MAN ALIVE - INTRODUCING THE CHARACTERS

Character Profiling and Casting For Man alive

As a writer, I always find that words flow better onto the page when I know exactly who I am writing for. This does not mean the person I have written for needs to play that character but it helps with my imagination. Sometimes of course they are a combination of people I have met during personal experiences and as such I have not found this limiting. For MAN ALIVE I decided to spend time casting my characters before I wrote the majority of my script to aid me with description and dialogue. I a number of weeks carfeully selecting each and every actor to play my 20+ roles for the series. These actors and actress are British and American, with a mixture of house hold names and unknown talent. They have all appeared in television dramas, many of whom in America and particularly for the AMC network which is important from a producers role when pitching to the channel, they have already had success with them.

I then looked into character profiles, composed a list and with Lauren worked on a way of presenting the main characters in our package. This will be in the form of case files and prison documents. We will also look to produce wanted posters that could be used in the marketing campaign. Below is my work on this area so far;

Before I named the characters, cast them and wrote the case files I sat down and wrote a paragraph or two about their role in the series and where they are heading.  Here is an example of one of the main characters;

Ethan Harperr

A young and wise LAPD cop, with a beautiful wife, and beautiful daughter Molly. Life was perfect in his hometown on the golden west coast. Then it all changed. 

He is the newest member of Coldmarsh Prison, and has been placed on Death Row, for the murder of his Partner James McCarthy. He is also charged with making deals with LA’s biggest Drug Lords. The LAPD cop is of course innocent. Up until now he has been an exemplary officer, harsh but fair. Then he stumbled upon his co workers, taking money from gangs, and promoting brutality among the force. When he made an official complaint, he was taken to a warehouse and locked away, whilst they murdered his partner, who also shared the same information. Ethan Harper, is to be made an example of, and will be punished by death in front of millions of people live on national TV by The Network. However, his only hope is the very same network and their lack of desire for justice. All they care about is ratings, if he can win over the nations heart, and increase votes, the network will keep him alive. But his only hope for escape, is getting into “The Lockdown Games”. 

This is an example of the case files we are looking to print professionally and include in our package:

Michael Harding 94965 by Lauren Howard

Here is a list of all the characters featured in the series, the role within MAN ALIVE, key plot developments, who I have cast to play them, a picture of the actor and small bio:

Charcter List PDF by Lauren Howard

MAN ALIVE - Researching Scripting Writing for AMC

MAN ALIVE SCRIPTWRITING

For MAN ALIVE I will be writing a full Pilot Episode to be aired on AMC at on Sunday 8th December 2013. AMC is funded by advertisements and as such the scripts are written in the form of “Acts. Typically each episode is split into four Acts that build up to a cliffhanger which is then followed by a 4-5 minute advert break. Therefore an hour time slot for the channel, which most typical dramas are, will only be filled by 40-45 minutes of drama (Due to adverts before and after the episode as well). If the traditional screenplay time of one page per one minute of action is applied, I will be looking to write a 42 paged script.

Below is an example AMC pilot episode screenplay from the hit series Breaking Bad. The writing is exciting, dramatic and full of twists and turns. I would like to base my style on this pilot episode and use techniques such as flashbacks which reveal key plot lines as well as simple actions that are later revealed to have major consequences. 

Screenplay Breaking Bad Pilot by Lauren Howard

MAN ALIVE - AMC's The Prisoner

Research into the Hit Series’ of AMC

THE PRISONER

A remake of the original series had been in the works, in one form or another, since 2005. The series premiered on November 15, 2009 as a miniseries on North American cable channel AMC in cooperation with British broadcaster.  The six part series premiered in the UK on 17 April 2010.

The series begins with an unidentified man waking up in a desert and finding himself in the middle of a pursuit as mysterious guards chase an elderly man through a canyon. The old man dies soon after, but not before passing a message on to the younger man: "Tell them I got out."

