Friday, February 26, 2010

Bloggaday 12 – SitCom VideHos… or is it HoVids?

Bloggaday 12 – SitCom VideHos… or is it HoVids?

If I ever became a major screenwriter/series creator, one of the things I want to do is an idea based on family videos.
Now, I’m going to bore you all with how I cam up with this idea, afterall, I’ve been a bit shy of 500 words. A few days ago, I decided I was going to grill up a steak. My class was cancelled well in advance, so I figured I would do it then. Day comes, I buy steak, and unless a wanted side dishes of cats and dogs, it was going to be rather difficult to grill. Yes folks, it started to pour.
But wait, I know we have a little grill, so if it lets up a little, I can use that and it would all be dry. Then I imagined myself huddled out there in the dark, shivering from the cold.
From here, I start flashing back to TV shows like Home Improvement or even 2 and a half men where Charlie brought a personal TV to Chelsea’s house for his night over. Then I thought how great it is, that now adays, we have iPods (and I guess if you’re from a Geico commercial, a Zune) and we can just watch the stuff we have deemed great enough to be with us at all time.
So now the picture is me, huddled in a huge jacket and snow hat, big scarf and all toasty (interesting mental image that I get, since I have none of those things), sitting outside my garage, light peaking through the door, watching my iPod while my steak cooks.
Now the jumping point here is when I thought of Charlie in Chelsea’s bed, kickin it and watching mini TV, I amused myself, because I would have had him watching 2 and a half men, the sound barely audible enough to here Jake taking some fool’s poker money or the like.
Now combine this with the old episode of Home Improvement where Tim eats one too many Polish delicacies and is watching old Tool Time episodes. It’s really nothing more than a clip show, but then I thought it would be kind of neat to take this to a home video setting. I think my inspiration here is probably the episode of Scrubs (yes, I watch far too much TV) where JD sees the video of his kid and decides he doesn’t want to be a part-time dad.
Now my idea is really coming together. Tool time had the benefit of being a show within a show, and thus easy to be a clip show. The last bit of inspiration is the episode of 2 and a Half Men where it’s Jakes Birthday, and Allen comes late with Candy tagging along. Candy rings the doorbell and they walk in. In the awkwardness, he blurts out something along the lines of “I’m having sex with this gorgeous (Gorgeous will be a subject of an upcoming bloggaday. Yay for broken 4th wall foreshadowing) 22 year-old.” Charlie grabs a camcorder and tells him to go back out and do it again.
Now, I would actually write into my series, events where cameras would be in the scenes: handheld, mounted, cellphones, etc, and other true, home video moments. I would then later have an episode where all of this original footage would be aired under the guise of some storyline.
I don’t know if I really see it in my cards to be the next Chuck Lorre, so please, someone take this creative* idea and apply it creatively* to a series or movie or something. That way, when you do, I can show people this weblog and bitch about how you stole my idea. And really, isn’t THAT the American Dream.


*As Einstein said, “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”

No comments:

Post a Comment