Selling the BIG Show - Here is the treatment…

If you have been following my entries you may remember that we had an issue with our head sizes - i.e. we were getting BIG heads.  Back when my head was getting fairly big we had decided that our simple HD reality show about MotorSport Ranch was not good enough for the networks.  Tayna and Bob had discussed the possibility of an elimination style show and here was the resulting treatment:

Concept:  Luxuriously rustic Texas country club, where eccentric and wealthy members meet, entertain, socialize, and race exotic dream cars and motorcycles. 

Think: Dallas (Miss Ellie & JR) meets The Apprentice meets NASCAR.

Synopsis:  At MotorSport Ranch, our members play neither golf nor tennis.  There is no pool.  We do not host Easter egg hunts.  Just fifteen minutes outside of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, free from conventional big city confines, this rustic Texas country club boasts a 1.7 mile road course, club house and private garages for members.  Our well-to-do members race supped-up exotic cars, open wheel formula racers and track ready motorcycles.  The Club Pro is a professional formula racer ready take your driving to the next level. 

This is not a Hollywood set!  MotorSport Ranch has been a fully operational country club for racing enthusiasts for the past six years, run by ranch-owner Jack Farr, his trusted ranch-hands and the Club Pro.  Our affluent members are doctors, dentists, lawyer, jewelers, oilmen, and land-barons.  All are serious car racing enthusiasts who periodically escape the real world to compete in their dream cars, which range from Ferraris to Dodge Vipers. 

MotorSport Ranch is the setting for our one-hour, reality show of the same name.  Its well-heeled members are the cast.  As in “The Apprentice” and “The Bachelor,” we begin the season with twenty of our ultra-competitive male and female racecar drivers.  Each have agreed to have their on- and off-track lives filmed in exchange for a chance to win a place on a professional racing team.  Ala “The Apprentice,” our Ranch-owner, his trusted ranch-hands and the Club Pro offer accolades, impart advice and eliminate competitors. 

Each week, we profile MotorSport Ranch competitors and showcase their coveted cars or motorcycles.  Viewers watch members train, socialize, and compete in on- and off-track competitions.  The final segment of the each episode, “The Show Down,” features remaining members in a two-part competition.  Part one is a sponsor-driven event; for example FedEx might provide trucks for each driver to race around the track or Jiffy Lube might provide the drivers with oil changing stations where each driver would have to change their own oil.  Part two is a highly competitive trial of speed.  The winner would receive the penultimate trophy, his moment in the spotlight and a full week of bragging rights.  Most importantly: he, alone, would receive the XM Radio (or other appropriate sponsor) immunity “idol” providing him immunity against the episode’s elimination round. 

On the season finale, one driver will prevail and be awarded The Title, hailed “MotorSport Ranch Champion!” and given a highly coveted spot on a professional racing team.  Tease: He (and perhaps others) will return next season. 

Format:

First Episode (2-hour pilot)—

Introduction to MotorSport Ranch.  Set the scene.  Meet the Ranch-owner, Ranch-hands, the Club Pro, the banker, the investors and the prevailing Title-holder or “top gun.”  Briefly meet each competing member both on- and off-track and behold his (or her) spectacular car or motorcycle.  Initial competition: “Show Down, 1.”  Several drivers are eliminated based on various factors.  Tease season’s future episodes.

Next Episodes—

Set the Scene:  Brief visual review: concept of MotorSport Ranch as a country club.  Re-introduce the Ranch-owner, Ranch-hands and the Club Pro. 

Meet the Members:  Remaining eccentric, affluent members and their dream cars profiled.  Viewers are granted a glimpse into their opulent real worlds.

Practice:  Members prepare for The Show Down.  Viewers are compelled to select and root for their favorites including phone and web voting, SMS, and public events. 

Dinner party:  Members meet and interact in a posh social setting the night before The Show Down.  Dinner party theme and menu will vary.  Alternatively, if Brinker International is interested in a sponsorship we could hold the dinners at the local Chilies right outside of the track. 

The Show Down: The two part, climatic, electrifying weekly race!  Length and style will vary.

Spotlight on the Winner:  Cocktail after-party.  Victor is toasted by members/staff.  The spine-tingling elimination.  Tease next episode.  

Finally THE ROUGH CUT!

It took 60 days, but we finally received our rough cut from Joe Dae.  Joe explained that Bob had failed to send certain elements, the time codes were faulty and so on to justify the delay.  Frankly I could care less - I was thrilled to have something to look at.  Bob dropped the take off at my house and Ethan (my 2 year old) and I sat down for a screening (I could not wait for Michele to get back from her workout). 

