Introduction
The Pilot is the show’s calling card.
Fine-tuning is critical to ensure every relationship and conflict is properly set up for the rest of the season.
I have created five different Teaser Acts for this Pilot now. Each of them explored how we would immediately engage the audience in the story of the protagonist and their dilemma. Does this version nail it? Have your say. Submit a review.
Theme and relevance
‘What’s the Biggest Question your Script or Pitch MUST Answer.’
The article covers how your script should mirror current events and social relevance.
Sentient’s theme is leadership. Leadership in a time of crisis. Sentient explores this theme at a time when it is exceedingly relevant to all of us.
Reference material
Draft Four of Sentient – Australia – A 50 page Pilot script, is ready for review. Click on the latest draft of the Pilot script to view.
View the act by act reveals.
View the major changes.
View the older draft, Draft Three.
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Reviews
This entry was posted on Saturday, April 4th, 2020 at 9:25 pm
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Tags: David Steinhoff, Presence Global Entertainment, sci-fi, sci-fi TV series, Sentient, Sentient - Australia, Sentient.tv
Posted in: dog, Help, Pilot, Sentient, Uncategorized, Writing
[…] of you who have read Sentient – Australia – Draft Four, know Dowd is a man of action. He is a highly focused character. That won’t change. The new […]
In response to Naira’s review;
Double mumbo jumbo
Blake Snyder in his book save the cat speaks of double mumbo-jumbo.
This is where you confuse mythology, mythology and genre.
We have a problem with this in the current screenplay.
The alien thing speaks of science fiction. The God mythology speaks of another genre.
In the TV series, Battlestar Galactica, I believe they successfully married these two however the critics strongly disagree. I believe it was the strongest and most redeeming part of the plot but that part of the plot reviewed very poorly.
The problem we face in the presentation of the synopsis/pitch and within the story is that we have to move away from the presentation of the life form as an alien life form and the story as pure sci-fi and pitch it on another level.
That’s very difficult.
We can speculate about what this life form is but we can never use the word alien. Let the viewer say that. Create a gap in the viewers’ mind.
What are they?
Characters, especially those with deeply held religious beliefs, face a dilemma. This is not a God they recognise and because of that they don’t recognise who these visitors are. Seraphim are referred to as a special class of angel. Abrahamic God mythology suggests that angels and Demons are one in the same, just on different sides. The lifeforms are in fact angels but with the radicalisation, become Demons. Not all of them. Just like us they have a choice but just like us nurture can have a significant impact on who they become.
The characters especially those with deeply-held religious beliefs do not recognise who these creatures are. They are angels, ANGELS from a God the characters do not recognise.
The big hint comes with the revelation from a teenage girl who states in Hebrew, ‘we are your judgement we are your gift.’
Conclusion re how to address this
Somehow, we have to cover this in the theme and presentation of thing in Tis and first act of the story so the viewer knows exactly where we are going. In addition, we have to somehow marry this into a genre people recognise but not practice double mumbo-jumbo.
Then of course, we have to keep it simple. Easy right?
Portals and the angel thing
Two things are true.
They are omnipresent.
Their mode of transport may be an application of what we see is black holes.
Yet like matter and antimatter, there is a balance and a residual.
So, if they come, they must leave but even if they leave, they leave something behind. That is the stuff of why the universe exists and curiously is like our own legacy, we come, we go, our children or our acts leave something behind.
So, whilst this is a wild journey into philosophy it’s also an exploration of the deep story questions we have to address and represent on screen.
David Nerlich provided some key advice re Toby, Dowd’s son. The idea was to make Dowd’s choices re Toby more heroic, saving his son ETC. There was other advice received regards adding Toby to the Pilot. The feeling is that it would make Dowd more touch-base. We did add Toby to the Teaser but the readers felt he needs to be embedded into the pilot.
There was also critique re the new teaser that it is not immediately relevant to the Sci- fi genre.
To address this, we could go back to the BEACH – discovery of the alien and Sammy Teaser and follow through with the China crisis, add a dive scene, show the disaster underwater then have Dowd wake in the compression chamber.
Then we find Toby in the CD office with Dr Teicher.
See my summary notes in the review about for a better explanation.
Mystery component of genre. Reference – LOST.
One thing that really stands out to me is, people are not getting this is a mystery.
I’m going to have to SLAP THAT GENRE GUIDE on each page because I am getting feedback like the work is meant to be full circle completed by the end of the pilot.
Had another conversation with Dave Nerlich today on Skype about creating a unique alien that hints at intent and that the alien is not wholly malevolent.
