Have You Read These TV Pilot Scripts?
If you want to learn how to write a TV pilot, the first step is to read TV pilot scripts.
Back in the old days, you had to have a friend working at an agency to slip you scripts if you wanted to read pilot script examples.
Now, there are many sleuths on the internet who have shared what they have discovered.
Exclusive Bonus:
the 10 TV pilot scripts included in this post (all scripts will be PDFs).
Obviously, I’m not sharing any shows that haven’t aired yet and this is for educational purposes.
Without further ado, here are the most requested pilot scripts.
Writer/director Jason Reitman said at a live reading of this script, “If you’re a writer tonight, you might want to hide your knives. This script is so good you’ll never want to write again. You f***er, Vince.” Watch
and time lapse view of what it was like.
Matthew Weiner wrote the Mad Men pilot script in 2000 and originally used it as a writing sample to get hired on The Sopranos. Terence Winter, Oscar-nominated writer of Wolf of Wall Street, creator of Boardwalk Empire and a writer on The Sopranos, recalls being bowled over when Sopranos creator David Chase asked him to read the Mad Men script. “It was all there on the page right out of the gate. The complexity of human interaction he captures — Matt always goes deeper with his writing. He is easily one of the smartest, most well-read people I’ve ever met.” The Mad Men pilot script was rejected by HBO, Showtime and others, but was embraced by AMC. Watch . “,” says AMC president Charlie Collier. “You really can’t say that in the same way about any other (modern) show I can think of.”
The Office pilot episode is a direct adaptation from the first episode of the British series. Although the episode was a ratings success, many critics criticized it as too much of a copy of the original. One critic stated, “Maybe, ”
Head writer Greg Daniels shared that the pilot episode was, “About two-thirds their version and one-third new stuff. It felt — every time you heard a line that you’d already seen on the English show, it was jarring. People were not loving that part of it, I would say. There was a lot of strategy behind it.
Then we were like, “All right, cool, FX.” But then he moved and became the head of NBC. So we were like, “NBC?” It didn’t seem like it would be the right home for this at the time.”
In this interview, Greg Daniels talks about the challenges of .
Editor’s note: Apparently this script is not the pilot, but a later episode.
I will update the link if I find the pilot episode. (7.18.14)
Tina Fey, then head writer of Saturday Night Live, pitched the idea for a series about a cable news network to NBC, who rejected it. She was encouraged to make the show more like Curb Your Enthusiam where she was at the center and really “herself” in the show. Nine months later, Fey approached NBC with a similar idea but it was problematic when based too much on real life. She reworked the concept again. Finally, the third time she pitched the show, NBC purchased.
During development of the show, some characters were altered. Watch clips from the , later replaced by Jane Krakowski.
Watch Tina Fey talk about , , and her .
The series was originally called My American Family. When Christopher Lloyd was asked, “Is the show as it currently stands close to what you pitched?” Lloyd said, ”The only real change was that at the very outset, we had a character who was the documentary filmmaker.
And now he’s in his 30s, he’s become a documentarian, and he realizes, the dad is now on his second marriage, both the kids have grown up, one’s gay, so if I were to make a documentary about the American family, it would be a great place to start. But as we got into it, it became a little bit cumbersome to service this Dutch documentarian every week. And it became a little bit self-conscious, I think. So we got rid of it.”
The creators
(they did not pitch it to Fox due to problems Lloyd had with the network with previous shows). CBS was interested, but not ready to make a big commitment. NBC already had two mockumentary shows, The Office and Parks and Recreation, and ABC was the best match.
The pilot episode by Steve Levitan and Christopher Lloyd won the .
Elizabeth (Liz) Meriwether started as a film writer and playwright.
She had developed a pilot previously that hadn’t gotten picked up. Jonathan Davis, executive V.P. of comedy development for 20th Century Fox Television, was sent a playbill for one of Meriwether’s plays by his mother-in-law. Davis read a few of her plays, loved her voice, and contacted her. Meriwether .
New Girl was originally titled .
Watch Elizabeth Meriwether talk about
with Meriwether and executive producers Brett Baer and Dave Finkel.
Writer Chris McKenna said, “”
The premise of Community was based on Harmon’s real-life experiences. In an attempt to save his relationship with his girlfriend, at the age of 32, he enrolled in Glendale Community College, where they would take Spanish together. Harmon found himself drawn into the lives of fellow students as he helped them with classwork.
and listen to .
Initially, Lost came about because Lloyd Braun who was president of ABC at the time ‘’
After developing a pilot with Jeffrey Lieber, ABC approached J.J. Abrams. Abrams agreed, but was too busy with Alias to do the show himself and wanted to work with another writer. Damon Lindelof had been wanting to write on Alias, but couldn’t get a meeting with Abrams. But then the executive Heather Kadin called Lindelof to meet with Abrams about another project. “The bad news is,” he recalled her saying, “. So you meet with J.J., this pilot goes nowhere, but then you get a job on Alias!”
