Workshop
PITCH TO PILOT: WRITING TV DRAMA
Organised by The London Film School
Ready to write your own TV series? What do you need to know? What do you need to deliver? Who do you deliver it to? And how do you go about that?
This course with writer/producer Neil Arksey is aimed at experienced writers in theatre, prose, radio, comedy, advertising, or related fields, who want to learn more about how drama series are created and written and how to develop and pitch them.
On six Saturdays, over four months, six participants will develop their own original drama series. The group will be taken though a step by step introduction to the various techniques and methods employed in breaking a pilot and pitching the show.
The course will focus on three main areas:
- Developing your own original idea for a drama.
- Translating that idea into pilot beats, scene-by-scenes and a screenplay.
- Crafting a compelling pitch document that will sell the show.
In addition to an initial group project designed to enable writers to swiftly absorb techniques and processes they will need for developing their own projects, each writer will also develop a first draft of their pilot episode and a pitch document for that show.
The course will also examine the development of a continuing serial drama and trace each step of how productions are managed in-house, from initial idea to full concept, storylines, block outlines, futures and scripts. As a consequence, participants will leave the course much better equipped to participate in writers’ rooms and to understand what is required to work successfully in the script and story offices of a continuing or serial drama.
COURSE OUTLINE
Topics covered in the classes include:
- The history and importance of serial story telling in TV drama
- Story Development
- Writers’ Rooms and working collaboratively
- Original Drama Ideas
- Character, Setting and Story
- Plot and Structure
- Beats, Act Structures and Scene by Scenes
- Breaking the Pilot
- Script Editing, Revising and Redrafting
- Crafting the killer outline
- Pitching
- Industry insights
Applicants will be expected to have had some (not necessarily professional) writing experience. They will be required to complete substantial in-class and homework assignments in order to achieve the course objective of completing a draft pilot script and outline document. Email access and sharing email contact are essential.
The course has been designed with lengthy breaks between sessions to maximise writing time and allow participants to complete the scripts of their original drama projects.
By the final week, writers that have completed all their assignments will have developed their own serial drama idea all the way to a first draft pilot script and received one-to-one feedback on their project from Neil.