DN Mentioned the Act One and Act Four interaction with the aliens as an opportunity to do so.
What if the BETA was somebody that Dowd knew and recognises him? What if that changed their behaviour to Dowd.
I argued that right now we need to see them as a threat and Dowd as acting against that threat.
The other issue is POV tracking. If we swap POV to the aliens, that may take the audience away from Dowd’s journey.
If there was a was to fix this, I would do it, but I know if I attempt to introduce anything that takes us away from Dowd’s POV or to address later elements or to link the aliens to the leadership theme when in fact they are the catalyst for addressing it, we will dilute the Pilot.
I get it but I can see nothing yet that would benefit the Pilot yet by taking that journey.
You say above there’s a pattern emerging. This is like the results of an experiment being reproducible. It’s evidence from multiple observers. I agree a sense of what every charcter wants and is trying to do is where engagement comes from. How you get mystery back into it is to keep undermining whats been set up so one is then engaged by whether their original perception was right or whether there’s more going on and we want to find out what. But if we have no idea what is going on, thats not engaging.
So everyone is asking the same question and that should be taken seriously. However I’m totally with you in rejecting this answer. Producers etc who can see problems rarely provide the best solutions. I find most instances of the perennial save-the-family motivation very weak. Theyre strong on motivation logic but weak for audience engagement because the audience doesnt care about the family. It’s not the audience’s family. The audience’s family is the characters they come to know and care about. If we know nothing about Toby I think he’s more useful as a source of guilt for Dowd at the outset, or even a character flaw. But whatever it is, you have to decide and make it felt.
ps if we’re going to care about Toby, whats he doing to save himself?
Toby is a big character.
Dying of cancer.
A Mensa genius.
Encouraged by V Admiral Frank, he studied and speaks Hebrew.
SAM the young girl brings him a message which she speaks in Hebrew.
He interprets, ‘I AM YOUR JUDGEMENT, I AM YOUR GIFT.’
This goes somewhere, somewhere big but it’s not MARVEL.
The struggle re TOBY is between his mother and Dowd. Dowd realises that the lifeforms can heal TOBY. His mother, the Commodore, forbids it.
I’m sure there are many answers to many questions. But what needs to be in the pilot?
Change the synopsis
Here is another angle.
I could just change the synopsis from;
A Navy Diver wakes in a recompression chamber to discover Sydney engulfed in a terrifying red storm and an alien lifeform preparing to invade.
to something like…
When an alien apocalypse wipes out most of humanity, the survivors wonder why they were spared and what the intention of this lifeform is for them?
Now that’s crap presentation but I could take it to something like that.
My argument goes that the synopsis and the mystery is fine. Get them into the passion of the story and the viewer won’t care.
It’s like, I am going on a date. Do I wear the blue shirt or the white one. OK, that may have an impact but if the other person is into you, once the passion starts, no one cares what colour the shirt is.
I keep going back to LOST.
The SMOKE MONSTER didn’t leave his card and say, look, I will be terrifying you guys for the rest of the series and we’ll spend an entire season explaining who I am. All we knew is that they had crashed, they were waiting for rescue and that thing turned up. It didn’t kill everyone. We bought it cause it was a cool premise and the characters were OK, like JACK.
Sentient, we know there has been an apocalypse, we know some have been spared. We know aliens have arrived. We don’t know why.
Further on the business of indicating the alien intent, as I wrote via email we can place a SUPER on blackscreen after the TITLES and before ACT ONE stating, ‘ I AM YOUR JUDGEMENT, I AM YOUR GIFT.’
It would be in HEBREW and would transition to ENGLISH. I have sought clarification regards the best choice of NOUN in Hebrew to cover the word Judgement and the translation is not literal and there are a few options.
Hopefully, this will pique the reader’s / viewer’s interest and indicate something of the alien life form’s intention.
A very interesting pattern is emerging from OS studio reviewers. They want to see the aliens straight away and they want to know the hero’s and the alien’s objective straight away. You see, that’s not what happened in LOST (for example) but it is the favourite of a MARVEL COMICS generation.
Thats ok if u want to reveal it later you establish a false answer to the question, ie at the beginning we think they want X, then its revealled woah they really want Y then right at the climax of the series, Z!!
Hi David,
Thought about the idea of the aliens together in a scene revealing their plot but it just doesn’t fit within this sub genre.
The closest I can get to an announcement of intention is to slap a SUPER on black at the front end with the words, I AM YOUR JUDGEMENT, I AM YOUR GIFT.