In a very quick time frame, Abrams and Lindelof wrote the pilot script and a document to prove to ABC that Lost was a viable series that should be picked up.
and more about the direction of the show.
The Lost pilot was one of the most expensive to produce (estimates range between $10-$14 million) and is one of the most critically acclaimed television pilots of all time.
The Sopranos began as a feature script idea, then turned into a network series idea (almost airing on Fox without any killings), and finally finding a home at HBO.
Creator David Chase said, “The Sopranos was just this idea about a mobster in therapy… This was uncharted territory. I mean, all of a sudden the guy that your entire network is riding on is going to strangle somebody to death with a piece of piano wire? That had never been done… I said ‘This guy is a mob boss in New Jersey. If he doesn’t kill this guy, he’s worthless as a mob boss. He’s worthless as a TV gangster.’ And I knew I was right about that.”
In a review of the pilot completed more recently, Todd VanDerWerff of the A.V. Club said,
After the fourth book in his series debuted at #1 on the New York Times best-seller list, author George R.R. Martin was getting many inquiries from studio executives who wanted to turn his book series into a feature film.
Writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss pitched Martin over a five-hour lunch at The Palm about why it should be a TV series on HBO instead.
Thankfully, Martin agreed as he only envisioned it as a TV series.
Watch David Benioff and D.B. Weiss interviewed on The Writer’s Room about .
Initally, Tom McCarthy directed the pilot episode.
However, due to artistic and casting reasons, it was decided that this pilot would not serve as the first episode. Several parts were recast and the reshot pilot episode that aired was directed by Tim Van Patten. In this detailed article, io9 dissects
based on a copy of the script posted online.
Want to learn how to write a TV pilot?
Check out this spreadsheet keeping track of the scripts being considered for the .
If you want to read a book about how to write a TV pilot, Ellen Sandler’s
is a great place to start.
What pilot script is your favorite?
What scripts would you like to read?
You Might Also Like:
MOST POPULAR POSTSExclusive: this is Android TV | The Verge
Every so often, some enterprising computer company will claim they’ve finally fixed the TV. They’ll talk about how they’ve turned a dumb terminal into a smart computing platform that extends your work and play to a gigantic screen. Then, we’ll watch as the idea flops because they fail to line up content deals or wind up delivering a confusing, haphazard experience. That was the story of Google TV, which became the laughing stock of the industry after Google chairman Eric Schmidt bet that it would ship on the majority of new televisions in 2012. (He was sorely wrong.)
But what these companies seem to be realizing as their content deals fail is that they don’t need to “fix” TV quite yet. The proper opening salvo may simply be to put desirable content in front of people who use television the same way as ever.
Enter Android TV.
According to documents obtained exclusively by The Verge, Google is about to launch a renewed assault on your television set called Android TV. Major video app providers are building for the platform right now. Android TV may sound like a semantic difference — after all, Google TV was based on Android — but it’s something very different. Android TV is no longer a crazy attempt to turn your TV into a bigger, more powerful smartphone. "Android TV is an entertainment interface, not a computing platform," writes Google. "It’s all about finding and enjoying content with the least amount of friction." It will be "cinematic, fun, fluid, and fast."
What does that all mean? It means that Android TV will look and feel a lot more like the rest of the set top boxes on the market, including Apple TV, Amazon’s Fire TV, and Roku.
Google’s new vision for Android TV is less ambitious and easier to understand. The company is calling for developers to build extremely simple TV apps for an extremely simple set-top-box interface. While Android still lives under the hood, the interface will consist of a set of scrolling "cards" that represent movies, shows, apps, and games sitting on a shelf. You use a remote control with a four-way directional pad to scroll left and right through different suggestions, or up and down through different categories of content, each with their own shelves. Much like on other set top boxes, each item will be like a miniature movie poster or book cover, and you’ll pick the one you want. The controller will also have Enter, Home, and Back buttons to help get around, and there will be "optional" game controllers.
Android TV will also support voice input and notifications — though Google is encouraging developers to only use notifications in very limited cases. In total, Android TV is remarkably similar to Amazon's just-released, Android-based .
What makes it a Google product is that Android TV will suggest those pieces of content on the homescreen itself. While you can dive through a collection of apps and games if you want, the goal isn’t to have a user select an app like Hulu and then browse through things to watch. Google wants to proactively recommend things to you&— including the ability to resume content you started watching on a phone or tablet&—&as soon as you turn your TV on.
"Access to content should be simple and magical," reads one Google document, which adds that it should never take more than three clicks or gestures to go from the homescreen to enjoying a new piece of content. Even search appears to be secondary to intuitively understanding what you want and delivering it as soon as possible, though search will still be one of Android TV’s primary tools. In addition to universal search, pressing the Search button on the controller will let you search from within individual apps as well.
