SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Hollywood Blueprint. I'm producer A.K. Moore.

SPEAKER_02 0:05

And I'm your host, Michelle Goldsborough.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

We have a very exciting episode planned for you this evening where we talk to the lovely Caitlin Ryan.

SPEAKER_02 0:12

She's an accomplished and scripted development producer at Chelsea Creative who has worked on a long list of shows.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Including Crime Scene Kitchen on Fox, Hollywood House Lifts with Jeff Lewis on Amazon slash Freevie, Flipping Showdown on HGTV, and a ton of YouTube originals, including Mr. Beast's Creator Games. Wow, that is a long list of stuff. Are we qualified?

SPEAKER_02 0:34

No. With that being said, welcome to Free Film School. It's so lovely to meet you. Thank you for doing this. Of course.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

So nice to meet you. This is uh my first time ever being on a podcast. I'm trying to try more new things this year, put myself out there. And um, you know, I love I love helping people kind of become, you know, either people can be like, oh, you're totally wrong about all this, and then I learn something, or somebody's like, oh hey, that's how I do this thing, and then I help somebody. So yeah, it's a win-win.

SPEAKER_02 1:09

That's the goal. The goal is having as candidly as possible a conversation because I'm so frustrated by the gatekeeping and I just don't think it's necessary. Totally. And also that I get to meet really cool people such as yourself, so it's a win-win. Yeah. Well, to get started, Caitlin, welcome to the Hollywood Blueprint. Thanks for being our second guest. Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Yeah, how's your Wednesday going? Gosh, uh, it feels like both a Thursday and a Monday, but it's been great. It's been uh busy, which in entertainment terms is always nice.

SPEAKER_02 1:46

Yeah, also busy in right now entertainment terms is like unheard of.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I'm I'm very lucky and and always uh, you know, some days I catch myself going, oh, I'm so busy, and I'm like, oh well, I'm busy. You're busy.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

Yeah, okay. Well, first of all, congratulations because I read in Variety that you helped develop and sell a show, and I want to plug that real quick because that's amazing. Tell me about it.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Yeah, so uh Million Dollar Nannies on Freeform and Hulu um drops on first two episodes drop on Freeform on June 17th, and then whole series drops on Hulu on the 18th. We're following a bunch of young, amazing, super fun, super funny nannies um as they're jetting off to Ebiza where they're working for families who are rich, famous, watching their kids, dealing with all of the crazy standards and rules. And then also, too, they're having their own kind of hot girl and hot boy Ibiza summer. We've got some nannies, some nannies. Um, the rest you're gonna have to watch to find out. You know, we've got some great characters, um, some great storylines that are gonna unfold. So it's it'll be it'll be a really fun one.

SPEAKER_02 3:04

I'm excited. As someone who used to be a personal assistant, granted it wasn't even for that long. I was like, I understand. Even if you've done it for like a month, any kind of nannying or personal assistant work, it you get it. You understand.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

I was a nanny. I was a nanny. So when I was developing the series, I was like, okay, I remember this and I remember that. And yeah, you know, mom comes home and something's up, you know. Something is always up. It's mom.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

So okay, now that we have this, let's take it back a little bit because I know that you went from a front desk assistant to a development assistant. Is that correct? How did you make that jump?

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Yeah, so I was very lucky in that I got my front desk assistanting and my like ground level assistanting out of the way when I was in college. So I um I was an intern at uh Revelations Entertainment, and I got kind of promoted at a certain point, you know, as much as an intern can be promoted, to a front desk assistant intern hybrid. So I was greeting guests, rolling calls, uh, parking validation. So I learned very quickly kind of the ins and the outs of this is how you just work in entertainment. Um, I also worked as a front desk assistant at a dance studio for a hot second. So again, kind of flexing the customer service skills, if you will. But it allowed me that amongst other things, allowed me to kind of skip the compulsory agency step or the compulsory front desk step. And I got hired, I started about three weeks after I graduated. I got hired before I graduated as a development assistant at a company I actually used to intern at. So it all came out. Oh, and that is why you intern. Yes, exactly. Oh, interning is meeting people. It's it's it's meeting people and getting the basic skills. And then you can kind of skip that post-grad step a lot of the time.

