The Amelia Gething Complex returned for its second series last week on BBC iPlayer. Houmi Miura is a graduate from our Northern Voices writer development scheme and describes how she got the chance to write for the show and what that entailed.
Hello there, my name’s Houmi and I was part BBC Writersroom’s Northern Voices 2020. I’ve recently had the pleasure of going through the pitching and commissioning processes for sketches on CBBC’s The Amelia Gething Complex.
A brief had been sent out with some themes that the team were looking at for season 2 and we’d been told to see where our imaginations took us. Which for me, it turns out, are some very strange places. After binging series 1, a lot of sitting, thinking and daydreaming, I jotted down a list of ideas and waited with bated breath for the workshop.
It was just as well that I’d decided to put some deodorant on that day as I’d found myself feeling a little nervous and clammy, but it turned out that everyone on the Zoom call was lovely and their ideas were very funny. There were 3 of us from Northern Voices and seeing some friendly faces was incredibly helpful for the clammy issue.
The Producer, Assistant Producer and Amelia Gething herself were on the call – no pressure. The word ‘pitch’ often sends waves of dread through me, because I imagine business suits, PowerPoints and smooth scripts. It’s taken a long time, but I’ve realised that pitching is actually explaining your idea and chatting about it – that’s all it is. Mind blown.
Once my adrenaline stopped spiking, it was a really fun couple of hours and felt like an accomplishment in my writing life but, truth be told, I notched it up to experience and didn’t expect a commission.
Colour me surprised when I got commissioned for not 1 but 2 sketches.
Now I had to put the ideas on the page. It was a week for delivery of the first draft of a 1 minute and 1 ½ minute sketch. Cue a sitting, thinking and typing montage. Hit send, cross fingers and try to forget about it.
A few days later, notes were given that were positive, specific (helpful) and felt more like riffing on what my first draft had done. Unexpectedly pain free. So off to work on the second. Cue more sitting, thinking and typing. I had a few days’ turnaround for this one, filled with endless cups of coffee and walks to get some objectivity. And hit send.
In the meantime, I’d been added to the list of sketch writers and the Amelia Gething Complex team had sent a wider call out for sketch submissions, and they also sent another call out a few weeks after that.
I also later received a lovely surprise email, where they asked for another sketch of mine – so 3 commissions in the end from a workshop where I expected nothing out of it. Not bad at all.
Main takeaways from my experience?
- 1) Pitching isn’t scary, it’s talking through your ideas and painting the picture of what you see in an informal way.
- 2) The people with the power to commission are interested in what you have to say, it’s not a test.
- 3) Writing short sketches is a writing exercise that’s a lesson in brevity. Everyone should try it once.
- 4) Finally, writer’s clamminess isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
