topitmunkeydog wrote:Heyy Michael, I was wondering if you could give me some advice on making this kind of series. Like sort of a sitcom thing.
So I live in a sort of hipster city and I am thinking about writing a series on hipsters. If you've ever seen Portlandia my idea is similar to that, except instead of skits I have a continuous story arc and recurring characters. I have a list of characters I've drafted here
So I was wondering if you think this is a good idea... Like are all my characters strong and are there too many of them? And should I choose the plot to focus on one specific character? My series won't be as faithful to the sitcom genre as yours... well actually mine isn't really going to be a sitcom at all because there is more absurd comedy and satire rather than like situational comedy. But still, advice, if you have any, would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you so much! 
Oh! I just figured out! Portlandia isn't a brickfilm of yours. It's a real series. And now I have time to write,
so I will.
I cant help much on technical aspects, as most people are smarter than me and more experienced in that area. When
it comes to animating, I wrote a file called "What I've learned" which I add to whenever I discover something tha
works (or fails epicly.) It should be somewhere in the PRODUCTION THREAD. NOw when it comes to writing a comedy
series, I can help there. Here I'll write my thoughts
1) Comedy is serious business. Watching THE POSIDEON ADVENTURE with my sister in law, she says, "What's Leslie
Neilson doing in this movie? How can he play a serious role?" Aside from him being a Shakespearian actor, watch
Neilson's delivery in any of th eNaked Gun movies. He's dead serious all the time. In comedy, the characters are
dead serous about the situations around them.
2) Keep it clean. That Angus kid from 2 1/2 Men is right: his show is garbage. Today a comey series can't be made
wihtout pervasive sexual themes. That's fine for an occassional show, but for so many it's a substitute for humor.
Actual humor requires much more thought. Viewers are starved for family friendly content, or something with
supposed shock value in a world where nothing is shocking. That doesn't mean that you can't write about mature
themes. But just put a little effort into the quality of the content without dumbinb it down, and 1) the audence
will appreciate it, and 2) you will have something better than half of what's considered TV entertainment. Yeah.
I'm not a braggart, but I have little respect for TV today. (CASE STUDIES: Comedy- 2 1/2 Men; Drama- The Book of Daniel, Gossip Girl)
3) I'm assuming that you are writing a pack comedy. This is a popular subgenre today. a Pack comedy revolves
around a "pack" of friends, usually single, and their misadventures. (CASE STUDY: How I Met Your Mother.) Pack
comedies aren't too much diferent from domestic comedies (HOlding Our Own is a domestic comedy). The main
difference is that in a domestic comedy the story usually revolves around parenting issues, but in the pack comedy,
the friends' reltionships are built or strained around conflicts between the main characters. You have to develop
situations where a character's principles are challenged by teh friendship. A common example: a charactere swears
to keep a secret about another friend. The friend is harmed unless he tells the secret to him. The character is
ptted between telling the secret and betraying the trust, or keeping the secret and allowing the friend to get hurt.
Usually the secret is told, and the episode is spent with the main character rying to cover up the fact that he
told the secret. There are endless situatons that can arise rom the pack comedy, but the next tip is IMPORTANT,
maybe the most helpful I can give.
4) When developing a plot twist or a character trait, NEVER EVER settle on the first idea for it that you thought.
The first idea is a cliche you saw somewhere else. The second idea is probably a cliche too. Think harder to find
a deeper reason a character can act or react. Not only will the idea be more original, it will make the character
more realistic.
5) When you form your core cast, think about the relatinships they have with each other.
6) Before giving your characters their first adventure, take time to thnk about the setting. When I created
"Holding Our Own", I figured on a whim that it would be a good idea to make the family, which I had already
developed a bit, German. The reasoning was that they are usually unfairly maligned as a race because of Hitler &
the Nazis and the whole country supprting him. So every German that comes after are evil intolerant white guys, and
they'd always have to cotend with that stereotype. After that, I decided that the who area could have been settled
by German immigrants. Hence the Schneider family name and the town of Bremen. Now this gave me a whole identity
for the entire community. The names are mostly decidedly and even ethnically German: Brent, Hector Bing, Maxmillian
Rolfe (Ep 2 segment 2), Keith Ackner, and the names of various other characters are all German. Melissa was named
before the decision. Angie was named not after my wife, but Angela Merkel, prime minister of Germany. NOw I knew
that Angie's gun should be German, or Austrian. Even very subtle jokes at the very beginning of episode 1 hint
early on at their ethnicity (words like Doppelganer and entropy, two German ideas). To break up the homogeneous
culture, I have some British characters too (Mark Manchester is the most notable example). Assigning a character to
an enthicity gives an instant cultural backdrop to a character, and may contribute to their decisions and behavior.
(CASE STUDY: EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND)
7) Make your antagonists sympathetic. I love "All In The Family". The main character wasn't supposed to be the
series father, Archie Bunker. It was supposed to be Gloria, the daughter. (I think of "Holding Our Own" as a
modern inversin of "All In the Fmaily". Gloria = Melissa). Anyway, the show was designed to dispel stereotypes and
point out the absurdity of not repsecting people's differences. Archie Bunker's role was the bigot. But as the
series played out, people realized that Archie Bunker was the stereotype of the "regular white guy" from the WWII
generation and really painted him as a cardbard cliche. This was the very opposite of the message the series was
trying to portray. Moreover, Archie becme such an obvious cliche that viewers actually tuned in just to hear what
outlandish thing he uld say next. The show was wildly popular, extremely funny, taught morals, but backfired in its
objective. Johnny Strange is the anatagonist in "Holding Our Own" (In the All In the Family parallel, he = Michael
"Meathead" Stivic.)
