TV PILOT Screenplay – Digital Natives by Adam Preston

Watch the August 2016 Winning TV PILOT screenplay.

Digital Natives  by Adam Preston

Genre: Comedy, Sitcom

When it all goes wrong for Phil Burrows he moves to London’s trendy Shoreditch district to reinvent himself as an on-the-pulse hipster in the place where it’s all happening. Not so hip or on-the-pulse is the fact that this involves moving in with his gran, Alice, who has lived there since year dot. To his horror Phil finds that a strange, vain, deluded twentysomething vlogger has wormed his way into her affections and now occupies the spare room. But horror turns to hope – could the technologically savvy Sam Fazackalee hold the secrets to his success?

CAST LIST:

NARRATOR – Becky Shrimpton
PHIL – Lorne Hiro
ALICE – Susan Wilson
SAM – Rais Muoi
QUILLON – David Straus
GEORGE – Stephen Flett
JOHN – Adam McNamara
VERA – Laura Darby

Get to know the winning writer Adam Preston:

What is your TV Pilot screenplay about?

Three characters from three different generations are shacked up in a house in Shoreditch, East London, the UK’s hotbed of innovation and new-tech. There they try to pursue their various dreams by doing what everyone is doing around them – using technology and the internet – but for them it never quite works out…

Why should this screenplay be made into a TV show?

There’s this assumption that everyone is comfortable with the rapid rate of technological development – but we’re human beings not robots and a lot of innovation leaves people feeling anxious or baffled. Digital Natives will be a release valve for all this pent up anxiety – meanwhile the age of robotics is only just getting started…

How would you describe this script in two words?

New-tech farce

What TV show do you keep watching over and over again?

Seinfeld

How long have you been working on this screenplay?

About a year. I made a short in 2015 called The Last Post – you can watch the trailer here: https://youtu.be/WjYFg1biT8Q This pilot expands on those themes

How many stories have you written?

Too many to count but I am very proud of a screenplay called The Second Coming which now has an Oscar nominated director attached.

What motivated you to write this screenplay?

There’s this huge gulf between my parents generation with their total bafflement with new technology and people in their 20’s who don’t even think of themselves as living in an age of technological development – for them it is just life. Then stuck in the middle is the generation (now in their 30s) who saw all this stuff come in. They have one foot in and one foot out of it. These disparities struck me as offering that essential ‘comic gap’ where world views collide to create laughs. I wanted to write a comedy that enabled me to have fun with that disparity of experience and understanding.

What obstacles did you face to finish this screenplay?

It’s hard to justify spending time writing stuff on spec but I felt very inspired and just made the time.

Apart from writing, what else are you passionate about?

I’m fiercely passionate about directing too.

What influenced you to enter the festival? What were your feelings on the initial feedback you received?

The same organization selected my screenplay Misprints for a reading and the intelligent feedback I got from that was very valuable. Whatever you are writing you need feedback but with comedy it is absolutely essential. The LA TV Festival feedback on Digital Natives was right on the money – offering some great ideas and a wonderful boost of encouragement. The draft I did following the feedback was a substantial improvement.

Any advice or tips you’d like to pass on to other writers?

I’m reluctant to give advice at this stage of my career but one thing I can say for sure is that it helps to network and develop good contacts in the indust

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Director/Producer: Matthew Toffolo http://www.matthewtoffolo.com

Casting Director: Sean Ballantyne

Editor: John Johnson