About
Andre Bormanis, BS, MSc was born in Chicago, but grew up in Arizona, where the dark night skies encouraged his love of astronomy and space science. He holds a B.S. in physics, and a Master's in science, technology and space policy, earned under a NASA Space Grant Fellowship at The George Washington University. He became the science consultant for the Star Trek TV and film franchise in 1993, and was soon writing episodes of Star Trek: Voyager. He became a full-time writer and eventually co-producer on Star Trek: Enterprise. He then served as a writer-producer on the CBS TV series Threshold and Eleventh Hour, the syndicated series Legend of the Seeker, and Disney XD's Tron: Uprising. He worked as a scientific consultant on the FOX / National Geographic production of Cosmos, and as a writer and co-executive producer of the National Geographic miniseries Mars. He is currently a writer and supervising producer on the Fox series Orville. He also serves on the board of directors of the Griffith Observatory fund-raising nonprofit organization, Friends Of The Observatory.
LinkedIn Profile: LinkedIn.com/in/andre-bormanis-7714a34/
Topic
Second Star to the Left and Straight on Till Morning, or: Project Management Challenges for Television Starships
Abstract
Making a successful one-hour network television series is a major production challenge involving literally hundreds of people with diverse talents and responsibilities, multiple layers of management and control, and logistical problems that change on a daily, even hourly basis. How television professionals deal with these challenges has been evolving since the earliest days of broadcast television, but much of the process is no different than it was half a century ago.
Andre Bormanis is a television writer and producer, and has worked in the industry for nearly thirty years. In this presentation, he will describe the basics of modern television production and its unique character from the perspective of a writer – every show begins with a script! He will share his experiences working in writing and production, and describe how television compares to other industries that require hundreds of people working together under tight budget and schedule constraints to produce a product.
General Outline of Presentation:
My TV origin story: After finishing my master’s degree in science, technology, and public policy, I was hired as the Science Consultant for the final season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the second season of Deep Space Nine. I worked directly with the writing staff to find the right technical language and scientific terms for dialog, provided a deeper understanding of scientific concepts and phenomena (ex: comets) used in stories, and ensured that established fictional terms invented for the Star Trek universe (phasers, transporters, warp drive, and other “technobabble”) were used consistently and correctly. It was also my job to keep the writers and producers abreast of recent scientific discoveries and inventions that could be fodder for future stories.
My first professional story sale, “Riddles”:
- How I came up with the story
- How I developed it
- How it changed from initial conception to final script
The Outlining Process
- In the writers room
- Pitching ideas and stories
- Breaking and boarding a story
- Writing a treatment
- From treatment to teleplay
The Production Meeting
- What can we cut?
- How many new sets, guest cast, props, etc.?
- How do we schedule the shoot?
Shooting the Script
- Standing sets first, new sets last
- Location shoots generally only in summer months (days longer than 12 hours)
The Editing Room
- Cutting to time
- Adding music, ADR
- Editing as “the final rewrite”
My first produced teleplay: “Fair Trade.” The story had been broken, but no one on the writing staff was available to write the teleplay. My big break!
Being on the Enterprise writing staff. My real education in writing for television. In the belly of the beast. Warriors are made on the battlefield. The Merciless Production Schedule: When we start, we know when every episode is scheduled to start shooting. If we don’t have a script and have to shut down, it costs us about $100K / day. Budget pattern for Enterprise ~$3M / episode.
Industry Standard Production Software: Movie Magic. Used to schedule the production, organize long-lead and short-lead production needs (new sets, guest cast, costumes, props, hair and makeup, etc).
Typically an episode of television will air just two or three months after it’s produced. Much more satisfying than writing features, which take years to get on screen if they do at all, and involve even more writers and rewriting than TV scripts.
To finish: A few thoughts on the future of writing for television.
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