Contour At The Movies

Those of you who have been following the “From the Floor” section of this site know that I’ve been working on a Family Channel/Disney Channel series called OVERRULED! which I co-created and am one of the executive producers of.  Well, after several years of production, we finally premiere tonight!

Those of you lucky enough to live in Canada can tune in to the Family Channel at 6:25pm EST and see two back-to-back episodes.  I’m not sure when the show will air in the States, however it’s already been airing in the UK and in Australia.

So if you get the chance, please watch and then let me know what you think!

– Jeffrey Alan Schechter

Well, I guess my partner (Jeff Biederman) and I didn’t mess up season 2 too badly…we just heard last week that we got picked up for season 3.  Not sure when we go to camera yet; looks like it’ll be sometime in the late fall.

Season 2, frankly, looks great.  Some very funny stuff in there that we’re really proud of.  Now…if only the show would start airing already!   The schedule is still in September, 2009.

–Jeffrey Alan Schechter

And here’s the (blurry) last slate of the last day of shooting on season 2 of OVERRULED.  Thirty-three days of shooting, all on time and on budget!  It was a great shoot, and the early cuts of the episodes look terrific. 

Thanks to all of you who have tracked the occasional posts FROM THE FLOOR.  I’ll try to post more next time we’re in production.  In the meantime, remember this: production starts with the writing.

So quit reading this and GO WRITE SOMETHING!

-Jeffrey Alan Schechter

The final two days of shooting for season 2 of OVERRULED are upon us!  If all goes according to plan, Thursday, April 23 wraps production of these 13 episodes.  After that, it’s back to the normal grind of juggling many balls.

It’s been a great shoot so far, made even more exciting by having caught some promos for the series on Family Channel.  We’re told that season 1 will air either in the summer or the fall.

So…what have I learned from the experience this time around? Firstly, I think that I’ve improved my 1/2 hour comedy writing.  I used to take more time setting up a joke, now I fish for the joke in almost every line.  I’m not sure this is the right pace for features, but for 21 minutes and 5 seconds of tween television, it’s what the genre demands.

Secondly, I’ve learned what the big hole in my skillset is.  I’m awful at the politics of this business.  Not the politics of getting a show made, but the politics of knowing what I want and not making people feel off-put because of it.  

I grew up in this business thinking that people like clarity and decisiveness.  You don’t want a director, executive producer, or showrunner who dithers.  However in the hands of some people, clarity and decisiveness come off as strident.  I may be one of those people.  My enormous certainty (not to mention ego) is an acquired taste.

But what can I do?  Without falling victim to delusions of grandeur, I can look back on my career and empirically say that the greatest successes I’ve had have been when I’ve followed my own lead.

I’m reminded of that scene in BROADCAST NEWS (written by James L. Brooks) between Holly Hunter as the news producer and her boss.  Holly’s character, JANE, is relentlessly pushing her vision for how a time-critical news segment should be produced.  Her boss, PAUL, disagrees with her but SHE WON’T LET IT GO.  Finally, he looks at her and says, sarcastically “It must be nice to always believe you know better, to always think you’re the smartest person in the room.”  Jane looks at him, ready to cry, and says from the bottom of her heart and totally in earnest the following:

“No. It’s awful.”

– Jeffrey Alan Schechter

First, a big THANKS! to Dan Pilditch for keeping the Contour-fueled reviews coming while I’m here in the studio.   Of course he gets to see all the movies I’m too busy to…

We’re almost halfway through the shoot schedule for season 2 of OVERRULED.  As I’m writing this I’m watching our incredibly talented cast do their thing.   Thanks to the magic that is wireless internet and Elegato’s EyeTV Hybrid USB device, I can watch the feed from both A and B camera (top left of screen), rewrite next week’s script (bottom left of screen) and write this blog entry (right half of screen.)

Now, if only I could see some of the movies Pilditch is writing about…

With exactly…uh…ZERO SECONDS TO SPARE!  Wrapped on time.  WHEW!

Day three.  We’re running a little behind and there’s less than an hour to go on our shoot day.  I’m informed that we can’t do overtime.  If I wasn’t a professional I’d start to panic right about now.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I’m taking a LOT of grief over my mobile cart.  Maybe it’s the rabbit ears antenna array I use to get the video feed from the cameras (kinda visible in the photo to the right of my laptop.)  Or maybe I’m just a geek.

We started right on time and finished early.  Even got in a bonus shot!   Having fun, so far.  But of course, any script that features a meeting of the VSA (Viking Students Association) can’t go too far wrong.  

The script in question is a first script from a new writing team: Richard Rabkin and Matt Simmons.  Richard’s someone who was introduced to me a few years ago and has been impressing me his writing over that time, and Matt is a friend of Richard’s who blew me away with a feature script he had written.  I thought the two of them would make a good team and suggested that they pitch some ideas for OVERRULED.  They did, one of them clicked, and their script is now the lead-off script for season 2.

There is a lesson in there about networking, persistence, and looking for creative opportunities.  Will this lead to more writing for them?  Who knows.  I know I’d hire them again.

First take, day one.