of that restaurant. That is your second hook. It is really the fact that you are going to have an A story every episode where our main talent attempts to do something that very few people can accomplish.

Biagio: Now look, does every single show on television, does every single movie, does everything ever created have a second hook? No of course not. However, a lot of the most successful, commercially successful shows, movies, documentaries they do. And so, especially when you are looking at some of the shows that we list on our page of shows we are looking for right now which you can get by signing up for our newsletter and following the directions. I think it is always good to ask yourself, is there a potential for this second hook and we are going to be way more interested if there is.

So to sum things up, if you really want commercial success, if you want to sell a lot of shows, if you want to be in the game of putting stuff out that a lot of people are going to see, I firmly believe what our great screenwriting teacher said long ago and I am sorry I do not remember his name but his advice was “One hook is not enough, you need two.”

Joke: It seems very simple and very short but it really has had a profound impact on how we tell stories and how we look at the world in terms of searching for stories. So really start taking this as part of your creative process when you look at shows and see whether or not they might be right for us or for you to pursue in general.

Biagio: Yes and again, use this advice whether you are pitching us a show, writing a screenplay, thinking about taking on a documentary or coming up with an idea for your next scripted television show and I think you will increase your odds of success.

So until next time, this has been episode 27. That is it! I always run out of things to say at the end. I am horrible at the end of episodes. That is alright.

Joke: Just say thank you and goodbye.

Biagio: Thank you and goodbye.

Joke: See you guys later.

Announcer: Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.