Behind Bars (Drop The Pilot) – Philip Lee

The ‘Drop The Pilot’ studio consisted of developing our screenwriting skills through class collaboration in order to conceptualise a prison dramedy called ‘Behind Bars’. This involved forming plot beat sheets, scene breakdowns, overall plotline and character development, until we began to write the pilot of the ‘Behind Bars’ series. The process involved choosing the genre and length of the show by majority vote, followed by thorough in-class discussions about the direction and inspirations we would take for the show. The show is to be an 8-episode finite sitcom, with each episode 45 minutes long (including credits).

When writing the first section of the pilot scrip   t, I began writing the scenes that I had the clearest vision for, which was the carjacking, then the party, then Kyle and Mercedes’ FaceTime. After I did those, I would go back to the beginning of the script and work chronologically. I found that I could get more of my ideas on the page that way. And when I connected the gaps from A to B, I could leave polishing the character consistency for the editing phase. Also for scenes that are disconnected or impactful, I was able to give those scenes as much time as I thought they needed without the worry of writing too much or too little. The screenwriting style is very new to me, so it was a unique experience learning all of the new terminology and conventions of the writing style. In a more general sense, the action description has taught me to be smarter with the verbs I use to describe, and that’s applicable to any kind of writing. The most valuable experience for me was definitely the mock writer’s room, allowing for multiple creatives to pitch their ideas and build off of each other. And with more than 20 of us in the room discussing how to progress the show effectively, it’s a rare opportunity to experience and learn from.

Drop The Pilot Experience – Tess Hansen

The studio I chose for this semester was Drop The Pilot. I originally chose this studio because I have always been a highly invested writer, and the creative process in film and television shows have always been a part of the industry I could really see myself working in. this studio didn’t disappoint me in any way. Whilst I was originally skeptical regarding how a class of so many students could all work collaboratively in creating a single television show, I was pleasantly surprised how each person was able to get involved, and how the class took everyone’s opinions and ideas on board. I felt like this was able to be achieved through everyone having a strong sense of respect for one another, and a desire to produce the best product we were able to.

‘Behind Bars’ became the product of this endeavour. This 8-episode dramatic comedy deviates from the traditional prison show with it being located in a rural rehabilitation program; a bar, where the inmates work together to keep it running. I personally really enjoyed participating in the creation of the characters, and advocated hard for Mercedes to be a teen mum, which became a strong character motivator for her in the series. One of my favourite assessments, however, was the group presentation, where each group was given an aspect of the show, and pitch it in front of industry professionals. My group was given ‘world’, and I really enjoyed creating an extra ‘hub’ for the show to pitch to the class.

This studio was an amazing opportunity to really experience the challenges and rewards of being in a writing room. Below are my slides that I created and presented for the group presentation.

Drop The Pilot: Behind Bars – Kevin Sun

 

Throughout the semester, our Drop the Pilot class aimed to recreate the feeling of being in a writer’s room. In our prototype writer’s room, we primarily focused on learning about genre, tone, Television narrative structure, and what typically goes into a Pilot episode for a show. With this foundation, we began pitching ideas for the Serial that we, as a class, collectively decided to create: Behind Bars. An unconventional take on the prison genre, where the show would take place in Australia, and instead of the conventional setting in a prison drama – a prison, the central hub of the show would be in a bar. In our classes we would pitch ideas for characters, plots, elements of the setting, certain moments of the show and more.  

Based on our ideas, we were tasked with an assignment to create a pitch deck regarding one of the many elements of the show that we came up with, which were  

  1. Title page + overview + story summary 
  1. World 
  1. Tone & style 
  1. Characters 
  1. Episode structure  

I chose to be a part of the characters group where we focused on summarizing or further developing the characters that our writers room came up with and coming up with potential character dynamics. Within this group assignment I attempted to further develop the characters of Boss (who serves as the mentor/motherly figure in the show), and Ted/The Warden (who is the primary antagonist of the show), as they were not as developed in our class discussions, in comparison to other characters like Josh or Mercedes, who were essentially the two leads of the show.  

