Some of you have a fantastic idea. Something that is knock-your-socks-off good. An idea that you cherish even though it’s… DOA.
Some sort of fatal flaw exists, perhaps in implementation, or conceptually, perhaps what you see isn’t yet technically feasible with the tools available. Perhaps culturally it’s past its time or maybe too soon. Regardless of why, your beautiful shiny idea is stillborn and you don’t know what to do with it. Stuck between an unwillingness to discard such a good idea and an inability to carry it forward, it languishes in your mind.
Some might say this is simply another white whale, and perhaps there’s some crossover certainly, but I would say it is also distinct. Some white whales might be DOA, but many are simply daunting or nebulous, which isn’t the same thing.
I’ve had a DOA for years involving the use of footage from foreign TV shows. I want to take advantage of subtitles and the general American ignorance of any other language than English. Imagine, a long running serial TV show, perhaps Supernatural or the X-Files. Imagine the wealth of scenes, acting, and scenarios included in those shows. Without even digging for b-roll footage, there would be hundreds of hours involving the same actors in a wild variety of situations. Now imagine I was writing a new show for a foreign audience, let’s say Korean. There’s nothing to prevent me from editing those clips together in any way I please, creating whole new plots, renaming characters, whatever I wanted. I could simply subtitle whatever I’d like the dialogue to be over the English voiceacting. The tone and emotion will still carry, and anyone understanding English will be treated to a bizarre nonsense blender of crazy, but from a strictly Korean POV, it would probably work. Now flip that on it’s head. There must be a long-running foreign serial TV show with fairly good acting and effects that is virtually unknown to American audiences. It’s a TV script writer’s wet dream. Instead of writing a script and praying it gets made, let alone made right, you simply make the existing material tell the story you already have in your heart.
The reason this is DOA is two pronged. One, legally, it’s a non-starter. With copyright as it is, that material would need be bought and paid for at an absurdly high cost to even attempt it. Two, even if I said screw it and figured it’d be a pirate production consigned to the torrents of the world, it’d be unethical. Those actors’ likenesses are being used and they aren’t being compensated whatsoever. Maybe, MAYBE, if the whole thing takes off spectacularly, they might get some kind of knockalong effect to their career that might benefit them, but it’d probably be more exploitative than anything else, which dampens my appetite for the idea. I can’t discard it, because, it’s honestly good, but… yeah.
Anyone else care to share their DOA ideas? Maybe with groupthink a lucky few will receive a touch of inspiration bringing them back to the land of plausibility. We saw a bit of that in the White Whale discussion last year.
