Matt may be QB2, but he’s got his eye on Coach Taylor’s daughter Julie. Jason and Tim may be best friends, but Jason’s girlfriend Lyla doesn’t always think very highly of Tim. While introducing the characters, the writer also lets the audience in on the web of complicated relationships between all these people. Not only that but Friday Night Lights goes one step further. Saracen, the Mayor of Dillon, the radio host who comments on the high school football team - everybody. Coach Taylor, Tami Taylor, Jason Street, Tim Riggins, Matt Saracen, Julie, Landry, Lyla, Buddy, Tyra, Smash, Billy, Mrs. In the pilot episode of Friday Night Lights, all of the characters are introduced in the first 20 minutes. More importantly, why should the audience root for these characters? What about them is intriguing enough to get a viewer to tune in the following week, or not switch over to something else on Netflix? Who are your characters? Who will the viewers see every week? Which characters are major and which are simply supporting?
#TV PILOT TREATMENT EXAMPLE SERIES#
In your series pilot, it’s essential that you introduce the characters important to the story. Characters are the reason television shows exist - TV characters sustain a series over multiple seasons because their stories are bigger than that of their film counterparts. Whereas movies can sometimes get away with being more about the story itself than the people in the story, it can never be that way with television. Of course as time goes on, the show reveals that there’s more to the story, like the origin of Dion’s powers, mysteries regarding Nicole’s deceased husband, Mark, and more - but we never stray far from the premise.Ī show is nothing - I repeat, nothing - without its characters.
The pilot episode does something incredibly important - it establishes right off the bat that the entire series would be about a widowed mother (Nicole) who tries to keep her son’s (Dion) newly developed superpowers under control. What themes will your show touch on? At its heart, what is the message, moral, or overarching universality you want to comment on with the story as a whole? What is your show? Is it a sitcom, drama, procedural, mystery, or anthology? What is the main thing your characters are going to be dealing with (i.e. This must work on two levels.įirst, you must lay the obvious groundwork of a concrete premise.
#TV PILOT TREATMENT EXAMPLE TV#
So, above all else, if you’re attempting to begin your show, make sure that you include these four crucial elements in your pilot episode.Īlready have a pilot that needs to be read? Enter the WeScreenplay TV Pilot Screenwriting Contest here.Īrguably the most important thing to establish in your pilot is what the show itself is about. It must build a world, let people into that world, introduce audiences to the characters in that world, and hook viewers so that they feel they must see the next episode. The very first episode of your TV show - the pilot - has to prove a great number of things. In life, love, and, of course, television.
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