Pilot film

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Deficiencies: Describes only 90-minute pilot films and thus only the German situation, arbitrarily chosen examples, good evidence is missing - C ENNOX X 13:59, May 20, 2015 (CEST)

A pilot film , also known as a pilot for short , is a film that was designed to introduce a television series . It serves to introduce the story or prehistory of the series, to introduce the main characters and to make the further episodes of the series palatable to viewers.

Pilot films as "test balloons"

In the United States in particular , the pilot is usually also used to assess how the public , reviewers , audiences, and potential advertisers respond to the actors and the concept of the series. Sometimes pilot films are not broadcast, but - sometimes as a short version that is supposed to give an impression of the plot and appearance of the series - only shown to a test audience or are made by a production company in order to sell a series concept to a television station . Often, based on the evaluation of the assessment by the test audience or the broadcaster, the cast, parts of the plot or the entire series concept changes again between the pilot film and the start of the series. Sometimes there is no series start or a modified one in which the original pilot films are not used. If a series concept is not sold, a pilot film can never be broadcast or only in a different form.

Pilot broadcast

Even in the non-fiction sector, television stations often produce a pilot program first before an entire season is commissioned. The decisive factor is then the quota that the shipments achieve. If this is satisfactory, the broadcaster orders further episodes. If not, there is usually no continuation.

Examples of unused pilot films

  • For Star Trek 1964, the pilot episode was The Cage (The Cage) shot, which was initially rejected by the studio and not published until more than twenty years after its production. The series then started with a different cast. Excerpts from the first pilot film were later integrated into the double episode Talos IV - Tabu .
  • Director Alexander Singer directed a first pilot for the series Falcon Crest in 1981, entitled The Vintage Years , which has not been used for the series and has not yet aired.
  • The pilot of the series Buffy - The Vampire Slayer was shot only as a promotion for interested broadcasters and never aired. He was much shorter, had a different leader and instead of Alyson Hannigan played Riff Regan , the role of Willow Rosenberg . The plot was broadly used in the first episode ( The Center of Evil , original title: Welcome to the Hellmouth ).
  • For The Big Bang Theory , a first pilot was produced in 2006, from which only the characters Leonard and Sheldon were taken.

See also

Web links

Wiktionary: Pilot film  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. The Vintage Years imdb.com, accessed December 11, 2015
  2. Falconcrest.org called on December 11, 2015
  3. ^ Christian Junklewitz: The Big Bang Theory: The Alternative Universe . Serienjunkies.de . June 5, 2010. Retrieved August 29, 2012.