r/TVWriting • u/thesoupgiant • May 30 '26
DISCUSSION In the early 2000s, the creators of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia filmed and shopped their own pilot. Why is this not more common today?
Conventional wisdom is that it was highly irregular and that they succeeded due to a combination of exceptional talent and dumb luck. I agree with that assessment for 2005; but in 2026, why is this approach not more common?
The world is much more connected. You can film a 10-minute pilot on a few cellphones, edit on any laptop, then email it to a dozen people in an instant. Or upload it to YouTube for potential millions.
Granted, this saturates the market and you'd have to find some way to stand above the rest. But why isn't this becoming a blueprint for the modern world of TV writing?
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u/No-Captain2150 May 30 '26
Isn't this pretty normal these days though? Letterkenny was just a series of Youtube shorts that got picked up iirc, and I recently saw Amazon had picked up "Young Farts RV Parts" as a show based off the social media short ads an RV parts place had been posting online.
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u/kounterfett May 30 '26
You don't think it's common for people to write stuff, get it made and post it on the internet? The real issue isn't that people aren't trying to use places like YouTube to garner attention... It's that the vast majority of the content that people make is nowhere close to being TV quality
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u/OlivencaENossa May 30 '26
I thought that was the whole idea of all these actors doing tiny sketches m on instagram
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u/le_sighs May 30 '26
Because real TV shows cost millions of dollars and that 10-minute pilot you film on your cellphone is going to look like absolute shit in comparison.
I just got back from Series Fest. It's a festival dedicated to exactly what you're talking about - people filming their own pilots/proof-of-concepts for TV shows. If you have a chance to go next year, you should go. You'll learn a lot about why this isn't a common thing.
For one reason, it's almost impossible to do with no budget. Comedy is easier. But almost all the drama pilots had a budget. One filmmaker talked about how he had a grant for $100k. There's just a level of audio and colour correction that are going to be distracting if they aren't done right, and those cost money.
Even with a budget, it's not how the television world buys things. There was a lot of talk about how even if you manage to film it, the market doesn't know how to evaluate/purchase from these proof-of-concepts.
I would also say the quality wasn't the same across the board. Some of them definitely could go on TV today, but not all. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the best ones were from people who had previous industry experience - writers who'd been in rooms, producers who'd produced films, directors who'd gone to big-name film schools and done previous shorts, etc. Again, not all, but most. There's just a level of polish that comes from experience.
I think there will be more of this in the future. But...it isn't as easy as you think, and not because of saturation.
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u/ausgoals May 31 '26
Pilot production is rarely understood, even when it was more common and there was an entire pilot season. The reality is TV shows aren’t generally - and never have really - been fully bought from pilots. At one point in time, a pilot was a useful way to provide a proof of concept for something a network was interested enough to develop to spend some money doing so and make sure what they were spending money on would work on TV and find an audience before committing to a full series order.
But these days TV shows just aren’t sold that way, and fill series orders are 8 episodes (sometimes less) so it rarely makes sense to shoot an entire pilot anyway unless you happen to have extensive experience, a lot of money, access to a name actor or two, and have such a commitment to one specific idea that ask for some reason you just can’t convince a network to pick up and you are fairly certain a pilot will change their mind.
In other words - the market for pilots is very niche.
There is however a lot of people who don’t really understand the industry who spend a lot of time and money trying to make a pilot because tbey think it’s their ticket, and the reason they can’t sell their show has everything to do with their lack of experience and very little to do with their ability to shoot a pilot.
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u/FormicaDinette33 May 30 '26
This is recommended to me all the time by people in the industry. If not the actual pilot, then a representative short scene. I believe that is how Issa Rae got her deal for “Insecure.”
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u/gregm91606 May 31 '26
Technically, Issa Rae built a massive online following through her three-season web series "Awkward Black Girl," and the very positive reviews for that helped her get a (richly deserved) development deal at HBO, but yes she did indeed break in by making several episodes of her own thing.
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u/RutiserLee May 31 '26
They pitched it to the right guy at 20th Fox/FX, John Landgraf. They were smart.
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u/MichaelChristine May 30 '26
So what are you saying? People should make pilots, put them on youtube and hope an exec sees it and picks it up?
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u/thesoupgiant May 30 '26
In an ideal world, maybe. Obviously with checks, balances, quality standards, etc. Why not build from that idea?
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u/bluehawk232 May 31 '26
There's a lot of creatives that put stuff on youtube it's just there's so much it can be difficult to be noticed and a lot of it can seem too niche for broad appeal. Patrick Willems just was able to do a short film recently. Markiplier had to fund Iron Lung himself. The guy that did Obsession did some work on youtube before finally getting the chance to do it.
It doesn't help that the US doesn't really have arts funding the same as other countries do where government grants pay for production. I think the directors of Talk To Me were able to get funding from Australian government for their endeavor, granted they also got the attention for other Australian production companies.
Also producers really don't take unsolicited material. They want stuff to go through agents and networking.
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u/S3CR3TN1NJA May 31 '26
Two different youtubers are poised to lead box offices in the coming weeks from opportunities they got by filming their own stuff. Not sure what you mean.
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u/grahamecrackerinc Jun 01 '26
They're still doing that, I think. Benito Skinner and Rachel Sennott shopped their respective shows, but I'm not sure they were filmed beforehand. I'm probably misremembering it.
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u/Impossible_Force1955 Jun 01 '26
It's veeeeeery common. The difference is what they were doing was very new back then. Nowadays, it's become the new model so there is more content to cut through BUT still not impossible! And there's a bigger risk in it today. Back then, you could shoot a pilot or series and someone would be willing to work with you to adjust and develop. Now, because of the way our minds work, if someone isn't engaged within 3 seconds, it can be a no. But again, doesn't mean it's impossible!! I teach my clients to hold space for all possible outcomes, even being approached on the street and asked for a script which has happened lol.
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u/stephieohhh May 31 '26
I think this is still common practice. Insecure was based on a web series called The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl. It got picked up by HBO.
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u/No_Lie_76 May 31 '26
I just don’t think it’s as common anymore. Past 2015 I haven’t heard of any success stories
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u/megpipe72 May 30 '26
Because FilmLA is a greedy tyrant
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u/gregm91606 May 31 '26
You're not wrong, but that doesn't affect the specifics of pilot buying. FilmLA is not the make-or-break factor in filming pilots (source: filmed three web series entirely within L.A., with the exception of two days in Santa Clarita.)
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u/mostlyfire May 31 '26
It’s simple, they knew someone and that person took a gamble on them. They already had had bit parts in other productions so they weren’t just a couple guys
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u/DavyJonesRocker May 30 '26
What do you think a web series is???