Sunday, January 23, 2011

Unique Ideas

I can't count the number of times that people not in the television business have said to me, "I have a great idea. It's like nothing else on television."

In my experience, that's very rarely the case. There are very few unique ideas. If you have an idea, it's very likely that someone else had a similar idea. The difference is in the way you execute the idea. There are many steps between the conception of an idea and a finished television program are movie. There's writing, casting, filming, production, and post-production. All of them have to work well together for the final product to work. If one of them goes wrong, your project could fail.

A successful producer or director can shepherd a project through all of these steps, keeping its essential integrity and telling the story clearly and compellingly. The people at the top of the profession -- a James Cameron, for example -- make millions of dollars because they've demonstrated that ability in projects that earned hundreds of millions of dollars. And in some cases they can spend years on a project and it can still fail to find an audience.

So if you have an idea, that's great. Remember that the idea is only as good as its execution, and spend time developing it the best way possible.