Exploring the desert, the man arrives in an enigmatic community, whose residents inform him that it's called simply The Village. Everyone he meets is known only by a number—he learns his number is 6—and he discovers that they have no knowledge or memory of the outside world.

6 himself is unable to remember his real name, or much of his life before the Village, only snippets of memory of New York City and a mysterious woman he met in a diner and took home. Meanwhile, he soon finds himself locked in a battle of wills against 2, the Village's leader, who goes to great lengths to make 6 assimilate into life in the Village. 6, meanwhile, tries to contact "dreamers" – Village residents who, like himself, have been experiencing flashes of memory of their life outside the Village. Along the way, he befriends 147, a Village taxi driver; 313, a doctor with whom 6 develops a romantic connection but who has her own secrets; and "11–12", 2's son, who begins to question the reality of the Village.

Each episode title in the series is one word taken from an episode title from the original programme.

Main Cast: 

• Ian McKellen as 2 / Curtis
• James Caviezel as 6 / Michael

• Ruth Wilson as 313 / Sarah

• Jamie Campbell Bower as 11–12
• Hayley Atwell as 4–15 / Lucy
• Rachael Blake as M2
• Lennie James as 147
• Renate Stuurman as 21-16

The Prisoner shows that the channel AMC could warm to a series that is set in a dystopian future that deals with themes of imprisonment. The Prisoner was also AMC’s first successful miniseries which is what our series hopes to be 

MAN ALIVE - IDEA MOOD BOARDS - What ideas will be in the script

MAN ALIVE THE FUTURE

I have researched some prototypes of ideas that I want to include in the script, such as advanced holographic television screens, smart TV’s (already in existence), microscopic flying surveillance drones in the disguise of mosquitos, new style prisons and architecture for The Network’s HQ . Below are my findings in image form.

Mood Board

MAN ALIVE - AMC RESEARCH - THE WALKING DEAD

The Walking Dead

I am currently watching the walking dead, and although the last series has started to decline, the first was ground breaking. The production level was close to that of LOST but the storytelling was more intricate. 

The Walking Dead is an American horror drama television series developed by Frank Darabont. It is based on the comic book series of the same name by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard. The series stars Andrew Lincoln as sheriff's deputy Rick Grimes, who awakens from a coma to find a post-apocalyptic world dominated by flesh-eating "walkers", resembling zombies. He sets out to find his family and encounters many other survivors along the way. The eponymous title of the series refers to the survivors, and not the zombies.

The Walking Dead premiered on October 31, 2010, on the cable television channel AMC in the United States. It premiered internationally during the first week of November 2010 on Fox International Channels. Based on its reception, AMC renewed the series for a second season of 13 episodes, which premiered on October 16, 2011.Two episodes into the second season, AMC announced that the show would return for a third season of 16 episodes, which began airing on October 14, 2012.[8] On December 21, 2012, AMC renewed The Walking Dead for a fourth season of 16 episodes.[9]

The series has been well received and has received many award nominations including ones for the Writers Guild of America Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series (Drama). The series has also attained strong Nielsen ratings, surpassing various records for a cable series, including receiving 12.4 million viewers for its season three finale to become the most-watched drama series telecast in basic cable history.

Based on the comic book series of the same name, The Walking Dead tells the story of a small group of survivors living in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. Most of the story takes place in the Atlanta metropolitan area and then the surrounding countryside of northern Georgia, as the survivors search for a safe haven away from the shuffling hordes of predatory "walkers" or "biters" (as the zombies are referred to in the show), who devour any living thing they catch, and whose bite is infectious to humans. The plot is focused primarily on the dilemmas the group faces as they struggle to balance their humanity with their survival against the zombie horde, and later, how they cope with members being killed and deal with other human survivors they encounter, many of whom are dangerous and predatory themselves.

The group is led by Rick Grimes, who was a sheriff's deputy before the zombie outbreak. At every turn they are faced with the horror of the walking zombies, the changing dynamic of their group, and hostility from the scattered remains of a struggling human populace who are focused on their own survival now that the structures of society have collapsed.