Five Essential Steps For Developing Your Own Reality TV Show Or Documentary Film
By Hector V. Herrera

These five steps will help you set out on the path towards developing your own reality TV show or documentary film with a professional, well thought out concept and a solid 30 second pitch.

1. THE HOMEWORK: The first step in developing your show or documentary film is research. As you begin flushing out your idea, do your homework. Think of all the reality TV shows you've seen in your lifetime. Which ones did you enjoy most? Why? Make notes of them and actively search for and try to find the most successful shows resembling your concept and ideas. You are going to need those in order to write an effective "log line" for your Reality TV style online video series, program or blog.

2. THE TREATMENT: Step two in the process of creating a sound TV show or documentary concept, is to write a one-page treatment. If you are writing a treatment for a reality TV program or documentary film, then begin the treatment with a single solid and well-written paragraph that grabs the reader's attention and briefly introduces them to the each of the themes you will cover in greater detail in the paragraphs below it. Dead simple... Right?

3. THE LOG LINE: Once you have a solid treatment down you can move on to step three. You will need to create a truly effective log line for your reality TV show or documentary film. Remember that a Log Line is a brief summary of your TV show or documentary concept, it should give a brief synopsis of the main plot, and what makes it different or unique, as well as what makes it similar, to other programs.

4. THE STORYBOARDS: The fourth step in developing a good reality TV show or documentary film concept, is to illustrate your point and that means creating storyboards to visualize your concept. You want to give the reader a visual feel for your TV show or documentary. Do some homework on branding techniques and search for royalty free images that will help illustrate your story. If your concept is for a reality TV show or even for a documentary film or series, don't be afraid to shoot stills with a digital camera or use stock photography to create your storyboards.

5. THE ONE SHEET: The final step in developing your concept for a TV show or documentary film is to put all of the pieces together into a single one sheet document that includes your log line, edited copy, a few key images and a brief synopsis of your reality TV show or documentary film concept. For an reality TV show or documentary film producer, this is the equivalent to a head shot for an actor or model, or a sizzle reel for a director or cinematographer. It's your calling card and the one thing anybody will ever really read all the way through. You need to grab the reader's attention immediately or it will quickly end up under a pile of other really great ideas, or most likely, under another thousand or so really mediocre ones.

Utilize each of these steps to focus on telling your full story in a clear and succinct fashion. The reader will appreciate it and will likely give it do time and consideration, which is likely to be 30 seconds or less. But, then again, it only takes an instant to make a good decision. Believe me, the media industry is beaming with content created in this exact way! If you follow the general guidelines in these examples you will have a short document that explains your brand vision clearly and professionally.