WOW!  When they say “rough” they really mean ROUGH.  I have been told that I am a somewhat critical person at times so perhaps I was being critical - but there were major problems.  I assumed that with 60 days of editing we would have made more progress, agian I certainly did not have any experience so I kept fairly quiet. 

The problems I noticed were major including: color variations between cuts, lighting problems with amny of the shots, the lack of noise/sounds, framing problems and so on.  I guess the biggest issue was the sound - I knew we were going to lay in music later, but you could not hear the cars - sound is SUPER important in a car show. 

 

Anyway, Ethan (who can barely sit still to watch anything at this point) is sitting quietly next to me watching the show intently.  He seems to like it - and more than that it was capturing his attention - warts and all.  Soon Michele arrives and I restart the tape - Ethan has lost interest at this point and we had to keep rewinding the tape as Ethan was jumping around making noise and blocking our view.  Michele decides the the bed of the show is slow - specifically the start - it does not draw you in - instead she thinks the race is very good.  I was very surprised at how well the race was put together as well. 

The next day I took the rough cut over to my parents house and held the second screening to my Mom, Dad and Grandfather (whow as in town for a visit).  Mom and Dad said they really liked it - who knows - parents will say anything about their kids art projects.  But my GrandfatherB24 (a WWII bomber pilot) simply said “you will NEVER sell it!”  Thanks Granddad!  Don’t pull any punches for your Grandson. 

I guess moral of the story is NEVER SHOW THE ROUGH CUT TO ANYONE!  I just watched Project Greenlight III last night and they were forced to show their rough to the studio after two weeks of editing.  I cannot imagine what ours must have looked like after two weeks. 

30 days since wrap: still no rough cut

But we did get the trailer/screener from Joe Dea - he had it FedEx it us.  It was bad, VERY BAD.  It scared me and I started to wonder if Joe knew anything about editing - our entire show was in his hands at this point.  We needed a new trailer/screener and Bob had another editor who would do the screener on SPEC (a nice way of saying it would cost us nothing if we did not like it).  Each week I checked with Bob to ask about the screener.  Each time I brought it up Bob would say “I need to call him”.  We needed the trailer/screener for our network meetings - we had a potential meeting with executives from FOX in LA and approaching very quickly. 

Also, I wanted to know how the editor “working” on the screener could be proceeding prior to meeting with us - how would he know what to do?  I had assumed that Bob has explained the project to the editor, but I wanted a say in the process.  I was annoyed…

The Show Opener from Mad River Post

While we did not select Mad River Post to produce the pilot, we did hire them to create the graphical elements for the show including the “show opener” and the “lower thirds graphics”.  I was very impressed with their work (David Burton did the graphics for the screener - his company is called G-Animation 214.823.7760).  You can view the opener on the pilot website www.motorsportranch.tv. 

Msr_logo_smMad River provided two versions and interestingly my two year old (at the time) son, Ethan, really liked them.  We suggested several modifications including the elimination of stutter cuts, and the addition of tire and engine sound.

Almost a month after the shoot and still no rough cut from Joe Dea - the director.  

Time for another creative meeting to discuss marketing the reality show to Hollywood

Once again we met with Tanya Norman, the co-author of Pitching Hollywood, to discuss our strategy for marketing the “Big Show” concept to various networks.  She felt that we should bring on a consultant/show runner to give us credibility - I guess that would make some sense since my television production experience was exclusive as a television viewer - Bob on the other hand had one show on HDNet, but evidently Tanya did not think that would be impressive to networks in LA. 

Tanya had worked with Jonathan Koch and Robert Kosberg previously and co-authored Pitching Hollywood with them.  She felt that either one of them would be a great addition to our team:

   1. We would gain credibilty

   2. Retain production revenue

   3. Assistance negotiating the deal

   4. We would have to give them between 10% and 50% of the deal

Next she suggested that we get sponsors prior to our pitch meetings.  Previously we had received interest from a major car company.  They had even included one of their cars in the pilot.  The idea is to show the network that the commercial time is already sold or can easily be sold. 

Finally she suggested that that we focus first on big domestic broadcast networks, next on cable networks and finally on HD only networks.  I thought we should work on selling the show to each venue simultaneously - but hey, I am only a television viewer - what do I know?

The Agent - IT IS YOUR FAULT!

So it only took a day for us to hear from Joe’s manager.  Paul indicated that Joe was VERY worried about the in car shots (remember the rigger issue - he was responsible for rigging the cameras - he did not know how to stabilize the cameras).  Joe was convinced they did not work due to poor rigging.  Paul wanted to make sure we knew that it would be our fault - and not Joe’s - if the in car shots failed. 

