This Saturday, July 24, 2010,  thousands of people from around the world are going to help film a “Life in a Day” here on planet earth.  Video submissions posted to Youtube will be used to make a feature length documentary about this single day of life.  If you can shoot video and upload it to Youtube, you can participate.

Filmmaker Kevin Macdonald talks about the project

Filmmaker Kevin Macdonald asks that you consider filming the following three things:

1. What do you fear most in your life today?
2. What do you love?  What makes you laught?
3. What’s in your pocket? Film it, describe it…

Having everyone participating do these three things will help provide some common threads upon which he can make his portrait of our world, our lives, in this time and place.

Ridley Scott says “Make it personal!“

For more information visit
http://www.youtube.com/user/lifeinaday

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More often then not the calls I receive are from people who

1. have been sitting on an idea for years, thinking and talking about it but without any formal documentation
2. are doing great work in terms of video or performance of some sort and want to make the leap to television but have no formal documentation
3. have tons of documentation, just nothing organized.

If you have an amazing project you’d like to be made into a TV show, its a great idea to intentionally start working on putting it together in the form of a Bible.

Not THE BIBLE , but a television SHOW BIBLE.

What’s a TV Show / Series Bible?

In the world of television a Bible is a document describing the Universe of a television show.  It outlines the premise, the format, describes the characters, primary locations, and the kind of adventures the characters have.   Now you may not need to have this to pitch a show, but it certainly can help organize your ideas, further the development of the project, and communicate to those in the industry that you’re serious.

As far as I’m concerned, if you aren’t willing to take the time to construct a Bible for your show, you don’t care enough to be making a show.  Or maybe you are an idea person and need to partner with someone who can write and move things along.

Either way, not much is going to happen if you can’t write your idea in a way that it can be protected, pitched and ultimately produced!

Sample TV Show Bibles

So how do you get started with writing your show’s Bible?  Well, you should get your hands on some samples.

Unfortunately these are hard to come by, especially online.  None of the show Bibles for the projects I work on are available online and I don’t have permission to share them.

Have no fear!

There is a great sample show Bible in Jeffrey Scott’s book  How to Write for Animation (affiliate link).   Even if your show is live action, puppet based, etc… the content is still worth reviewing.

There are also some websites with small collections of Bibles, though not many for childrens television.  See resource links below.

If you work in the industry and have a Bible you’d like to share with my readers for educational purposes, please let me know.  It would be great to share some samples from shows in production.  Email me

Additional Resources

I often meet people/acts that are wannabees.  The Jitterbugs are REAL bees.  Uh, and ladybugs and spiders….  They have been entertaining children through their live stage show for years and are now looking to move into television.

Take a look at their show reel.

Dancing bugs.. What’s not to love?  Ellen, thanks for sharing.  And good luck!

FOR THE BEST IN CHILDREN’S ENTERTAINMENT,
LOOK NO FURTHER THAN “THE JITTERBUGS”
THE JITTERBUGS IS A UNIQUE, HIGH ENERGY,
ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY LIVE SHOW

www.thejitterbugs.com.au

Sensational children’s show. Interactive, entertaining and educational. The children love the bug theme & all the friendly characters in the show. A non-stop, interactive musical extravaganza.

The Jitterbugs are in their 12^th year of performing Australia wide and now seeking the international market. The show is filled with non-stop entertainment and educational segments which encourage interactive audience participation. With gentle messages The Jitterbugs characters through song and dance educate the children from an early age the importance of caring for our environment and the world we live in.

In this video the last two contestants are facing off.  Their final face-off challenge is the electromagnetic spectrum stacking challenge.  I love seen games/props that I made translated into the cartoon portion of the show.  I was also in charge of cheesing up Studio G.  Too. Much. Fun.

But please, don’t call or email and try and tell me your ideas. Not yet at least!

You need to protect your ideas.  Until you get your amazing concepts (ideas) down in text, documented and registered anyone can take them. You can’t copyright raw ideas that are nothing more than flickering impulses in that beauty of a brain of yours.  You have to create something concrete from the idea  – a treatment, a script, a character.

When I get cold calls from people who want to work in television, want have their show made, but have no idea of the law and various protections, I refer them to the book The Writer Got Screwed (But Didn’t Have To) : A Guide to the Legal and Business Practices of Writing for the Entertainment Industry (affiliate link).

When you’re ready to expand your team (and have some funding) I’d love to discuss your project.

Peter

PBS writes:
This one-minute video, created by PBS, won a Daytime Emmy on June 25, 2010 and shows how PBS KIDS is helping parents and kids explore the world around them as a trusted guide. The video features favorite PBS KIDS and PBS KIDS GO! characters — Grover, Curious George, Arthur, and Clifford the Big Red Dog — who continue to inspire children everywhere to explore the world around them and realize their potential. For more tips to help children succeed in and out of the classroom, visit http://www.pbsparents.org

And if you don’t know how to make your own loon call…

While the tools are easy to acquire, knowing how to use them doesn’t come in the box.   When pitching the idea of doing in-house video production (or if you are told you’ll be doing it) place a training budget line item in the plan.  Let those in charge know that their will be ongoing cost savings only if those using the equipment are sufficiently trained.

This is a smart investment as video production without the training isn’t productive at all.

Poorly executed in-house video production can

1. Eat staff time
2. Look amateurish
3. Hurt your image

In-house video production done well

1. Greatly increases your media output per $$$
2. Allowing you to engage more regularly with your community
3. Feeding all those video hungry social media users

Those of you with regular staff retreats, how about losing the ropes course for a year and go instead for a digital video production boot camp?

Budgets tight?  We can organize an event with registration fee.  Your team gets in for free and the fee for participation from other organizations pays for the training fee.

In-house video production – you can do it.  And if you want training, we can help.

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