Some of the slides can be seen below (where I may have gone into too much detail for a pitch deck and it probably needed a little more refining – a skill that I would need to work on, if I were to do another pitch deck). 

After all the groups had presented their pitches and had a firm understanding of everything that would happen within the show, we were tasked with our final assignment: writing 1/3 of our choosing of the screenplay for our pilot episode. I had chosen to right the last third. Now while I had previously written some screenplays for short films in school, but have never taken it seriously and would always write for myself, where a lot of my writing were place holders for things that I or someone else would improvise during production. So, writing in an industry standard way was challenging for me, and having to come up with dialogue that isn’t cliché and/or an actual person would say was surprisingly difficult.  

But by the end of it all, I came out satisfied with my attempt (seen above) as I think I was able to portray the character’s personality clearly through my writing (even though there could definitely be some improvement). Overall, Drop the Pilot has provided me great insight to the world of TV writing and writer’s rooms, and I would definitely like to further improve my screenwriting even after the end of this class.

Drop the Pilot ( ‘Behind Bars’) – By Angus Kilgour

This semester in ‘Drop the Pilot’, our class devised a television series coined ‘Behind Bars’, a drama/comedy that followed a rural halfway house fighting for survival. Our final work encompassed an individual segment of the series’ 40-minute-long pilot script, whereby students were able to add their unique touch on the story world crafted by the entire class.

Much of the semester centered around crafting ‘Behind Bars’, including devising the setting, characters and scene breakdowns, which would form the basis of the show. For myself and many others, this experience would’ve been our first experience in a writer’s room (hypothetical or not), meaning we were rather new to the collaborative process. I thoroughly enjoyed this process and found myself becoming more engaged with the content as the semester went on.

An aspect of this class I really enjoyed was the pitch deck process, as I thought it gave me a great level of clarity over the story world and its characters. On a personal note, I thought my own group’s work of mapping out and solidifying the town of Barrel, was engaging and something I’m proud of.

The final script that I crafted gave me an opportunity to cement the knowledge I had learned throughout the semester. This was no doubt my favourite part of the learning process, as it gave me a chance to put my own individualism on how I thought the show should sound.

This course gave me greater confidence in my own writing and showed me a side of the industry that I had never seen before. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to work alongside the people I did and to be guided by Stayci, who always gave us great freedom and confidence in our work.

Drop the Pilot – How we got Behind Bars

This semester we worked together in an enlarged version of a writer’s room to develop a serial drama and produce a script for the pilot episode.

Most of us were entering this semester with minimal writing experience. We spent the first few weeks delving into what defines the different forms of episodic writing and the strategies and conventions employed to construct an engaging story. Having explored the various forms TV shows can take; series, serial, finite infinite and so on, it was time to decide where ours would fall. After much discussion and exploration of worlds and characters, we settled on a finite serial drama set in a prison. This allowed us to explore the many conventions that come with this type of setting/genre and subsequently put our own spin on them. This process was eye-opening as to just how much thought goes into every decision, there is always a reason behind a character or the structural component of a show.

It was week 4 when we finally settled on the concept of our show “Behind Bars” developing the logline: “A ragtag group of rehabilitation-needing Aussies are given the choice between going behind bars and bartending, what could go wrong when the big wigs cut the funding, and bigots and the local gangs cut the lights?”

It was now time to explore the characters and develop the story. Over the course of the next few weeks, we constructed the core cast and developed the world and its local hub. This allowed us to start exploring A, B and C plot lines and place them on a timeline for the first season. To write a whole 8-episode season in our limited time was ultimately too much work so we constructed the story beats across the season and then zeroed in on the pilot. After beating out the pilot script together we each went away and individually created a scene breakdown. These breakdowns taught me how to write in a way that maintains cohesiveness when working in a group setting, ensuring everything was clear and free of variable interpretation.

We presented a pitch deck in week 9, small groups each focusing on a different element. My group focused on world and went about exploring the locale and how this would be conveyed on screen. This experience was fantastic for reaching a better understanding of the story’s setting. It also provided invaluable feedback on what to do and not to do in a pitching scenario, a process that seems very intimidating.

