The Elements of Fox Network’s Sleepy Hollow

Fox Network's Sleepy Hollow Headless Horseman

What makes a great story for television? Is it the story, characters, or visual effects? Perhaps it is all three elements.

In Fox Network’s new television series Sleepy Hollow, all three elements are present. The modern twist on the old classic tale Sleepy Hollow shows Ichabod Crane (Tom Misen) as a Revolutionary Soldier that is resurrected to solve a two-hundred-year old mystery dating back to America’s origins – The Revolutionary War – and prevents the Headless Horseman (one of the Four Horseman) from starting the Apocalypse. Crane meets Abby Mills (Nicole Beharie), a police lieutenant who has a mysterious past and watched her Sheriff die at the hands of the Headless Horseman. Each week these two characters face various supernatural forces and work through mysteries that will take them closer to defeating Moloch, the Headless Horseman’s demon boss.

The audience can relate to the characters Crain and Mills. Crain is learning about modern technologies and what happened to his wife Katrina (Katia Winter). Mills discovers her family tree and strives to find her place in the world. As the series progresses, Crain and Mills realize their families’ fates have been entwined.

The visual effects enhance the Sleepy Hollow’s story, and draw the audience in. Director and executive producer Ken Olin stated, “The show is complicated because in every scene there’s either visual effects, make-up effects, stunts, or sometimes we have them all. We want our stunts to enhance scenes, not create them.” Senior Supervisor Colorist Todd Bochner uses DaVinci Resolve for the color correction that provides the mood of the show. Richard Cetrone (the Headless Horseman) wears a chromakey green hood during filming, and the hood is taken out during postproduction. Additional visual effects, make-up effects, and stunts of Sleepy Hollow are shown in the YouTube video below.

With the presence of all three elements, Sleepy Hollow maintains an audience of over three million viewers each week. The show is among the television series nominated for the American Society of Cinematographer’s Outstanding AchievementAwards. Fox Networks announced Sleepy Hollow has been picked up for a second season. Sleepy Hollow proves a great television series needs a great story, strong characters, and fabulous visual effects.

Instantly Transform Your Screenplay Into a Movie

Plotagon

Writing a screenplay is not easy. The writer has to transfer the scene from his or her imagination to paper. Once the screenplay is written, the only way to know if the scene was actually complete or needed to be rewritten was seeing the actors play the scene out. Or is it? Now, there is an app for that, and it is called Plotagon.

The creators of Plotagon refer to it as “the magic typewriter”. It is software for Mac and PC computers designed to make it easy to write a story, and immediately watch it as an animated film. Plotagon is still in beta testing, and it is free to download. It is designed to be simple. It allows you to choose from The Sims like characters and locations your story is set in. The characters actions and cues come directly from the screenplay you write in the program. The characters can only speak English, but the creators are working on French, Spanish, and German languages. According to their website, Plotagon will continue to be free even when it is out of beta testing. It is not available for any mobile device. The finished movies can only be uploaded to Plotagon’s website. However, the movies can be shared on Facebook and Twitter. It does not import any screenplays, but it will export them.

What does this mean for Hollywood and the filming industry? Despite its limitations, Plotagon will be a great way to be able to do a test run of a television series or movie. It will provide the writer the opportunity to “beta test” his or her screenplay before showing or pitching the final screenplay. It will be wonderful to know what was wrong with your scene or scenes beforehand. Plotagon will allow professionals and amateurs to create screenplays quickly and more efficiently.

TV Integrates with Internet

TV series streaming on the Internet

Once upon a time, watching TV shows meant you had to set in front of a television set. When you missed the TV show, you had to wait forever until it came out on DVD. Since civilization has moved into the digital age, we can watch television virtually anywhere. As long as you have an Internet connection, you can watch television on your computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

Virtually, every broadcast and cable network has its own website that plays its TV shows. Many networks make the viewer wait a day after the show has aired before he or she can stream the show to his or her laptop, computer, tablet, or smartphone. The networks that allow the show to be viewed almost instantly after it has aired charge a fee or needs to be paid for in advanced (videos on demand). 

