Recently I wrote a diary post about rewriting my teaser for my pilot. Today, I finished my pilot. I loosely structured the new pilot around an outline I did. The odd thing about the is I didn’t follow it much. Every time, I started working from the outline, a new scene popped in my head. I followed that and got away from the outline. However a large part of the outline is still in tact and can be used for episode two.
I have plenty of flashbacks in this pilot, because they are all part of Drake’s backstory. In one of he most important flashbacks I have a character named the Dreamkeeper. He’s a spiritual character that enters through Drake’s dreams and they travel to parts of his past. In this flashback, the Dreamkeeper takes Drake back to the time when he was given up to Father Mike to the orphanage. Father Mike knows the woman, her name is Bridget. We won’t know how Father Mike knows the woman until a season or two later. Bridget is torn up about giving her son up, but she and her husband, Ronald are concerned for Drake’s safety. His real father is a very dangerous, powerful man and would stop at nothing to have access to Drake. As I was writing this scene, something sparked inside Drake like it had never sparked before. His emotional side came out. He allowed himself to feel anguish watching mother give him up. I suddenly felt myself feeling his pain and started to tear up myself. Having lost my own Mother in December, I am not sure if that had anything to do with it or not, but I was there with Drake, I saw his pain and I really felt for him.
About a year ago or so a friend of mine read the first few pages of the script and he gave me some very important notes. Make us care about this guy. Yes Drake had been too angry. He wanted to see what a normal day was like for this guy. I tried to do that as much as possible for him. In his eyes, we didn’t root for him enough. This latest pilot, there’s more of a human feel to Drake. We see him coach a little league team in a championship game. We watch him offer his hat to a curious Iraqi boy and of course the scene I just talked about. I haven’t read this episode back to myself. That will come tomorrow, then an edit and off to copyright it. All in all it has been a pretty good week finishing up the pilot and moving Drake’s story along. Now onto episode two. Drake lands in Iraq to save a Navy Seal. Who knows what kinds of trouble he will get into with that.
Third Eye Diary 2
The Script is the thing 