Turning your ‘run of the mill’ idea into a ‘high concept’ idea.

Once we had tied up the location and began hearing how great our idea was from every Tom, Dick and Harry in Dallas we began to think that our original concept wasn’t ‘big’ enough. Steve Kaire suggests, “In defining High Concept, we talk about the premise of your story, not what happens in Acts 1, 2 and 3. The premise or logline is the core of High Concept. My comprehensive definition of High Concept is comprised of five requirements, each of which is mandatory. The five requirements are in descending order of importance. Therefore, numbers one and two are the most important as well as the most difficult to attain. But meeting only several of the requirements is not enough. All five requirements have to be met for success in achieving the “slam dunk” project everyone is looking for.” Read more about the five rules here. Of course, we didn’t meet Steve’s five rules and as a result our idea never really made it to ‘high concept’ stage.

Our original idea consisted of six eight-minute segments:

1. What is MotorSport Ranch
2. Driver One Profile (home, office & track)
3. Driver Two Profile (home, office & track)
4. Driver Three Profile (home, office & track)
5. The time trial & reactions
6. The RACE!

The primary story points:

1. What is MotorSport Ranch - History of facility.
2. Who is at the Ranch - why and what do they do there?
3. Who is Jack Farr? Our three drivers?
4. What are the features of the cars?
5. Time trials & race - why three cars? What do we learn?

Cast:

1. Jack Farr - Owner MSR
2. Michael Tari - Hedge Fund Manager
3. Deborah Loth - Dentist/Mother of Three
4. Jon Ward - Software Millionaire

As everyone heaped praise on our silly little idea we began think that our concept had to change if we were going to attract a “real” network to air our show. If we were going to sell our pilot to a “real network” we would need to “up the ante” and improve our intended production values and our overall budget. MotorSport Ranch had to be BIGGER with more people, elimination rounds, lots of sponsorship opportunities and so on. I started calling it “concept creep”. Suddenly our little show began to sound like a “high concept” reality series like Survivor; think, Survivor on a racetrack! So we started to ask, “How much will it cost to produce a network ready pilot in an elimination format?

The answer we came to was $100,000 or more. Of course, our original justification for the pilot did not make sense with the new “reality” that our program was destined for FOX. No network would apply to the series. We really needed a screener or promo reel. After much debate, we decided to shoot the original “small” pilot as downside protection, i.e. we could sell it to an HD network if we were unable to sell the series to a network. We would then take the footage from the shoot and cut a second three to five minute “screener” to use as a sales tool with the networks. Of course, this additional work, plus other changes that we thought were necessary increased our budget to just under $50,000.