Soon it was clear Paul was blaming Molly as she hired the rigger and Molly was defending the rigger as she had hired him and so on…  All I know is that I was getting concerned that we might not have a complete show - I then learned about something called a “pick-up day” from Bob.  We met at a local bar in Dallas called TABC and talked about the next steps and how we might resolve the in car camera issues.  At the end of the day we had a few beers and decided to see what Joe came up with - as Bob likes to say - “it is what it is”.  

Post Shoot - Do we have a show?

During the wrap dinner at Joe T. Garcia’s between the fajitas and margaritas I little voice in my head started to question whether or not we had enough footage to make the show we wanted to make.  Joe and Michael were back slapping at their success, but I started to wonder how everything would come together. 

FastcarIn meantime I took in the stories about Jon driving his Ferrari backwards on the track while Jack and Michael freaked out.  The photo is from the Fast Cars Blog - if Bill Gates has his way neither Jon or the guy on the left will ever get into a wreck (how will he control Jon’s Ferrari?  Also, there were stories about the rigger we hired who, as it turns out, knew less about rigging than I know about rigging - which is ZERO.  Then there was the story about the transvestite pro driver…

We said our goodbyes and I started to pray that Joe would be able to create a workable rough cut.  Bob provided Joe with a Macintosh PowerBook G4 loaded with Apple’s Final Cut Pro HD.  Most everyone doing low budget projects is working with the Final Cut product.  The support is weak but the software is $999 versus $25,000 for AVID.  

HD Camera Set-ups for MotorSport Ranch Race Segments

To save money we only utilized a single camera during each shot on the MotorSport Ranch set.  The primary camera was a huge Sony HD camera.  We also used two small JVC first generation HD single chip cameras for the in-car camera shoots.  The primary footage of the show was filmed in 1080i HDTV with the big camera; however, the small in car cameras could only produce 720p HDTV.  We decided the deal with the quality differences in post.   

Director’s notes on camera mounts:

    * Sony HD Camera “Big Camera” and Trunk Mounts - Rearfrontmountrig just one car with hood and trunk mount.  This will be a car that is not part of the race.  Perhaps have Jack drive this car since he is not in the race.  We will rig it so that you can’t tell what car it is; none of the car will be visible in the frame.  This car will serve as the POV shot for each of the real cars in the race.  We’ll repeat the race multiple times with this car “standing in” for the three racecars.  This car will also be our camera car to lead and tail the race. 

    * JVC HD Camera Single Chip #1 - Mounted on the dashboard inside the racecars for a CU of each driver - we’ll shoot one full lap per driver. 

    * JVC HD Camera Single Chip #2 - Over the shoulder POV looking out the windshield - inlike the hood and tail mount this will reveal which car are in, showing some of the steering wheel, dashboard and hood. 

    * JVC HD Camera Single Chip #1 - hand held inteior Viper and Ferrari - the camera operator is in the front passenger seat, his job is to get coverage of the driver and of the other cars passing or being passed - all in one shot.  This will be the shaky-cam g-force camera.  We will not be able to do this with the open wheel racer.  

 

Lots of people seem to have problems with HD camera mounts:  Car Mounts for HD Cameras.  Check HERE for more information about a historical timeline of HD camcorders.  

Shot List for MotorSport Ranch (Part 2)

More detailed information from the Director’s notes. 

“If we run out of time shooting the race and the time trials we may be able to shoot the “club house reaction” on the last day when we do the interviews - weather permitting.”

   1. Four indepth interviews:  (4-5 hours) - shoot last day - quiet day at track - possibly get Jack Farr work-home footage this day too since he lives and works at the track.  The interview day needs to be on a quiet day at the track for clean audio.  We’ll shoot the interviews the last day so we can talk about everything we’ve shot up to this point.  Interviews will take forty minutes to one hour each not including changing locations and setting up.  We’ll need to update the list of questions as we shoot so we are sure to talk about everything we shoot.  Interview location to be determined.  People to interview:  Jack Farr, Michael Tari, Deborah Loth, and Jon Ward. 

   2. Documentary coverage of a busy day at the track: (3-5 hours) - Most of this footage will be used to tell the story of what MotorSport Ranch is.  We need to shoot on the busiest day possible.  What events will be happening on the track this day?  We’ll shoot as many different types of people cars, bikes and events on the track as possible.  We are not covering our featured drivers on this day.  We’ll get very short walk and talk interviews from key ranch regulars talking about what they are doing.  We need Jack Farr or his staff to get ont he phone and call members and get them to commit to showing up (not just email this time) so we are sure to have a rich assortment of people, vehicles and events.  We need a list of whom we can expect to see at the track, when they will be there and where their garages are located.  We need to open as many of those garage doors as we can and show cars and people at twork and having fun.  Can we get Jack and staff to open garage doors where the drivers have not shown up?  Closed door look like crap. 