After this point, it was a matter of finalising scenes and scene arrangement in the pilot. We split the script into thirds, and everyone was assigned a part to write. Between everyone, we have ended up with a fully developed pilot script. I had never written a script before, but it was something I’ve always been interested in exploring. Being able to receive feedback and guidance on how to write for the screen was invaluable. I have loved this studio and it has been a fantastic experience.

Some of my sections can be viewed below along with a few of my slides from the group pitch deck.

  

Behind Bars, Drop the Pilot experience – Arya Dewa Phipps

Over the course of this semester, our entire class has come up with a TV series titled ‘Behind Bars’. We have all put so much thought and time into the story, plot, and characters, and it has become something really detailed and interesting. Experiencing a mock writers’ room has been one of the most fun things about this class, and the whole semester. I feel like I know so much more about what being a screenwriter entails now. I have learned a lot and the overall experience of this class has been very positive for me. It has been so nice getting to meet like minded people and work collaboratively throughout these weeks.

One of our assignments that I really enjoyed was our group pitch decks. My group was in charge of summarising the characters from our show. Me and Claudia worked on Josh’s (one of the main characters in the show) slides together, and so I have included screenshots of them here. It was such a joy getting to write down all the characters traits and distinguish their personalities and flesh them out so that they feel like real people. Putting our pitch together was really enjoyable because all of us cared about this show and these characters. I think we all presented it in an engaging way, and I am very proud of how all of us worked together during this assignment.

For our final assignment, we each got to pick a section from episode 1 and we had to write an actual script for the show. I found this task very interesting as I’d never attempted to write a script before. I learned a lot about different conventions of script writing, and about how to make sure that you are giving each of the characters a distinct voice, allowing their personalities to shine through. I think that for a first attempt, my script turned out pretty well, and I had fun writing it. Overall, this class has been such a great experience and I am so glad to have picked it as my studio this semester.

Behind the scenes of Behind Bars – Ruby Edwards

Behind the scenes of Behind Bars – Ruby Edwards ♥


Drop The Pilot aimed to emulate a real world writers room experiences of forming, pitching and ‘dropping the pilot’ of a scripted fiction T.V series. Over the semester we worked collectively to create a T.V show from scratch. As you may be able to imagine, doing this with over 20 students and only over one semester was quite the challenge, but we lived up to it. We settled on a 8 episode non-traditional prison ‘dramedy’ series called Behind Bars. Although I was skeptical about the prison genre and how things would pan out in terms of collaboration, I can gladly say the experience was enriching learning about all things writers’ rooms.

For our final task we each wrote 1/3 of the pilot Behind Bars. I chose the middle section as I felt it contained the most engaging scenes. It took me a while to grasp how to write well for the screen but in the end I felt proud of the work I created and proud of the class as a whole. My pilot script features the introduction of the show’s hub, Bottom of The Barrel and starts to unveil some of the key relationships and dynamics in the show. I truly enjoyed learning about how writers’ rooms function, working with the large group collaboratively, creating the show and persevering with screenwriting for the first time. What I got out of this studio was a solid foundational knowledge of screenwriting and writers’ room basics that will guide me in my future endeavours, whether that is in screenwriting or not!

Lauren Stephen- Drop the Pilot experience

Throughout the semester of Drop the Pilot, our class developed an idea for a complex serial called “Behind Bars”. Using many classes to brainstorm and discuss, we progressed our story into a 40-minute eight-episode Australian prison-drama inspired by Orange is the New Black and Schitts Creek. Our show follows our protagonist, city slicker Josh, as he ventures to the rural town of Barrel where he accidentally destroys the towns beloved ‘Big Barrel’ and consequently works off his sentence at a bar with other convicts at ‘Bottom of the Barrel’. Our class was able to explore character development, relationships between characters and overlapping storylines to create a conventional show for all audiences.

From this mock ‘writers’ room’ experience, we learnt new skills in screenwriting and the overall process of creating, pitching, and writing a television show. One of the key milestones for “Behind Bars” was the pitch deck which fleshed out all the details of our show. I was in the overview group which articulated our main plot and purpose for “Behind Bars”. I think this was a very important part of the pitch deck as we spoke about the inspiration, target audience and representation in the show as well as presenting the main details such as a log line and the format. This was our audiences first introduction to the show, so we aimed to leave an unforgettable impression and set the tone for the rest of the pitch deck, which I think we achieved.