SPEAKER_02 5:12

Wait, how many internships did you have in college?

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Four.

SPEAKER_02 5:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

I did uh uh summer after my sophomore year, summer after my junior year, and then during the year my senior year, I did too. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 5:28

Okay, that's cool. I'm trying, I had, and most of they were like all over the place, but I haven't thought about this in years. But I had 13 internships in college, and I'm just like, why did I do that too much? Some of them were like, well, so senior side story. Uh when I graduated college, I still wasn't sure what I wanted to do. And I was interning at say us to the dress. Oh, I think that was like Monday and Friday, and I would commute from Philadelphia to New York, and then the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday part of the week, I was working as a post assistant at a small company called Cinema Cake Filmmakers. The fact that I remember that name, and they did wedding videos. Oh, like let me try to do it. I was not actually, but I was just like, let me do a bunch of things to figure it out. And I was like, let me just go to LA. But that's amazing that the internship helped you get a foot in the door because that's what it's supposed to be about. Yeah. I love that. Um, okay, so you've spent like nearly a decade working your way up from assistant to director. Yeah. What were some of the most pivotal moments that accelerated your growth?

SPEAKER_01 6:39

The only reason I've been able to do that is because I made those internship connections. My first ever internship, I had no idea I wanted to do unscripted. I just happened to be kind of the internship that I got at the time, and I was fiending for anything. Um, and I just happened also to love unscripted TV. And I got an internship at Fly on the Wall Entertainment. They do Big Brother and many, many things since then. But um it's where I started. I had a fabulous experience. My internship supervisor was great, and then her boss was great, and they ended up just so happening to have a position for a development assistant open up right after I graduated. I emailed my former uh internship supervisor, said, Hey, can you look over my resume? And she said, I'll do you one better. You want to apply for this job? And I remember the first day on the job, um, I sat down and the guy who was my boss came up to me and said, Hey, I need you to write this deck for me. Here's what you gotta do. Here's the show concept. Can you write this, you know, this, this, and this out? And I remember thinking, all right, I have no idea what I do I'm doing. I thought I was here to be an assistant and roll calls. I just got thrown into the deep end and from there, every day was figure it out. So that's kind of how I was able to get from assistant to uh coordinator to manager and then to director in a in a decently you know expeditious timeline is because I was constantly picking up more work and I was constantly saying, okay, hey, I know you asked me to do this, but I also took a stab at doing this, even though I have no idea how to do it. A lot of the times it was like, hey, nice try, but and then the next time it's like, okay, I know what I'm doing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:38

So it's I love that. Yeah. Okay. So for the people, because I feel like I'm a teaching hospital, because part of this is like teaching terms that like I myself would have wanted to know as a green person in this industry. Can you explain really quickly what a deck is?

SPEAKER_01 8:54

Absolutely. Yeah. So a deck is basically a PowerPoint presentation that in the old days, you know, we'd print it out. Now we just pull it up on Zoom or wherever. And it walks you through your um your show concept beat by beat. So usually it'll start with kind of a premise of, you know, hey, here's the world of the show, here is the why of the show, here's what you can expect, then a page where you get your synopsis of the show, and then everything else breaks down. If it's a format, it's breaking down the rules step by step. If it's a talent-based uh concept, it's breaking down the talent. And here's who this person is, here's who that person is. Um, so it's just a really helpful tool that um during the pitch, you can walk network executives through and then they can take it upstairs to their boss as they're starting to uh consider green lights.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

Yeah, and I will say, okay, I had to make a pitch deck myself. I was a temp assistant somewhere and I won't name where, and I was like, I have no idea what I'm doing. Netflix has a really great public resource for creating a good deck. Oh. Especially if you're not graphically inclined. Like there's social media graphics and then there's pitch deck graphics, and that's a completely different world.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Yeah. The first time I worked at a company that had somebody to make decks, and I was like, oh, this is so nice. Because it really is just a lot of assistants and coordinators just figuring out graphic design. So that's nice. Where is that?