People disagree with ech other on issues. But you're being unrealistic if someone is a bad person just because they
have a different politicial point of view. I hate Happy Feet. I hate Avatar(ted). I hate the motion picture
corruption of The Lorax. I hate the 2011 Muppets movie. They all turn the antagonist into a stereotype, and a
one-dimensional one at that. Even in the Muppets, throughout the movie e bad guy is named "An Evil Oil Tycoon",
almost as if it's his name. You can't gt more obnoxious than that: oil tycoon = evil. People start to apply these
labels to people in real life. No one wants to sit in a theatre to relax after working all week and get preached
to. In Holding Our own, the parents' poilitical leanings are much closer to my own, and Johnny is far from it.
Johnny is intelectually equal to Brent, probably considerably smarter. He's sharp-witted, funny, and often zings
his verbal opponents. Brent often falters. In fact, all the characters wind up on equal footing; Each character
has a brilliant shining monent and a foolish moment. Even a drug dealer or Planned Parenthood employee has a reason
they got to poisoning kids minds or killing babies for profit. They didnt' just start out evil. Real life people
aren't just plain evil because they see things differentl. They just got lost and maybe want to find a way out. I
mentined preachy environmental themed films. In contrast, JETSONS: THE MOVIE (1989) depicts Mr Spaceley as someone
not evil, but starting out well-intentioned but blinded by a company milestone. It gives a message, but doesn't
vilify the antagonist. ANECDOTE: HOlding Our Own Episode 1 hd a theme about veganism, with the moral that it's
natural to eat meat. MY friend, Mike, loved the cartoon so uch he wanted to be in one. He's the voice of Hector
Bing. He is a strict vegan on principle. Episode 1: Vegan-Approved!
When writing the script, dont' write it as if it's set in stone. Go back after writing and rewrite parts of it
keeping in mind two questions: 1) How can this be mae funnier? and 2) How can a character say or do this that is
more in line with this character's personality? Focusing on question 2: In "Everybody Loves Raymond" and "How I Met
YOur Mother", Marie Barone and Lily, respectively, always have an underlying movite of manupilating the characters
closest to them. SO when you see them doing anything, you automatically think they're up to something below the
surface. Like tip 7, they are not doing this because they ar malicious, but because they don't like the way change
can upset the consistancy in their relationship among their group, and do they things they do out of fear of losing
the attachments to those they love most.
9) If you make long episodes, it may seem arduous, but there is a blessing to it: While you are working with the
characters, it gives you a lot of time to think about the characters, their personality, and the setting.
10) This is VERY important: Keep extensive and detailed notes about everything. Write character bios for private
reference. Write story ideas and jokes that you intend to use in future episodes, so you don't forget. Give each
character goals, character-based barriers to the goals, and separate goals for each character that converge (Case
study: SEINFELD). Do extensive research on writing. Here are some (but not all) topics I've researched for the
first 4 episodes of Holding Our Own:
German naming
Luger pistols
Text speech
culture in 2009
80s slang
Geography
I also have a lot of trivial knowledge that I use in the series to make it more realistic. The facts in the first
four scripts of Holding Our Own are true about the following topics:
"Weird Al"
John Holdren
Barbie
all the 80s artists in episode 2
Mystery Date (board game)
2009 Homeland security document mentioned by Mark Manchester in episode 4.
I can share some of my materials with you. Id helps keep the characters consistant.
10) Writing parody: Find something hypocritical about a topic and exploit the double standard by making the
characters obivious to the hypocrisy. An example from the ending to Holding Our Own: Episode 1.
MELISSA
If there's one thing I hate, it's the inhumanity of personkind. (pause.) Hey, why are we eating out here?
ANGELA
It's a special night for your father.
BRENT SCHNEIDER
Yeah. There's a 24 marathon that just started: 24 hours in 24 hours.
MELISSA
All right! I can't wait to see Jack Bauer torture some terrorists!
I like the fact that you're doing satir involving a town of hipsters. Lots of potential for funny situations. I
will look forward to your finished product! HipsterNation (tentative title idea?!)
11) Consider freezing your characters in time like I did. Some shows have unrealistic aging (CASE STUDIES:
Simpsons, King of the hill, or in reverse, Last Man Standing/ Family Ties, Superman movies). children dont age
properly. Soaps are the worst; newborn babies are in high school in a year! The drawback is that you have to
freeze the technology and societal evolution at that point. But it's fun to do so!
12) Most important rule: have a reason for taking the time to do this. And it can't be to get 100 million youtube
views. You have to have something you're passionate about that you want to convey through the entertainment medium.
In "Holding Our Own", brent quotes the Bible or constitution while debating in every episode. For public school
students with two parents working full time to support them, this may be the only time they get to hear these
important documents. This does not conflict with tip 7. Tip 7's not about not having a message. It's about not
being one-dimensional, unrealistic or preachy about your message so you lose half your audience in disgust. Having
a purpose also gives yor character short and long term goals and help you develop the character-based obstacles to
those goals.
I learned all this from nothing, just out of 1 year from brickfilming, but I hope this can help you out. I can
answer any qs privaely, and I can let you look at some of the reference materials I'vebeen keeping to get an idea on how to organize thoughts/plots/ etc. Let me know if this helps. Also, watch the sitcoms you like and see what
makes them funny!
I havn't checked yr char list today, as I'm working offline as I type, but will now!!!!!
https://vimeo.com/channels/holdingourown http://holding-our-own.tumblr.com"None practice tolerance less frequently than those who most loudly preach it."
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