Probably our biggest milestone for “Behind Bars” was getting to write the script. Though a whole pilot episode was a little much to write, we split the beats into three sections to be able to execute what we had learned in scriptwriting. This was probably my favourite part as I had never written a script like this before, so to properly understand formatting and ways in storytelling was helpful. I had the third and final section of the script which was arguably most difficult as it had a lot of action rather than dialogue, however, from what I had learned in the course, having more ‘big print’ was supposedly better than not having enough. I think having the pitch deck was quite helpful for this task as all our details were cemented and I had the freedom to experiment with character dynamics and voices. I definitely learnt a lot of new skills throughout ‘Drop the Pilot’ which will definitely help me in the future.

Here is the final scene from my script:

 

 

Behind Bars Script – Larissa Fazzari

Over the course of the semester, in our prototype writer’s room we planned our show Behind Bars.  This planning involved the creation of the world, characters and the characters’ relationships within our television show, leading to one thing, dropping the pilot.  My section of the script covers the final third of the episode where Josh struggles with the fact that his car has been stolen, then finding himself in an unusual set of circumstances, one being a car chase between him, the police and the thieves who stole his car. Josh, the protagonist’s journey throughout the episode is a wild one and as he moves through the rural country town of Barrel, the audience learns as he does that there is more to this town than what appears on the surface. Through working on the script of Behind Bars I had to keep these factors in mind, what does the audience know and what must be kept hidden to create drama and tension in the audience so that they can remain hooked. Additionally, when creating the script, I had to take on board the world, the characters’ personalities as well characters’ relationships to one another by referring to beat sheets, previous story lining and the class pitch for the serial. This was integral so that characters didn’t act out of the norm and to create a unique character voice for each character. Through working on the script, I learnt how to structure scripts as well as creating unique voices for different characters who obviously would talk differently to each other if they existed in real life.

The following images capture a scene from my script where Josh is in low spirits after his car has been stolen.

Behind Bars and Drop the Pilot – Matthew Robertson

Throughout this semester as part of the Drop the Pilot media studio, our class has focussed primarily on the art of screenwriting and process of evolving an initial concept into a final pilot script. Through various brainstorming and discussion sessions, we discovered the idea for a complex serial called Behind Bars. As an Australian take on a prison-drama program in a similar vein to Wentworth or Orange is the new Black, Behind Bars sees lead protagonist Josh travel to the rural Victorian town of Barrel, get arrested and subsequently get sentenced to work off his sentence as a staff member of ‘Bottom of the Barrel’: the local town pub. Despite being an arrogant city-slicker, Josh learns to love the town and grow as a person with the help of various colourful characters working both in and around the bar.

A key aim of the studio was to each individually contribute to the creation of key characters, their relationships with one another and the greater narrative. Furthermore, we were each tasked in groups with formulating a pitch deck regarding key aspects of the show which would then be presented to the class as well as professional screenwriters to get feedback. My group in particular was tasked with conceptualising eight episode outlines for the season. I found coming up with different episode concepts highly engaging as it allowed me to use the conversations we were having in class to formulate fresh, engaging scenarios and plotlines. My outline for Episode 5 in particular, entitled ‘Flashbarrel’ was my favourite to write as it allowed me to delve deeper into the backstories and inner psyche of the characters.

 

Once the feedback from our pitch presentations was gained, we were tasked with individually drafting out one-third of the script for Behind Bars’ pilot episode as a capstone of what we learnt throughout the semester. I decided to draft out the middle third of the narrative as it was in this section that Josh would first interact with a number of key characters, and this versatility was greatly enticing to me. In writing this section, I took into account all aspects of our learning from across the semester, such as understanding character and story beats, writing diverse characters with unique personalities and succinctly structuring a narrative to reach at an emotive peak. I found this media studio highly engaging and it has better prepared me with the possibility of writing for television in the future.