Assuming the documentation we’ve reviewed is correct, Google is currently courting select app developers to create apps and games for Android TV and encouraging them to create apps with consistent interfaces. Screenshots we’ve obtained show Google’s own apps like Play Movies, YouTube, and H but also third party apps like Vevo, Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, and games.
"Android TV is Android, optimized for the living room consumption experience on a TV screen," writes the company, but the focus is on simplicity for now. Google is stripping away unneeded features like telephony, cameras, touchscreen support and near-field communication to keep developers focused, and handing them ready-made interfaces where they can hopefully just plug in shows, games, photos, music, and films. Perhaps there’s room for inventive new applications that harness the big screen, but the entry point is people lazing on the couch.
The odd thing about Android TV, though, is that Google already had a strategy for such couchsurfing:&. Google had been sending the message that developers didn't actually need to build apps for TV at all&— simply special webpages for TV that could receive commands from a phone. The Verge understands that the Chromecast won't go away, so that may mean developers will have to build two different interfaces, one for Chromecast and one for Android TV.
Android TV may also send mixed messages to Google's premiere hardware partners&—
into all of its new televisions.
Google would build Android TV itself, which would put it in direct competition with its hardware partners. Those partners may have to choose between supporting a new version of Android or trying to own the living room themselves.
For now, Android TV might not sound any more compelling than a Roku, an Apple TV, an Amazon Fire TV, or, for that matter, an Xbox One or PlayStation 4. And after the utter failure of Google TV, many will not be willing to give Google the benefit of the doubt. , there's still a desire out there for dead-simple set top boxes that stream compelling content. Google still wants the living room, and Android TV could be a foot back in the door.
Google declined to comment for this story.
The best of
If you currently have a username with "@" in it, please email .
Remember me?
Forgot password?
We'll email you a reset link.
If you signed up using a 3rd party account like Facebook or Twitter, please
with it instead.
Forgot username?
We'll email it to you.
If you signed up using a 3rd party account like Facebook or Twitter, please
with it instead.
Forgot password?
If you signed up using a 3rd party account like Facebook or Twitter, please
with it instead.
Forgot username?
If you signed up using a 3rd party account like Facebook or Twitter, please
with it instead.
Almost done,
By becoming a registered user, you are also agreeing to our
and confirming that
you have read our .
Authenticating
Choose an available username to complete sign up.
In order to provide our users with a better overall experience, we ask for more information from Facebook when using it to login so that we can learn more about our audience and provide you with the best possible experience. We do not store specific user data and the sharing of it is not required to login with Facebook.
Yes, share my data
Please don't share my data小学生必须把握的常用英语单词（三） 共有 0 条回复件 ...
music room音乐教室
TV room电视机房
flat公寓 ...
基于49个网页-
Hasl 6是不缺Study room（自习室），computer room（机房）和TV room（电视房）的，所以练习，玩电脑，看电视是完全不成题目的。看看【转载】NTU宿舍简介。
基于30个网页-
I don’t know.我不知道
TV room电视室
computer room计算机房 ...
基于13个网页-
求翻译：How you can use to forgive me? 是什么意思? ...
过上车很快结束了 >> Through the end of the car soon
影视间 >> TV room
经过多少次失败后，他终于成功的发明了一种比已有的任何一种都好的自行车（superior to,in existence） >> After how many failures, he finally invented a success than any existing good bike (superior to,in existence) ...
基于3个网页-
电子游戏室
动画制作室
逃出电视大厅
逃出电视客厅房间
更多收起网络短语
a room set aside for viewing television
以上来源于:
We sat, horrified, until at last we found the “baby monitor” my son had left behind, the apparatus under the bed, the receiver in our TV room, to hear whether the baby was crying.
后来我们才发现原来这是我儿子落下的婴儿监听器。 监听部分在客房的床下面，接收器在这个放电视的房间，本来是用来听婴儿哭没哭的。
Is your TV room big enough for a big-screen Apple television, Mr. and Ms. Fanboi?
Finally I cornered it in the TV room, a gas detector to protect against leaks in the gas fireplace.
Unless your TV room is a closet, you should be looking at a 42-inch set or larger, especially if you plan to host big viewing parties.
点击关注有道词典
$firstVoiceSent
- 来自原声例句
请问您想要如何调整此模块？
感谢您的反馈，我们会尽快进行适当修改！
请问您想要如何调整此模块？
感谢您的反馈，我们会尽快进行适当修改！(苏教牛津版)四年级英语上册Unit 3练习题_百度文库
两大类热门资源免费畅读
续费一年阅读会员，立省24元！
(苏教牛津版)四年级英语上册Unit 3练习题
上传于||暂无简介
阅读已结束，如果下载本文需要使用5下载券
想免费下载本文？
你可能喜欢}