   3. Arial shot of track - this is a low priority if we have a crane truck.  Michael Greene says if you don’t have a camera mount in the chopper the HD will look like crap.  I need the helicopter pilots name and number.  Where is the airport?  How far from the track?  How long will this take?  Can we shoot on a busy day at the track?  Will the HD camera fit in the plane?  Our shooter needs to talk to the pilot ASAP. 

   4. Our drivers arriving and prepping their cars with their crew: (1.5 to 2 hours each driver) - Some drivers keep their cars in a garage and some bring their cars in a trailer.  This is when we learn something about each type of car we are featuring and set up each car’s strengths and weaknesses.  We should shoot atleast two quick take away race & car tips with each driver.  This “tips” should be part of the doc footage and appear to happen organically as the cars are prepped.  (Perhaps something can be done graphically with these race & car tips after the show is off lined).  We need to ding out and decide what race & car tups each driver and crew will do on camera (change tires, mix fuel etc.).  They need to tell us what they know and how they can show it on camera. 

   5. Off Track - Our drivers and Jack Farr at work and at home: (time?) - If we need to save time this is the area to cut.  We need to get locations and work out a schedule.  There could be a lot of travel time here.  Jack’s home and business are on the track property so we could shoot Jack another day.

   6. The time trials and the race: (one long day) - Shot on a day when we have total control of the track.  Also reactions of fans and crew as the race is happening.  We will shoot the race multiple times for multipe camera placements.  In the cars (hand helds)  Hood mounts & trunk mounts - Brian Greene has a camer mount expert we can use.  Update:  Brian Greene indicated that the HD footage will look like crap from a scissor lift if there is ANY wind.  We should consider using a big old-fashion movie crane mounted on a truck - this could really help. 

   7. At the clubhouse after the race, drivers and drinks and react to video of the race:  They discuss and we see each car’s strengths and weaknesses on the track.  I would like them to have a few drinks and get loose so we can see their laid-back side.  How do they view this footage?  This is tricky because we will not have edited footage of the race, just one camera angle for them to view, we probably will not get one shot that shows the whole race straigth through.  Perhaps they watch it on the screen of the small one-chip HD cameras.  We can establish one of the crewmembers or fans shooting with this camera during the race.  Later, after I cut the race we can play it through the camera and shoot and secu of it with the big HD camera.  This means shooting another hour with the big HD after the fact - this can be shot in the parking lot at HD Republic.  

Shot List for MotorSport Ranch

Joe Dea did an amazing job with a limited budget and an abreviated shooting schedule.  I thought it might be interesting to detail the shot lists he worked from during the shoot:

MotorSport Ranch Outline & Shot List

Three Drivers

Show Format: 48 minutes = six eight minute segments

    * Segment One - What is MotorSport Ranch

    * Segment Two - Driver One Profile (open wheel car)

    * Segment Three - Driver Two Profile (Viper)

    * Segment Four - Driver Three Profile (Ferrari)

    * Segment Five - Time Trials

    * Segment Six - The Race and Reaction

Who, what, where, when & why story points to cover:

   1. What is MotorSport Ranch - how did it come to be?

   2. Who is at the ranch - why, how & what they do there.

   3. Who is Jack Farr and our three drivers?  What is their race car/sports car story?  What is their back-story?

   4. What are the three cars we are featuring and what are their strengths and weaknesses on a racetrack - the cars are a Ferrari, a Viper, an open wheel racer.

   5. Time trials and the race - why this race with three very different cars - what do we learn from the race?

 

JackdeborahThe Cast:

 

Jack Farr - Owner

Michael Tari - Hedge Fund Manager

Deborah Loth - Dentist and Mother of Three

Jon Ward - Software Million (President Keil Software)

 

Things to Shoot:

 

   1. Four interviews - these form the bed for the entire show (shoot time: setup and interviews 3.5 to 5 hours)

   2. Documentary coverage of a busy day at the track (shoot time: 3 to 5 hours)

   3. Our drivers and their crews arriving and prepping their cars (shoot time: 1.5 to 2 hours for each driver)

   4. Off Track Documentary coverage of our driers and Jack Farr at work and at home.  (if we need to cut something this is the area to cut - shoot times may vary due to travel time)

   5. Time trials - all drivers and crew watching.

   6. The Race - post race at clubhouse, drivers have drinks and react to video of the race (shoot time: 1 day)

 

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