{"id":5941,"date":"2021-02-13T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2021-02-12T23:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/?p=5941"},"modified":"2021-03-24T14:18:30","modified_gmt":"2021-03-24T01:18:30","slug":"wheel-reinventing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wheel-reinventing\/","title":{"rendered":"Wheel Reinventing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
A life-size horse lamp because A LIFE-SIZE HORSE LAMP. (Without permission from www.droold.com.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Late last year, I got asked to work up a little something that would probably open with \u2014<\/p>\n

\n

BASED ON A TRUE STORY.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I hadn’t done a based-on-actual-events job before* but I accepted the gig because 1. it paid, and 2. how hard could it be?<\/p>\n

The\u00a0 concept was simple enough: a mini-series based on an incident that had happened a decade earlier, was reported world-wide, and it had a gorgeous protagonist to boot. A tweak here and there, and maybe I could work in a car chase, maybe even some gun play. As I researched the heck out of it, a voice in my head screamed over and over, This shit is just writing itself!<\/em><\/p>\n

Except.<\/p>\n

It had to be the kind of show that I<\/em> would consciously tune in to. Which meant there would be no in media res<\/em> device in the first ep because I’ve had it up to here with \u2014<\/p>\n

\n

A wham-bang opening scene, then --<\/p>\n

TITLE: One week earlier.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2014 so much so that when the Lovely Wife<\/strong> and I were trying a new show recently, I said, “If this sequence ends with a title saying, ‘Six hours ear\u2014’ FUUUCK!” that last word making her spill her tea and I had to go and make her a fresh cuppa.<\/p>\n

\u2026 Where was I? Yes. So. Here I was playing in the biographical drama space and one of my first creative decisions meant I had no wham-bang sequence to lure the audience in with.<\/p>\n

What to do?<\/p>\n

The development journey was all down hill from there.<\/p>\n

* One could argue that\u00a0Goodbye My Feleni<\/a> and We Are Many<\/a> are earlier outings in historical drama but no: they each took an “Inspired by” approach to Samoa and Aotearoa New Zealand history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Late last year, I got asked to work up a little something that would probably open with \u2014 BASED ON A TRUE STORY. I hadn’t done a based-on-actual-events job before* but I accepted the gig because 1. it paid, and 2. how hard could it be? The\u00a0 concept was simple enough: a mini-series based on … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Wheel Reinventing”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[244,1264,1268],"class_list":["post-5941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scriptwriting","category-television","tag-goodbye-my-feleni","tag-the-lovely-wife","tag-we-are-many"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5941"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5968,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5941\/revisions\/5968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}