The Biggest Difference Between TV show and Webseries

First thing I wanted to announce that Julie Kendall has been attached to play the character of Anne Steavens in the TV show.  Julie has so much passion and talent that every director out there should be looking at her resume.  Now back to the main topic...

Naturally when people think TV show verses webseries the assumption is that the main difference between the two is broadcasting medium.  It is assumed that a TV show is something you see on your TV with either cable, satellite or, back in the day, they had those antiques called "bunny ears" that hook in the back of your TV when things were analog.

But there's a problem with assuming the difference is "how it is delivered".  If the deciding factor was that you had to watch it through those options then House of Cards, produced exclusively to be viewed on Netflix, shouldn't be nominated for an Emmy as a TV show.  Netflix streaming is online.

So what is the major difference?  The format of the script.

Webseries are shorter.  A traditional TV show script is broken down as Teaser followed by 5 Acts.  The act break downs were as such because of advertising, but I also find that it helps with pacing.  A TV show moves faster than a movie.  A TV show is traditionally 45 pages long/45 minutes long.  A film traditionally goes 90-120 minutes (or if your making a tent pole movie it could go onto until eternity).

The break down of the script is the key factor on how myself, the writer/director, tells the story and how you, the audience, responds to it.  Most webseries are 5-10 minutes long and really have to get to the point quickly.  With a TV show script I focus on how to get to the beginning and end of an Act with a sense of mystery and urgency so that by the end of the act you're driven to go to the next one.

With AMNESIA it is a series of twists and turns.  Just when you think you've figured out what's going on or who to trust then something is thrown into the mix and you become concerned with the outcome.  If I had attempted to tell this as a webseries it would be novel and interesting, but it couldn't be developed the way the TV show format is set up.

In many ways I think it can be easier to do a webseries.  And don't get me wrong I think there are some great webseries out there.  But if I was going to go big enough and emotionally compelling enough to give this story what it deserves than I had to "go big" and it had to be written as a TV show.

By the way, my style of TV show scripts was inspired by two famous TV shows which had the same writer/director on both shows.  The writer/director is now directing some of the biggest movies right now.  Take a guess which two TV show scripts inspired my style for AMNESIA?

How to Pull Off An Apacalyptic TV show with 3 Timelines

The story structure of the Amnesia TV show is designed where there are three timelines going on.  The flashback to the main character's past (that tells him in pieces what happened to him and his love interest), the "Event" timeline t(hat comes in pieces telling us what led to the world) and finally the present day apocalyptic timeline of some time in the near future.

Writing that was hard, trying to figure out how to pull that off without ballooning the budget was even harder.  I kept wrestling with how to do it.  One part is shot on mostly a city/college campus location, another is one is a road full of smashed up cars near a major city and the third is in the forests near the mountains.  Racing back and forth to the different locations per episode would just be too time consuming and expensive plus it would run the mistake of forgetting things or making small mistakes that would end up turning into bigger ones.  The more I looked at the concept it seemed like a nightmare.  How could I pull this off?

I had another issue.  Andrew Roth, who is playing the lead Allan Carter, has to go through 3 major hair changes.  These changes would be much easier done naturally than faking it.  In one timeline he is a clean cut college student another one he's older with a gottee and then another he has long hair and a beard.  All I could think was "continuity nightmare".  A TV episode is about 45 minutes long when you take away the 15 minutes of commercial.  In a 45 minute episode he's going to go through 3 hair changes and be in 3 different "worlds".  If the studios did this on a per episode basis each episode would be expensive.

That's when it hit me.  Don't shoot per episode.  Shoot per timeline.  Shoot the "Event" timeline first to draw in more interest.  Then shoot the "flashback" timeline second and then third the present day "apocalyptic" timeline.  By shooting it this way I would save huge on transporation, time, money and the massive headache of trying to make it work.

The other catch, spread the production schedule out so that there are months between each timeline shoot.  This gives ample time to just focus on finding the locations and lining up all other necessary components per timeline.  This also means that each actor just focuses on where there character is at this moment in their character's lives.

With this in mind the execution really comes down to 2 major forms of organization: the script and the storyboard.  If I know exactly how the story is told per scene via the storyboard than I don't have to worry if things will flow between the timelines when they are edited together per episode because I would have already played out how the match up on paper in the drawings.


JWB