SPEAKER_02 10:30

You know what? I think I found it by accident while I was like searching around the NHA Discord, and then I just saw, you know, you just like search like pitch deck and just see what comes up, but I'm happy to share it with you. Yeah, I was gonna say link in the description. I'll send it to you. There's no gatekeeping, I will send it to anyone who wants to see it. I am so happy to share resources, whatever, but I thought it was so fascinating to see because obviously it's Netflix and they're huge. So what speaks to them and they they do a really good job of mapping things out. I'm also curious about Fly on the Wall because you seem to have you were there for a little bit longer than maybe like the average person would be at a company. What was it like to work under long-term like mentorship and having people teach you?

SPEAKER_01 11:20

It it was great. I loved my time there. Um, it's a for doing, I mean, again, Big Brother is a huge show that we've had tons of others uh uh formats. We had uh Million Dollar Mile on CBS, uh Crime Scene Kitchen, which I was on the team that helped develop that, a big interior design show with Amazon Freevie, with Jeff Lewis. And um, but for being a fairly large output company, we were small. So the development team there were three of us, and I got really, really close with um my boss there, who is a gentleman named Patrick Haggins, and I credit him and um my co-worker for part of my time there, who was my internship supervisor, uh, Kathy Alvarez, with my career pretty much. They taught me everything I know, and I just became kind of a stage five clinger at a certain point. I was like constantly like, okay, you're building a deck. I'm gonna be looking over your shoulder, trying to figure out what you're doing. Yeah, can I work? You know, you're you're having a conversation about the show. Hey, I have an idea. So just it was really great to have those deep relationships and to also establish a trust and a rapport. You know, there was a lot of, you know, you start out working anywhere and you're, you know, misunderstandings happen and you're trying to learn each other's languages. And by the end of it, I mean, I worked with Patrick for until last year, actually. So 2019 to 2025. And girl, that's a long time. Yeah. And so we were able to, at the end of it, literally, like, I our offices were next to each other, and I would hear like footsteps, and I would be like, I know exactly what he's gonna say. Like it was a really smooth working relationship. And now going to other companies, working under other people, I can more easily have some of those fundamentals of here is the standard for what a deck should look like. Here is what a pitch should sound like, here are the major players in the entertainment um game. And so working under a long-term mentor like that, I was able to, you know, feel really safe and open to ask those questions and to, you know, if I didn't know something, ask about it, or if I wanted to learn something, ask about it. And um, you know, at a certain point, we would start to know, like, okay, this is what you can handle. I know you don't know this. I'm gonna explain it before you even have to ask.

SPEAKER_02 13:59

Yeah. Um, yeah, and it seems like it was also a great place because I would think one of the things I thought about asking you was what it was like for you to take on more responsibilities and how your mindset shifted at each level as you grew up at Fly on the Wall. But it sounds like you just kind of proactively said, Let me try this. Or I'm hearing people talk about this, let me, you know, put my hat in the ring or show you what I've got or just offer to help, which is really important.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Yeah, I the one thing I remember uh Patrick at one point told me, he said, um, I was I was a manager or I can't remember director at this point. And he said, You're a much better executive than you are an assistant, and you should take that as a compliment. Holy cow! We had a great laugh about that, but it's it's true. And this is what I want to tell, you know, assistants out there and people who are really they're in the industry they want to be in, they just want to move up. Be a good assistant, roll the call, schedule the meetings, but make yourself indispensable in ways that are not assistant work. So whether it's hey, you know, you hear your boss mention that they need a title, start thinking of titles and offhand, you could say, Hey, I wrote up some titles. Not, you know, you never want to impose yourself, but not sure if you want to read them. I'd love, you know.

SPEAKER_02 15:14

Take initiative and be really good at those things so that you're not, they can replace you as an assistant, but they want to promote you to coordinator, they want to promote you to manager because they put work into you, they want to keep you around, exactly training you.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

Yeah, you know, I've seen people who are like the world's best assistant, but they're having trouble moving up because their boss can't imagine them not being the assistant. Yeah. So it's kind of a uh a line that you have to tow of be a really be really good at whatever job you're doing, but also get good at the job that you want.

SPEAKER_02 15:51

Everyone wants to keep their assistant as a career assistant because you become indispensable, but they're then you're like, Can I, you know, move up the ladder? Yeah, yeah. It's wonderful to hear that they were so accommodating and a great, it's a great learning space for people. You know, they want to go someplace, think about them. I don't know. Okay, let's move into you know the development process and creative strategy, the good stuff. So, what is your current title right now?

