Secrets to Selling Your TV Show and Movie Ideas
Today, the staff of any media company necessarily has a creator or even a whole department of those. These people study the behavior of viewers and users, analyze their preferences, and offer ideas for new projects. More often, ideas are born at the junction of different media - TV, the Internet, applications, etc. First of all, entertainment is growing. Ideas are constantly chasing time, and some are out of fashion, others are gaining popularity.
List of Production Companies to Pitch Your TV Show Ideas
Creating an idea, you should immediately think about how you can also make a big show from a small show, to transfer it from television to other media, to create a trans-media product around the program. You can also transfer the show to other cultures. Thus, you can implement the idea in different television markets around the world.
This massive acceleration in TV shows has begun. They are made one after the other, like cakes, and if you have a formula for success, then transform it into different cultures.
There are a lot of "cross-media" ideas, but so far, they earn a little. There is an excellent scheme: television is used to attract an audience to the project, and then another project life is created, not related to TV, which is just a window to sales.
People see the show on television, and then online, they can get acquainted with a completely different side of the "story." It also happens that the show ends on television, but continues on the Internet.
This happens in many transmedia products.
We are used to the scheme when the program is first launched on TV, and then it appears on the Internet. But now the process is beginning to take place and vice versa since there are also original formats online.
Also, it is important to know what to focus on: either you are thinking of making a profit from your local channel now, or you are thinking of creating a business that can grow beyond the borders of not only the channel but also the country.
List of Production Companies to Pitch Your TV Show Ideas
If you are thinking about creating and expanding a business, you should think about intellectual property, that is, you must create something that you can enforce rights to.
It's a slightly different approach to being than just producing a popular show. It is necessary to determine whether to spend all the money on the production of the show or to leave a little on its development and promotion in other markets.
If you are a creative mind, you must be prepared for both success and failure, because when you create something, there is no guarantee that this will become a hit. You must tune in to the fact that this can be a hit.
It is always likely that most of your shows will fail, but there will be one that will be a hit and will pay off the costs of previous failures. Making an idea function this way is not easy. But quite real. There is no specific rule or a single algorithm of action for all.
This is akin to the question: "Where does a writer need to start a novel?" I think that if you want to be a person that can create something new, you need an environment that will allow you to fail. When developing new ideas, you cannot know exactly which one will work and which one will not.
To sell your TV show, you have the opportunity to work in two modes: open, when you can find inspiration and create something new, and in the closed, when you can pull yourself together and bring the project to life because creativity is not talent, but a way of working.
Sometimes this means switching from the closed mode to open (this is very difficult for a person who only performs tasks in closed mode and does not have time to come up with ideas in the open mode and develop new ideas).
The main problem of many people is that they stay only behind closed doors, which might hinder your level of creativity from coming up with interesting stories. Let's imagine that I had the idea of a show that I have not seen from anyone.
How can I check a unique format for an invented format?
You cannot verify this. You can conduct research, try to find out whether such a show is already being released somewhere. You can team up with a strong player who knows the market, with a major entertainment brand - they know what is happening.
And it happens that you come up with something original, and they can tell you: such a show is already coming out in another place, you simply did not know about it. You could come up with something similar simply because the idea was in the air.
There is no single department of patents for creative ideas for entertainment television or a register of all the shows that can be used to check the idea of a television project for originality. You can find out only by launching the project on the market.
List of Production Companies to Pitch Your TV Show Ideas
You Need to Steal Ideas Wisely
Another situation. I saw some shows on some channels that I wanted to implement. I'm changing several elements: for example, the protagonist will not be a man, as in the original. Still, a woman, the number of participants will increase, a new test will be added, or will I be considered the author of a new idea or the thief of an idea?
In our business, everyone stands on the shoulders of colleagues and predecessors. Even copyright law does not mind others inspiring you. You will always take something from others - this is inevitable. But the question is: can you create an original project with unique content from the ideas you have?
Or do you just change something to hide the lack of an original idea?
If the essence was not in similarities, but in differences, the thief could defend himself, indicating that he did not steal all the rings from the store, but took only a few. But this is not the right approach. Creating a project, it is necessary to put original notions at the forefront, and not hide borrowings.
Everyone can borrow an idea, style, some elements, and, adding their idea, show their new format. But another thing is when someone takes the format and does not change anything in it. And if you do something like that, then you are just a copycat.
Often those who are accused of copying say: I have a different leader or I have not 8 players, but 10. Is this a significant difference?! For example, if you add one small flower to the corner of the picture, will it be a completely different picture?!
Common Violations
Constantly, the television industry is imitative. A lot of money is circulating in it, a lot of rival tension reigns inside it, because of which copies of ideas occur. Someone watching TV in the US may well not know what they are showing, for example, in England.
It is very simple to watch foreign channels, copy shows from other markets and release them here without a license. Previously, this did not matter, because the television show industry did not cover the global scale, and was limited only to the market of its own country.
But now the project creators know what is happening around the world because TV shows now are a global market. When someone copies the show, depriving copyright holders of the format of money that they will not receive from your market, then there is a violation of the law.
Thus, endeavor to build your idea based on originality, and it will set you apart from others in the industry and can help you in selling your idea quickly without any hassle.