When the viewer watches his or her favorite TV show, he or she must watch commercials with the show, and they cannot fast-forward them.  The viewer becomes annoyed from watching the same group of commercials over several times before the end of the show. For a fee, companies like Netflicks stream TV series without commercials. This may become a problem for broadcasting networks like NBC, ABC, and CBS because they depend significantly on advertisers.

The Internet is becoming so popular that networks are developing their own web series. The CW Network has its web series website called the CW Seed. The advantage with web series is a viewer can watch several show episodes within an hour because most web episodes are between 4 to 10 minutes.

The Internet provides all types of filmmakers the opportunity to have their film or web series viewed by people from around the world. If it becomes popular, a network may pick it up. For instance, The CW Network picked up Joss Whedon’s Dr.Horrible, and Comedy Central picked up Tiny Apartment.

The one constant is the demand for television series continues to be high. It is the format that has changed, and will continue to change as technology develops. The networks must be able to meet the demands of the viewers, and adapt to the technological changes of TV viewing.

The Art of Pitching

Your pitch can make or break your TV series.

You have a great idea for a movie or television series? That was easy. The hard part is pitching your idea. The art of pitching is a necessary skill one must develop if he or she wants to survive in Hollywood. Most executives have a very short attention span meaning you have only a minute or two before the executive loses interest. This is why the art of pitching is also known as “the currency of Hollywood”.

How do you start out a pitch? Start out with your hook. What will cause the viewer to be interested in your show?  It needs to contain the “what if” question. Most pitches consist of one sentence, and no more than two sentences. The pitch for The Bourne Identity was “a man with amnesia discovers he is a governmental assassin who has been targeted for death by the organization that employs him”.  This is not as easy as it sounds. Summarizing your movie or television series idea in a few sentences can be extremely difficult even for most professional writers. Most expert pitches are revised several times before they are pitched to executives.

Screenwriter Blake Snyder recommended walking up to strangers and pitching to them your idea. He said to repeat this over and over until you have perfected the pitch. This method will help in three ways. First, it will help you to prefect your pitch. Second, you will know what works and what does not work. Lastly, it will give you the confidence to pitch in front of executives.

No matter what method you use to perfect your pitch, you need the executives to take interest in order to start the process of bringing your idea to the big or small screen. Thus, the pitch is the Hollywood currency you need to survive in this industry.

The World of Hollywood Product Placement

Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) using a MacBook Pro.

Product placement has been around since the age of silent films. Product placement took off in the movie E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial in 1982 when Eliot (Henry Thomas) lured E.T. into a trap using Reese Pieces. Since that time, product placement has become almost unnoticeable because the products look like they belong in the scene. There is not a movie or television series that does not use product placement.

Apple products are shown in 30% of the movies. Their products like the iPhone, iPad, iMac, MacBook Air, MacBook, and MacBook Pro have appeared in several movies including The Twilight Series, Mission Impossible 3: Ghost Protocol, Contraband, Safe House, and Chronicle.  In television, Dexter uses iPhones and MacBook. MacBooks are in Sex and the City, 24, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and House of Cards.  In the trial of the century (Apple vs. Samsung), Apple executives claim that they do not pay for the product placement.  Instead, they provide free devices for product placement in television and film. What production company will turn down free products to place in their television series or films? Apple products appear 891 times in television shows in 2011.  It is very smart on Apple’s part. Apple spends one billion dollars each year on advertising, and that does not include the products they give away for free to television series and movies. Their competitors – Samsung and Microsoft – spent much more than Apple on advertising.

Product placement has become extremely important particularly because of devices like Dish Network’s The Hopper, which allows the viewer to skip commercials during live television. It is because of this feature that Fox, CBS, and NBC have filed a lawsuit against Dish Network. Since product placement is within the television series episode and movie, devices like The Hopper cannot skip over them, and forces the viewer to observe the product in action. Since the product looks like it belongs in the shot, no one minds this type of commercial.