SPEAKER_01 16:18

So, I am currently a development producer at Chelsea Creative. We do both casting and development. Most recently, we were behind the cast of uh Real Housewives of Rhode Island, which is a very fun time. Highly suggest episode Bravo on Sundays, Peacock on Mondays.

SPEAKER_02 16:38

Okay, I know nothing about Unscripted or The Real Housewives. I think I've watched my first episode of a Housewives show recently, and I don't even know what show it was. So tell me about that world.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

It is so much fun. Rhode Island specifically um is the most beautiful place people have never heard of. It's like it's it's Hampton's light, it's ever everybody knows each other, and um, you know, the cast is they're having a blast, and you can tell. So we're we've we've really been enjoying the response that everybody's been having. And um, you know, in casting an ensemble show like that, it really is so dependent on your cast members. Are they willing to quote unquote play ball? Are they willing to really put themselves out there and be themselves? And prior to me joining, actually, but Chelsea and her team found a really great group of women, and now getting to be there for the the the aftermath is is it's something really special.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

That's incredible. Ugh, I love that you're like having so much fun in your projects.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

It's so I love reality TV. I haven't watched a scripted show in like a year and a half. You haven't watched? No. I I saw I was not even The Pit. No, girl. See, I'm watching the show that I'm watching right now, everybody's watching The Pit. I'm watching um Ambulance Australia. They have full episodes on YouTube, and it's just following ambulances.

SPEAKER_02 18:11

Man, my shows, I think the Kardashians, I have to, whatever they're called now. And then it's always been Survivor because I actually didn't watch the latest season because I just I haven't had time. There's only so much you can do with your day.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

It's a juicy season. I know.

SPEAKER_02 18:31

It is a blast. I know, but I'm also super obsessed with the pit and hacks, and my favorite show is Law and Order SVU. So I'm just like, I got a schedule, you know? But okay, yeah. So you're in the development process.

SPEAKER_03 18:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 18:44

How do you evaluate whether an idea has real like sell-through potential versus just being creatively interesting? Because obviously a lot of reality shows have potential, but you're like, well, what's actually going to get numbers, viewership, whatever you're trying to sell? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

It's it's both an art and a science. Um, so we get a lot of pitches that, like you said, and you put it really well, are creatively interesting. We get very few that there's nothing interesting about them. That being said, we also get it's it's kind of a bell curve. Most of them are creatively interesting. Some of them are, you know, okay, thank you, but no thank you. And some of them are, this is a show. And in generating ideas and getting outside pitches, it really comes down to what you as a creative believe in. Um, you know, you get network mandates and you get things that, oh, networks right now want self-contained game shows, or they want series arcing ensemble shows, or they want, you know, there's always kind of a trend, and certain networks tend to specialize in certain things, but you know, you can really pigeon pigeon self pigeonhole yourself in those, but you also have to believe in it as a creative. So there's a lot of things. I would say the biggest um the biggest thing that I've been taught to think about when evaluating a concept is, and it sounds so simple, but a lot of people forget, what are we seeing? Um, I had an intern once pitch a drawing competition, and the intern said, you know, there's never been a drawing, an art painting competition before. And I said, it sounds it's creatively interesting. However, beyond seeing somebody stationary at a table drawing, what are we seeing? There's gotta be, you know, that's not enough to sustain you for a half hour episode. It's enough for a YouTube video, it's enough for a TikTok. And I think people conflate those ideas sometimes. They think it's interesting on YouTube, it'll be interesting for TV, and it's just not always cohesive. Um, I think the other thing too is topical relevancy. You know, what are current things out in the zeitgeist? What are current trends? Um, when we were developing uh million dollar nannies, there was a lot of articles and a lot of trends about celebrities in Ibiza and rich and famous people in Ibiza and families vacationing there. And separately we saw articles about nannies. So it kind of coincided. Let's put them together. Yeah, yeah. So I love that. Yeah, so it's that's a big part of it. Um, and then also too, just some of the business constraints, budget. How much is this gonna cost to make and what are episode or what are what are network budgets right now?

