BIG vs little...

A strange thing happened to me yesterday that I thought might be encouraging to you.

I was on a conference call with our co-development partners in NYC from 8:30-9:45pm on that new dramatic TV series I've been mentioning to you, while my staff from THE WELL (our small church which is EXPLODING by the way...) waited patiently upstairs so we could adjourn our staff meeting and move to our backyard hot tub.

(now that's MY kind of staff meeting...)

Anyway, on the call, the development exec and I were hashing out two new pages that needed to be added to our (now 14 page) series proposal.  The two added pages were in response to the first two meetings they had in Hollywood on the series last week.  The upshot of the meetings? They LOVED the mock trailer we cut for the thing and liked the concept but wanted more 'story world' detail and some deeper description of the 'stakes' at play in each episode.

Cool.

See, I'm a writer/producer.  I LIKE story.  The whole reason I do what I do is because 'story world' gets me.  I love to explore a world and learn from it.  I love finding redemption in the strangest places.

Story world.  I dig it.

A stress for me in the early stages of development has been working with our wonderful partners to 'pare down' my extremely messy and complicated 'story world' into a concept that was simple enough that they knew the execs they were going to be pitching wouldn't get overwhelmed.

It felt at times (I must confess) like we were gutting 'my' story.

Okay, I'm officially developing this in 'partnership'.  It's not 'my' story.

Got it.

Second, sometimes you gotta' 'gut' something to get it to live.

Alright.

So, out the treatment goes, and they 'love' the trailer (rich in story world I might add...) and want more story world detail.

"Yeehaw!" shouts Todd.

But, last night, in the ongoing back and forth it becomes clear to me that I'm thinking too 'small' for them.  My indie (I 'aint never had a network series) roots are biting me in the butt. They say 'stakes' and I think 'emotional', 'contained', something I can shoot in two days. 

They're thinking exploding trains with the Secretary of State onboard.

Ahh...

"What you're saying, is you want me to 'Hollywood-ize' it a bit for you..."

(a pause on the line)

"Exactly..."

So that's what we did.  Added some 'sizzle' to it. Took it and sprinkled some L.A L.A-land 'dust' on it.

I was so humbled. So reminded that I need to give myself permission to THINK BIG despite all the beats I've taken (and will continue to take) in trying to make it.

THINK BIG friends.

think big...

T