Progress Report – Fourteen Hours

It’s Wednesday again, time for a shot update and some random thoughts.

One book/screenplay: Still reading Sandman. Still delighted.
Two movies: Due to reasons I will talk about later, I spend some time with some old TV shows.
Seven pages: I’m on a roll. I started to do write sprints ¹. Basically I set a timer (I use 45 minutes) and I write until the time is up. Just writing, nothing else. It’s impressive how the clock and the limited time helps you focus.
Seven hours: Orlindo told me about an opportunity to pitch ideas. I decided to work on two ideas and maybe one of them will shape up to be good enough to present.

This is actually what I intend to write about today. I feel confident to share the ideas here, it’s not like I have any readers who might steal (or comment) on them so this is basically just talking to myself about these ideas. The ideas are for TV so I have to keep them simple and cheap, I decided to work on a TV Movie an a TV Show.

Movie idea: A couple of years ago I wrote a story about a guy who reconnects with that girl from High School who broke his heart/ignored him. There are two layers to it. It’s a romance movie and a courtroom movie. Basically he’s a lawyer who helps defend her. Sounds boring and that’s why I added another layer: He’s responsible for her problems. I’m not sure how down German Tv guys are with that kind of story and I’m not are how to end it. Does he get away with it, or not?

Series idea:TV is either about relationships or about some kind of procedure, most of the time it’s kind of both because you have to disguise the one with the other. I don’t have to list all these different kinds of shows but I always hated the ones that were too focused on one aspect. I went through my TV library and watched some pilots and looked for something that might work for German TV, well not in the sense of what show could I remake, what aspects would work in a show for German TV. Here’s what I came up with:

• Fish out of water – adjusting to new surroundings
• Why the change? – tragedy?
• family problems – mother vs. daughter
• romance with obstacles
• issue of the week – crime? illness? something else?

So what do I see here? I see a family (or parts of a family) who moves to a new place. I don0t know why yet but it’s a big adjustment. It might be a new country, o just from the city to the countryside. Or why not a refugee family? The mother might be a doctor who helps people who don’t trust her and don’t really want her there and there might be a tiny village where everyone knows each other. And the boy from the family falls on love with the daughter of the local AfD politician.

…hmm…that sound quite interesting. I’ll get back to you on that one.