SPEAKER_02 21:42

Right. Yeah. I mean to to talk about today's market, what are common mistakes people make when developing or pitching unscripted material?

SPEAKER_01 21:52

Uh the two biggest are again the the logistical constraints. You know, you get a lot of people who are And then we're gonna fly from here to here, and we're gonna build a house here, and our house is gonna live here, and then we're gonna build this thing here, and you gotta start kind of thinking through budgets are not going to support that. We can certainly scale it back once something's greenlit, but if it's going if something really expensive is going up against something that can be done for cheaper, they're gonna go with something that's done for cheaper. The other thing, um, too, is IP. You know, a lot of times IP is a big thing, and you know, you've got something as simple as traitors, which is kind of a um what's the mafia? It's it's like a a mafia upscale version of a playground game. You get reboots. Um, yeah, that's another consideration.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

Um actually never seen traitors, but I know it's really good.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

It's great, it's a great time.

SPEAKER_02 22:54

Um it's just they do a great job with the ambiance and the uh Yeah, I just can't unsee Alan Cummings as like that guy in Spy Kids on the podcast. Oh my god, I forgot about that. Yeah, which has nothing to do with me being able to watch Trader. It's just like it's just how in my head I like cast typed him or whatever that freezes. I get it, I get it.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

He's he's good, but he's very deliciously like he had perfect casting.

SPEAKER_02 23:21

Yeah, yeah. Delicious is a great way to describe it.

SPEAKER_01 23:24

Yeah, uh, yeah, that's how that show feels. It's just very like, oh, it's it's it scratches a certain itch.

SPEAKER_02 23:30

Yeah. Um, so how do you balance creative instincts with the commercial realities of networks and streamers? I feel like that's a big question that can be answered across the board.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

I I if I had a like 100% answer on this, I'd be a bajillionaire because I'd have every single show on the air. Yeah. Um, it really comes down to at a certain point, you have to pick your battles. You know, I've been in so many rooms and uh um pitches where you pitch this idea, you've thought through it all the way, you every rule is fleshed out, every, you know, you have all of the answers. And somebody says, you know, oh, we don't like the title. Sure, we'll change the title. No problem. What do you want? It but if somebody says, oh, we don't like, you know, we wish this cooking competition was about knitting. That's when you have to decide, do I compromise the idea to make a sale? And sometimes it's worth it. You know, what's the budget? What's the network? Is there talent attached? Um, and sometimes it's not. Sometimes, especially if there's multiple people interested, it's uh, this isn't quite worth it. This isn't gonna work. A lot of the times it's not quite like that. It's a lot, you know. Yeah, gosh. It must be coming back to that.

SPEAKER_02 24:52

It must be so interesting to see like some of the more interesting pitches that come to you guys. Like, okay, this could be like a TikTok, like one and done.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

Yeah, well, here's what I will say is I they they always say no nothing is new. Everything is new, is old again, everything old is gonna be new. I prefer a a really maybe it's not a like, I don't want to say good, but it's it's it's a rougher pitch, but there's something bizarre and interesting about it than a really well-done pitch of an idea I've heard 50 times before. And you know, unfortunately, you just don't know until you pitch it. I've been in that seat where I think I have the world's best idea, and then I pitch it, and somebody goes, Well, we heard that pitch last week. I had one of those, and yeah, yeah, it was a competition show. I was super excited about it. We brought it to our agents at uh CAA at the time, and they said, Oh, yeah, they already have this show in development at CBS or wherever it was, and wah wah months. Yeah, so I'd rather if somebody has like a totally off-the-wall idea, I'd rather hear that than somebody who goes, Oh, it's my version of this or my version of that.

SPEAKER_02 26:06

Yeah, I I get it. Okay, speaking of pitching, obviously you've successfully pitched and sold to outlets like Hulu, Bravo, Discovery, those are some of the big ones that come to mind. Does your pitch strategy change depending on who you're speaking to? Or I mean it's kind of in my head like a cover letter. You have to like change a lot of stuff, make the mission statement make sense. But what does that look like for you guys?

