Editor's Note: Future Talent was an opportunity we ran in the West Midlands between November 2014 and March 2015. Entrants were asked to submit a pilot episode for a potential online drama or comedy series.
As far back as I can remember, I've been writing. As a child, it involved a lot of Power Rangersfan fiction, which in retrospect was rather odd considering I didn't actually like Power Rangers. I've known since I was about fifteen that I wanted to write scripts for a living but this was before the Internet (it existed, just not in our house) and I struggled to find information on how to actually go about pursuing it. It seemed a world away. I was always told "it's not what you know, it's who you know" - that you needed famous connections rather than talent to get past the dreaded gatekeepers at institutions like the BBC. Or at the very least, you had to talk like Jack Whitehall. I wish I did, but I don't. I'm a Brummie, which would be the worst accent in the world if Scouse didn't exist.
I gravitated to the stories of the American indie directors like Kevin Smith and Robert Rodriguez, who didn't have an "in" to the industry but just wrote and made their films outside of it and got noticed that way. In the 2000s, equipment was more affordable than ever. Information became plentiful online. Making films independently is easy now, right? Turns out it's bloody hard. Generally speaking, writing is something you do on your own in your pants. Making films is a collaborative effort with many more moving parts, which means you have to get dressed and go outside and talk to humans. Ugh.
Comedy films in particular are tough to get going for no money; my experience is that roughly 99% of aspiring actors want to do drama (comedy performers are doing stand-up and sketches rather than replying to random casting ads), and exactly 100% of people who know how to work fancy cameras want to make Alien and Indiana Jones. I’ve come across nobody yet who got into the technical side of filmmaking because they loved The Office. But there are some great shows that started out as friends mucking around with camcorders. In Canada, there’s Trailer Park Boys. In Ireland, Hardy Bucks. My favourite current UK sitcom is People Just Do Nothing. If you’ve not seen it, stop reading this immediately and go and check if it’s on BBC iPlayer at the moment (it is at time of writing). The guys involved started doing it themselves online, got the attention of audiences and producers and ended up with a BBC commission. I can’t wait for their second series.
Towards the end of 2014, BBC Writersroom announced an upcoming Future Talent initiative in the West Midlands. As a rule, I'm not particularly fond of writing for competitions, purely because I often end up writing rubbish just for the sake of submitting something in time. I've sent some absolute drivel to Newsjack and The Show What You Wrote. This initiative was a bit different, though. Rather than asking for scripts, they wanted a five-minute web pilot video. And it didn't have to have great production values. This was perfect for me. I immediately started drafting my inevitable winner’s blog post and spent a week deliberating whether to keep the Power Rangers line, then a fortnight wondering how much false modesty to include.
Fast-forward to February 2015. With the deadline approaching and a fair bit of upheaval in my own life in the intervening few months, I still had nothing to submit. My original idea, set in an allotment, didn’t bear any fruit (or veg). My second idea was essentially a sketch about bereavement and a pub quiz. I still like it, but I couldn’t make it work well enough. Determined not to let the opportunity slip by, I was struck by an idea that I thought had legs, about a girl in a rut who tries to sort her life out by tackling a list of what other people deem to be her flaws. One list item per episode. I started putting fingers to keyboard, and the first script for 'What's Wrong With Me?' was born. A couple of short drafts later, I thought it was in decent enough shape to shoot.
Though I'm the one being named the winner, the pilot is actually the work of three other people too: Katrina Sansone, who plays Emma, the lead; Carl Hutchinson, who plays Emma's ex-boyfriend Callum; and Jeanette Moreland, who plays Emma's unenthusiastic new BFF Judith and was also the only crew member besides myself. We filmed most of the pilot in Jeanette’s house with no special lighting setup, using a DSLR camera, and recorded the sound on an iPhone. This wasn't a Spielberg production. We were even shorter on time than equipment, shooting on a Friday evening with a Monday deadline - but we blasted through it, hoping the selection panel would see the potential despite the rough and ready video.
In early May, I received an email that confirmed that my submission had been shortlisted and forwarded onto the judges... And they’d selected it as the winner! I was at work when I saw the email, so I couldn’t dance around singing “Boom boom boom boom, I want you in my room" in celebration. Instead, I asked my manager for a couple of days off to attend the Salford Sitcom Showcase Writersroom sessions I’d been invited to at MediaCityUK, and made plans to head up to Salford. I've since discovered I'm not actually supposed to be checking my private emails at work. I'm probably not supposed to be writing this blog post at work, either. If anyone from my office is reading, I wrote it on my lunch.
I’ve attended lots of talks at MediaCity before, but as a VIP guest, it was a whole new ballgame. For starters, my admission stickers had a “G” on them, and most people’s didn’t. The talks from the sessions have already been expertly covered in other blogs so I won’t go over them. Besides those valuable tips from industry folk, I got to experience some new pilots, see some live character comedy and met fellow writers that I’ve been exchanging emails with since.
After the sessions were over, I sat down with BBC Writersroom North Development Producer Joanna Blake and the new Head of BBC Writersroom Anne Edyvean to talk plans going forward. As well as exciting discussions about the future of 'What's Wrong With Me?', the best thing to come out of it is realising that the big scary gatekeepers are quite lovely, normal people who just want to make good stuff and work with talented writers. The world is changing, the BBC is evolving, and there are ample opportunities for those of us who aren't as posh or well-known as Jack Whitehall. Although I’m hoping to give him a run for his money on both counts by about 2020. It’s morphin’ time!
Find out more about Future Talent & Salford Sitcom Showcase on our Storify page
On the Blog: Summing-Up Salford Sitcom Showcase! Plus more Comedy writing blogs
On the Blog: People Just Do Nothing - Writer Steve Stamp on moving from Youtube to BBC Comedy Feed to full BBC Three series