Sam and Dowd’s son TOBIAS were meant to do the reveal on that but I could put it at the front as a question mark.
That still won’t give the LA readers what they want, a Sci-fi were the Alien says, ‘We are here to conquer.’
I strongly believe they are wrong. Your point, DN, was that they are in chorus so it should be paid attention to but I believe they are in chorus as they are working to a TICK BOX formula.
The same formula applied to say a work like NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, would get a review that the good guy needs to get the money and kill the bad guy. They are not going to get what is happening in that kind of work or this kind of work because they are 22 fresh out of uni.
Received a review from Screencraft . Their critique came down to this. They want to see both Dowd and the Alien immediately reveal their objectives and go after them in conflict from the beginning.
My gut is telling me that is the wrong choice. It would remove the mystery component of this story and make it hack. In TWD, RICK GRIMES doesn’t immediately seek out zombies and start a killing spree. YES, he does go after his family, that’s his anchor.
The reviewer said that Dowd should spend the pilot trying to save his son. I saw that in a Sci-fi epic movie where the lead did this but it was not engaging.
I feel that the Pilot of Sentient creates a family around Dowd, being Teicher, Amiri and Hunt. This is his circle. The next episode allows him to go for TOBY his son, who is in hospital but if I was watching it as a viewer and I saw a Navy officer drop everything, his duty, his responsibility and go to attend his family, I would be very much disappointed.
What is your view on this?
I forgot all about Toby, so it didnt seem a problem, until you reminded me of him. Oops. So the objective needs to be there and he i is frustrated from it by his duty and also the immediate threats. Even if he does defer his wish to save Toby, it cant just be forgotten. He should be visibly taking it into account and making plans.
I’ve included this in the polish draft. May not be perfect but it will cover us.
You say above there’s a patterm emerging. This is like the results of an experiment being reproducible. It’s evidence from multiple observers. I agree a sense of what every charcter wants and is trying to do is where engagement comes from. How you get mystery back into it is to keep undermining whats been set up so one is then engaged by whether their original perception was right or whether there’s more going on and we want to find out what. But if we have no idea what is going on, thats not engaging.
So everyone is asking the same question and that should be taken seriously. However I’m totally with you in rejecting this answer. Producers etc who can see problems rarely provide the best solutions. I find most instances of the perennial save-the-family motivation very weak. Theyre strong on motivation logic but weak for audience engagement because the audience doesnt care about the family. It’s not the audience’s family. The audience’s family is the characters they come to know and care about. If we know nothing about Toby I think he’s more useful as a source of guilt for Dowd at the outset, or even a character flaw. But whatever it is, you have to decide and make it felt.
ps if we’re going to care about Toby, whats he doing to save himself?
So, as a genre add on there is a mystery in play here. What’s happening becomes clear when we see an alien. Why they survive is the bigger mystery which they explore in act four. We don’t answer the Q but we hint at it by using biblical references.
We leave a gap that the audience can fill themselves.
Episode 101 will see us get to Toby with Sam and deliver the message, I AM YOUR JUDGEMENT, I AM YOUR GIFT.
It is a reveal and yet also another mystery.
There is another pattern emerging from reviews. Readers really like the Abrahamic style prophecy or biblical reference. Not the US readers. Locals. I believe strongly, that the global market would respond positively to leaving that gap open for them to leap in and interpret. Don’t think the TICK BOX readers from the studios get that. My gut tells me, this is the right choice.
Things to interpret is what you want. I think there’s one thing to interpret in the pilot. “Why have we been spared?” This is our first glimpse of what the aliens are up to. They’ve made a DECISION. We wonder why. (this is apart from the decision to conqer the earth of course, but its a given aliens come to do that unless indicated otherwise).
Ok so, if we mention that the Israelites were spared when the Angel of death killed all the firstborn children, as a punishment visited upon Egypt and Pharoh, and given we have just seen humanity vapourised, can the viewer not be satisfied that we were spared for a reason? Teicher even states we were PAINTED. Saying we were spared for X reason removes all speculation and that speculation is the source of a great deal of conflict in the first season. That gap enables the viewer. Allows them to make up their own mind until the plot surprises them.
We had some off-site discussion about this but yes dont give the reason. Advance/deepen the question if possible, and show it, dont have Teicher tell it.
Excellent!
Thanks so much E. Shall publish your notes ASAP.
From Dr Dowd – Original Investor
I’m excited about this. It has a real energy to it. Becomes quite electric towards the end of Act 5. Interesting how real that red storm feels after this summer’s bushfires. I really like the tension, and the dynamic between the hero and the bitter ex is palpable.