SPEAKER_01 26:30

Yeah, I think it's twofold. So a lot of the times, especially when it comes to formats, not so much to with talent, because that's kind of you know, your your talent is is your talent, but with formats especially, it kind of evolves chronologically. So you go to your first pitch, and a lot of times your first pitch is your your B tier network where you're like, ah, this may not be right, and the network probably knows it may not be right, but it's a good practice. Okay. And then you get a lot of the kinks out, and you say, Oh, when we were running through the gameplay section here, this that didn't make sense at all. Let's workshop it before our pitch next week with the network where we're really mutually interested. And it keeps evolving like that. And you have your really good pitches and you have your pitches where it's oh god, I forgot to say this and this happened, and you know, it's but it evolves as you get those kinks out. Yeah, it's really just knowing the executive you're pitching, and this is where the relationship building comes in. Entertainment is mostly about relationships. Um, you know, you can have a pitch that's just a log line. And if you know the CEO of Netflix and you're getting lunch with him and you guys have a great rapport, you pitch in that log line, that could be a show. Whereas somebody else who doesn't have that relationship could email a fully fleshed out deck and it never gets read, or it gets a pitch and passed on. But it what as you're going into these pitches, it's all about the relationship and the connection. So remembering something from last time, bringing up, oh hey, so and so, how are the kids? I remember you had mentioned putting them in figure skating. Yeah, there's always those like two minutes of kind of back and forth bantering. So water cooler talks. Exactly, exactly. And that's that's where it really changes because you you know your executives and you know, okay, this person really likes this sports team. And there was a game yesterday. And I think congratulations! Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 28:34

And you're genuinely taking an interest because you know you can tell when somebody's faking something, but really the the phrase uh this is like I think applies to romantic relationships, but it's like to be known is to be loved, but that also applies to these platonic ones because you're remembering they're the things that make them tick, and then they're like, Okay, I'm listening.

SPEAKER_01 28:55

Yeah, and and it also too carries over into the pitch style of this person really likes a pitch to be fast, and they'll ask a lot of questions at the end. Yeah, this person, you pitch them, they will ask you no questions, and then you know, you can't read. There's a lot of poker faces out there, so you know, okay, yeah, I can't get slapped by this or that. You get a lot of faces that are easy to read, and you know, okay, if they're starting to look like this, I gotta do this. So just really knowing the person that you're pitching.

SPEAKER_02 29:25

Oh, sounds a little bit exhausting, but also a really good skill to get better at, and then also just trying at all is better than not trying. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

Yeah, I've I have I have been a part of some rough pitches in my day. I had to, as an intern, I actually had to pitch the guy who would have become my boss. And I gee, if I could like turn that back, I'm sure I was fidgety, I'm sure I was sweating, I'm sure I would it uh nothing made sense. And you just gotta you gotta try. The worst they can say is no. There's a lot of no's, and you just gotta, you know, you can wallow at the those no's for two seconds, and then you just gotta say, on to the next.

SPEAKER_02 30:07

Yeah, okay. So to dive just a teeny bit deeper into an unscripted pitch, tell me if what I'm imagining is completely wrong. You've got your deck, and then I'm assuming it's like a 15-minute presentation. Is that wrong?

SPEAKER_01 30:22

Yeah, roughly. Again, it really depends on your executive and your network. You get some who you have a half-hour slot and you know, you get cut off. You get some who they're always running late. Your pitch is probably gonna be like an hour, they've got a ton of questions, and so it really depends. But the actual pitch itself should be about 15 minutes of walking through the deck, and then the rest is questions and brainstorming and feedback and all of that.

SPEAKER_02 30:53

Do you include talent attachments or anything else in the pitch deck?

SPEAKER_01 30:58

It depends. Okay. Um, you know, a lot of times, I mean, again, a talent-based deck, like if it's uh a housewives show or something like that, talent is baked in. Um so if as we go into those final meetings, you've got a lot of talent baked in. And sometimes you can swap it in and out, like we'll pitch something with some initial talent, we'll get additional casting money, and then from there we'll continue to reach out, interview, refine our talent group or our team or our business or whatever we're following. But in terms of um of formats, sometimes we will, sometimes we won't. We will if there's like a celebrity EP. So if we're doing something, let's say with Channing Tatum's company. Canning Tatum will be in that deck. Um, or if we're doing something that is, let's say it's a game show about hip hop, we'll probably put in sample hosts, and it'll be this person, this person, this person, why they make sense for this uh concept. Sometimes we won't. Sometimes it'll be, you know, just hosts. If it's a dating show, for example, you can kind of plug in your dating show type host to that.

