| Television Pilot |
Article Index for Television |
Website Links For Television |
Information AboutTelevision Pilot |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT TELEVISION PILOT | |
| television programming | |
| television pilots | |
| internet television series | |
| television websites | |
|
While many pilots are shot, few make it to the screen, and even fewer go on to become full-fledged television series. Competition at the Network level is intense, with Advertising money and choice viewer Demographic s at stake. ORIGINS OF A PILOT EPISODE The concept for a pilot is generally "pitched" to network executives by a Producer or Writer . If interested, the network will fund the writing of a script. This may happen 50 times in a particular year. At this point various stakeholders at the network propose changes, and rewrites occur to satisfy those demands. If a project is unable to meet these changes, it will often be shelved or enter " Development Hell ", a period of perpetual rewrites and recasting that lasts until the pilot is deemed completed or the Producer s give up on the project. If the script for a pilot has satisfied the stakeholders at the network and is sufficiently exciting, then the production of the pilot itself can begin. On average, only about 10% of the scripts commissioned by Hollywood networks actually get to the production stage. PRODUCTION OF THE PILOT Pilots are expensive to produce. Before a network commits to funding an entire pilot episode, it often requests a pilot presentation, a one-day shoot that, when edited together, gives a general idea of the look and feel of the proposed show. Some pilots can be just a few minutes long (ex: 10 minutes or less); however, such pilots will not be shown on the air unless more material is subsequently padded into them to make them at least twenty-two minutes in length, the actual duration of a nominally "thirty minute" program (taking account of commercials). Occasionally, more than one pilot is commissioned for a particular proposed television series to evaluate what the show would be like with modifications. '''' is the most famous example of this situation. An example of change between the making of a pilot and the making of a series is '' To Tell The Truth '' in 1956 . The original title of the pilot was ''Nothing But the Truth'' and the show was hosted by Mike Wallace . The program host was changed to Bud Collyer , and the title changed to ''To Tell the Truth''. BARE BONES PILOT Some series (most notably Buffy The Vampire Slayer ) are given bare bones pilots that are never meant to be shown to the public. These pilots are made on a substantially smaller budget with no real special effects and feature a condensed story. In Buffy's case the pilot was barely 20 minutes long and took place entirely within Sunnydale High . This allowed the writers and producers to show off the style and general mood of the show and convince the network to pay for a more polished 2 hour pilot, which was then aired. AIRING THE PILOT Pilots usually run as the first episode of the series, unless the series ended up being so different from the pilot that it wouldn't make sense (in this case the pilot, or portions of it, is reshot or rewritten to fit the rest of the series). The pilot for '' Gilligan's Island '', for instance, showed the castaways becoming stranded on the island. However, three roles were recast before going to series, with the characters either modified or completely altered to the point where the pilot could no longer be used as a regular episode. The series began with the second produced episode, with the characters already on the island. The story from the pilot was largely reworked into a flashback episode which aired later, although with several key scenes reshot. There have been exceptions to this rule when a network or a producer has chosen to run the pilot at a later date. Series for which this has happened include the first '''' series, where the second, modified pilot (" Where No Man Has Gone Before ") was aired as the third episode, and footage from the original pilot (" The Cage ") was edited into newer footage to produce the two part episode " The Menagerie ". The more recent television show '' Firefly '' set a particularly curious example, where the series was officially cancelled before the pilot aired as the final televised episode. Critics of the ''Firefly'' move complained that airing the pilot out of sequence made it difficult for audiences to understand what was going on; when the series was subsequently released on DVD, the pilot became the first listed episode. BACKDOOR PILOTS A backdoor pilot is a television movie, other TV special event, or even an otherwise normal episode of an already established series that is being used as a " where the crew of the ''Enterprise'' encounters Gary Seven , a character with his own agenda with the planet in a story that was intended to introduce the character and the premise of his adventures in a proposed series of his own. More recent examples are ''. Similarly, the first two seasons of the original ''") followed 11 months later and served as the first official episode of the legendary series. {Link without Title} At one time many pilots not selected for production as full series were aired as parts of Anthology programs; these shows, which were often aired as summer replacements, were regarded as potentially holding more of the audience than repeat showings of old episodes of popular programs and this usage allowed the recoupment of at least a small part of the large development cost. Also, in a very few, rare instances, public interest could result in network executives taking a second look at the decision not to go forward with the series. One of the best known examples is "Love and the Happy Days", a rejected pilot for a TV series about a family in the 1950s , which was aired as an installment of the popular anthology, '' Love, American Style ''; this, combined with the popularity of the Film '' American Graffiti '' (both productions starring Ron Howard ) resulted in the series '' Happy Days '' being commissioned. The practice of airing pilots is now very seldom seen; pilots are more apt to be screened to Focus Group s than to a mass audience. Few pilots not selected to go into production as a series are ever aired in any form. |
|
|