Sports Drama Series. First Post.

I’ve started researching and have found some possible interesting sections of sport; i.e. Marketing and Sponsorship. I’ve also got an idea that would be set during the build up to the 2012 Olympics and would show the different sides and dramas of the people involved in its mammoth preparation. Each episode would be a countdown to the big day and show a different section of the preparation.

I made the choice not to work with friends on this because I didn’t want to play it safe. I wanted to be dropped into a new situation and have the challenge of getting to know new people (or people I vaguely knew, better) and work with them in an industry like environment.

The thing with this and what I’ve heard from people is everyone wants to pick their favourite sport, which I think is wrong and in a group of eight is never going to work. The way I see this and for me personally is: as long as we can create interesting characters and exciting stories then I’m not worried about what sport we choose. It can be anything. It’s all about the characters anyway and there’s no saying on how much the sport has to feature. People should be thinking of a place where there’s a number of distinct and different characters who are caught up with each other and clash on a regular basis. The sport can either be in the background or in direct relation to their jobs and everyday activity. I think the best way for the series to work would be to have the sport in the background and the characters and their lives (within the area) however connected in the foreground.

We had our first meeting today, which was good. The ball is now rolling. I presented my Oylmpic idea but we decided that a small and simple idea is the best way to go and what we feel the tutors want. Everybody presented different possible storylines and arenas so we have something to work from. We ended up with an (almost) final idea for the sport and its setting. But I still want to keep the door open on other possibilities for awhile and especially as two people didn’t turn up. So they’ve still got a chance to have input on the arena and we’ve got time if something better turns up.

We set ourselves a deadline to decide what sport/arena to go with, which is Sunday 15th July. I will set up a forum online for communication and idea posting over the summer.

Personally I think the sport/arena we have is the one we’ll end up going with. I’m not a fan of the sport and think there’s nothing to it. But the job now is to act on what I said earlier about creating interesting characters and pretty much turning the sport/arena’s ‘boring’ stereotype on its head.