The Damage Patrol: From Primetime Adventures to Script

February 19, 2010 2 comments

This is how the process is working, so far:

Once a week, the writers (who are also the main cast members) get together and play out an episode of Primetime Adaventures. We do this by the book, even though there probably won’t be “previously on” or “next time on” spots in individual episodes. Those serve to help us remember what we’ve done, and get us excited for next time.

We set things up for 10 episodes, which monkeyed with the PTA 5- or 9-episode structure. The first episode, which we treated as a pilot, had everyone with a screen presence of 2 and did not count toward the allocation of screen presence in the other 9 episodes.

As episodes are designed to be 5 to 7 minutes long (giving us about an hours’ worth of show for a future DVD release), we’re being mindful that scenes are only about a minute long. An episode will have five scenes. If we feel it runs short, we’ll insert a sixth scene. If a scene runs long and really feel like it needs to be long, we’ll cut the number of scenes to 4.

At the start of each episode, we figure out it’s overall Focus (plot or character) and Agenda (this is what needs to happen), the way you normally do for a scene in PTA. Individual scenes will have their own Focus and Agenda, but it should contribute toward fulfilling the episode’s Focus and Agenda.

As Producer, I’m also acting as scribe. I write down the Focus, Location, and Agenda of each episode, and each scene. I actually pound it out on my Alphasmart. I write questions for later (music, props, locations needed, things like that) on 3×5 cards. I don’t try to grab everything we say; I write down the “beats” of what happens, along with good jokes and bits of dialogue (if it gets someone Fan Mail, it gets documented).

A couple of days after the session, I edit my notes, clean it up, and email it out to the crew. They add notes, jokes and bits and things they thought of after the fact. We get all this together, and at the start of the next session we go over the last session’s notes.

What we end up with is a tight outline. What happens, where it happens, who’s there, some dialogue, some stage direction. Not a script, but a solid frame to build a script on.

Once we’ve played out the entire 10 episodes and have it all outlined, we’ll go over the whole thing to make sure it hangs together as one solid story. Add things that make make the episodes connect better, delete bits that don’t fit into the whole, adjust for good ideas we didn’t fall into until later episodes.

When we’re happy with the outline, then we’ll start on the real script. Each person will get assigned episodes to write, and then we’ll pass those first drafts around. If I write an episode, I’ll pass it to Dave (for example) so he can doctor it. We’ll then re-convene and go over the whole script. When we’re happy, then we move into production.

It’s as democratic a process as we can muster, and there are obvious perils to doing this by committee, but we’re all on the same wavelengths and play to each others’ strengths and compensate for each others’ weaknesses. It’s also why we’re looking at taking 3 to 4 months just to get the script. It doesn’t mean we don’t have other facets of production going on in the background, but for our first outing we figure if the script isn’t tight, we’re sunk.