Sports Drama Series. Second Post.

The forum‘s now set up, which is good. So hopefully we can start making some progress on research and even story-wise.

When thinking about ideas for this its hard to not go off on a tangent and completely explore the story and other characters and their stories. So what started off as one character is now effectively the main set of characters for the series and all their interrelationships and back stories. But I know that I can’t present that as a whole because we’re meant to be creating this together and its probably too early to have the main characters. So I’ll just split them up in their single characters and story and just use them and their connections as possibilities.

I’ve approached ideas for this in a different way than before. I started by looking at lists of the most popular sport films. I then underlined from a review- what makes each one special and what’s original about it. I then started to work these essential ideas and ways into possible characters and storylines for the series. For example; with A League Of Their Own, which is a great film. I’ve used the male (Tom Hanks) as the fish out of water in an all girl baseball team and turned it into a female, who has recently brought the (sport) club and has to earn respect from the all-male team and including the hard-nosed coach, her ex-husband. Other strong characters that stood out and were begging for representation were Maggie from Million Dollar Baby; her sheer determination for self-respect, which in a way is combined with the above character. Also the underdog that is Rocky Balboa, who’s father coaches the team and is often ridiculed by him because he has no interest in sport. But when they’re short of players he’s asked by his mother (new owner-from above) to fill in. So he does and although they lose he gains a moral victory and gains some much needed respect. This then changes the everyman into some what of a hero and creates a much needed role-reversal between his father (coach) and himself.

When you look at the series as a whole and start thinking about the certain people who’d live in the area it becomes easy to see who’d live there and how they’d all relate and bounce off each other. But my problem is I get carried away and write it before we’ve had the chance to sit down and actually write it. So I think its good to come up with characters and stories and cast designs early on. But also to keep in mind the likelihood of them sticking is slim. But overall it can’t be bad having too many ideas because they can be used for other things.

There are seven other people in the group so all will have their own characters/stories and self-satisfying agendas. So the trick then (for your own ideas) is to take a little bit of what everyone wants and put that within your main ideas. So they’re more likely to accept them. Compromise without compromising. Finding out what people want and doing it before it’s a conscious thing on everyone’s mind. The last thing I want is someone to be unhappy about something or feel left out. So I’ll try and include everyone’s own interests in each of my ideas.

It’s still to early to be thinking about characters and ideas in a time where research is the main thing at this stage. So I think I need to return to kind of research that‘s needed and will be presented in the series bible.

An invaluable source for this was the example series bible and assignment brief from last year on Media 2. This gave me a greater insight into what‘s needed and I now feel confident in how to go about achieving that.