Wow, all these people came out of the woodwork to submit for Pilot Week. It’s as if there’s this whole sub-section of secret Scriptshadow readers who were waiting for this moment. I might have to do a second week of this since there were so many submissions and I couldn’t get all the good ones in today. But first we’ll have to see how this week goes. For those who don’t know the rules, download and read the pilots and vote on your favorite in the comment section. Winners gets a review next week. Also, if you have time, give feedback to the writers, letting them know where you had problems (or on what page you stopped reading their script) and how they can improve. Good luck to all!
Title: Unraveled
Genre: Viewer-Interactive Mystery
Logline: Tasked with finding a wealthy family’s newlywed daughter, we quickly realize we’re not working a straightforward case.
Why You Should Read: Greetings from the future! 2020 to be exact. In the back of my driver-less car I just finished binge-watching Netflix’s first foray into “viewer-interactive/virtual reality” content. Frankly, it wasn’t very good. We storytellers at Scriptshadow can do better. So I jumped in my family’s time traveling Honda Odyssey(new feature for 2018) and jetted back to 2016 to ask, humbly, for your feedback. “Unraveled” bridges the gap between serial format TV and gaming, on the forefront of Virtual Reality storytelling. As the viewer adopts the protagonists role, he/she can(and should) choose the order in which they watch episodes as they try to solve the mystery. As a result, not only do the characters have GSU, but the viewer as well. Is this ambitious? Yes. Is it impossible? You’ll have to open the script to find out.
Title: Bananas & Cocaine
Genre: TV Pilot – Drama
Premise: What if Miss Chiquita walter-whited her way to the top of a Colombian cartel?
Why You Should Read: I think I subconsciously came up with the concept for this pilot while shopping at Ralph’s back in the day. You see, there happened to be a grocery list left inside the shopping basket I snagged on my way into the store. (Which is way better than the usual red onion skin remnants and/or unidentifiable sticky liquid by the way.) As I took a gander at this list, I noticed that the only two items not crossed off were “Bananas” and “Coke.” Voila!
Title: Infamous
Genre: 1hr Dramedy
Logline: A struggling author goes undercover at an infamous gossip magazine to write a tell-all book and discovers that her morals aren’t the only thing threatened in the bizarre world of celebrity news.
Why You Should Read: Well, most people know me as a dedicated Writer/Producer/Director, but only a few know my dirty little secret: I used to be a gossip reporter for a top gossip magazine, and Infamous gives you an inside look at the absurdity of it all.
As a gossip reporter, my life was part Carrie Bradshaw, part James Bond and completely over the top. If I wasn’t dining by candlelight with Angelina’s bodyguard, I was undercover in Belize tracking Tom Cruise, or trying to find out if Britney Spears ate bacon for breakfast. I have so many stories to tell, and this pilot is just the beginning.
Title: The Remains
Genre: Thriller/Athology (aimed at Netflix/Amazon/HBO, etc)
Logline: When the main suspect commits suicide on the twentieth anniversary of her mother’s disappearance, a woman soon finds out that everything she held true about what happened all those years ago is shattered and she must partner with an unstable Texas Ranger to save her own life and uncover the truth.
Why You Should Read: I grew up in a small Texas town (pop. 2000). After a local woman simply vanished in the ’90’s, I would listen to my dad come in late at night and tell my mother about the case, which he was investigating. The stories were replete with local scoundrels, psychics, and drugs.
Even as I entered adulthood and went on in the world, the case never left my psyche. It’s exacerbated each time I see her daughter, who was a few years younger than me, posting on Facebook each year on the anniversary.
Although the real-life story and my version are vastly different, I still owe the seed being planted, so many years ago, to those late night stories about the case. A case that I feel is hard for me to let go of emotionally, although I have no deep personal connection to any of the parties that were involved.
Title: Calling All Destroyers
Genre: TV Pilot – Adventure
Logline: A wide-eyed teenager follows in the footsteps of his heroic older brother and enlists in The Monster Defense Force, an organization responsible for protecting what’s left of America from attacks by giant monsters.
Why You Should Read: There were a million reasons not to write this.
It’s insanely expensive. It doesn’t check any of the traditional boxes an hourlong pilot should. There isn’t an obvious structure or episode guideline to follow (it’s more of a weird hybrid mini-series than anything). It feels more like a movie than TV. The narrative is heavily influenced by books as opposed to any of the visual material that shares the same subject matter. It’s a waste of time because no one will ever make it. So no one will ever buy it. Which means no one in the industry wants to read it. Etc. Etc. Etc into infinity.
But here’s the thing people forget about writing, sometimes the story picks you. And it chases you everywhere you go until it finally catches you and invades your brain.
So while there definitely was a million boring and responsible reasons not to write this, it just wouldn’t leave me alone. So I HAD to do it anyway.
Calling All Destroyers is an adventure story about a group of underdogs figuring out who they really are in the midst of fighting giant monsters. It’s the best thing I’ve ever written. And I’m incredibly proud of it.
