Two local film makers are looking to enter your television sets.
Christina Nicolaou and Blair Wood entered Idiot Parade, a television series created by the two, into the CBC ComedyCoup competition.
With over 300 projects submitted, the pair have advanced into the top 55 and are looking for local support to making their dreams a reality.
The CBC ComedyCoup is a disruptive studio that accelerates comedy creators towards development and production opportunities for their original show concepts. Over a 10-week period, competitors advance on ComedyCoup’s fan-fueled social web platform, by creating fresh content to package their projects and engage fan support.
The winning project will begin working with ComedyCoup producers to to deliver, market and broadcast the special on CBC prime time by Fall 2015.
“The more content you are making, the more people are getting to see of your work, which is as good as winning,” Nicolaou said.
Teams are assigned tasks each week, such as creating a trailer, meet the team features and a poster to market the program. That, combined with a full work schedule, have led to many sleepless nights, Wood says.
“So much work goes into this. You need to show them the direction you are taking within the first 30 minutes,” he said. “There is lots range in many of the projects so far, but you have to make sure it’s sustainable as a series.”
Idiot Parade started off as a short film produced by the duo. They began re-writing the script when they found out about ComedyCoup. A short time later, armed with a completed pilot and script, they began working on the assignments and gathering votes.
“I grew up here, so it would be really cool to get the support of Pelham behind this project,” Nicolaou said. “Often you are making stuff and people aren’t seeing it, so this has been great to get our name out there in social media and online.”
Voting runs from Nov. 6-9 online. Keep up to date with the project by following them on the official website www.comedycoup.cbc.ca/idiot-parade.
Nicolaou says the more people share, watch and interact with the show, the chances of advancing increase as they enter the final 15 projects.
“It’s all us. This is our project and we hope people like it as much as we do.”