SPEAKER_02 32:11

The dreamcast.

SPEAKER_01 32:12

Exactly, exactly. Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:14

Oh, that must be so much fun. It's like you can just pick your own avatars and be like, here you go.

SPEAKER_01 32:19

Yeah, it's a lot of I that was always one of my favorite parts until it wasn't, until it's like, no, actually, we need somebody more like this. And I'm like, that's a fake person. You're asking me to put a fake person in here to host.

SPEAKER_02 32:30

That doesn't exist, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:32

Whatever you want doesn't make any sense. I still think you'd be better. Yeah, but I I love the talent piece of it, which is why right now I'm doing a lot of the talent-based um development.

SPEAKER_02 32:43

Wow, okay. So, how have streamer demands changed the way unscripted content is developed and sold? That's a big question.

SPEAKER_01 32:55

It is. I it's funny because we're at kind of a point where it's kind of the wild west. And I wouldn't even necessarily say it's streamer demands, I would say it's the constant addition of new buyers and different types of buyers. The streamers were kind of the first wave of like the new buyers. So before it was like, okay, you're gonna sell your show to Fox, CBS, ABC, CW, MTV, like there were, you know, you have your cable channels uh that you're gonna sell your show to. Cable. Then it then it was, you know, okay, now there's Netflix. Netflix is buying, then there's uh HBO, then they're just Discovery Plus, and oh now they're merging, and now there's all the all the different streamers. Then, okay, YouTube is commissioning things, but also they're not only commissioning things, you can just develop and produce something and put it on YouTube, and that way you can control the ad revenue. And oh, if you have a sponsor, not only can you do that, but you can sell it to Roku. Um, Amazon does a lot of dedicated sponsor buying. Um, Hulu has a ad-supported sponsored uh arm of their of their uh distribution platform, yeah. So, and then TikTok, you know, TikTok. Don't forget TikTok. Um, I remember the first pitch I was ever in was actually for OnlyFans. No way. And we had they were trying to put out um non-explicit adult content, and so I had developed a bunch of content for them and was part of that pitch. So it's just constantly new apps, new distributors, chick uh was it Chick-fil-A that announced a streaming platform, like ads are so it's just the it's not so much just the streamers anymore, it's all of these different funding models and platforms and what they're asking for, and then the mergers too, you know.

SPEAKER_02 35:01

Yeah, oh god, the mergers, yeah, and I can barely handle that. If Chick-fil-A or some other like restaurant chain starts getting involved, I'm done.

SPEAKER_01 35:10

Yeah, yeah. It's I mean, the mergers are are a whole thing too, because at a certain point it's like, who am I pitching and what are they commissioning? Are they commissioning?

SPEAKER_02 35:19

Yeah, and if you don't know what we're talking about, you should Google it. Yeah, oh god. It's a whole other conversation, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay, damn. I didn't even think about how many, you know, chess pieces, moving parts that are involved, whoever is demanding something. That's that's a lot to work with. That's where having agency friends comes in handy because they know what's going on and they can be like people who can separate the madness.

SPEAKER_01 35:45

Yeah, they can be like, You gotta pitch uh Scoobity Doo, the new streaming service in partnership with Home Depot, uh uh a game dance show, you know, they're looking for that. You're like, okay. Yeah, exactly. So I can do that, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:01

Wow, okay. So you've also worked with some digital creators like Mr. Beast. So I'm curious, like you mentioned TikTok. How has working on projects tied to influential digital creators, search as Mr. Beast, has that influenced your approach to casting and the development of the show? Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:22

The and when I was at Fly on the Wall, we did uh Mr. Beast Creator Games, which aired on his channel in partnership with YouTube originals, um, to basically, and I think the first two seasons or episodes were shot during COVID. So it was basically like a Zoom tournament of the first one was rock, paper, scissors, and the second one was trivia. And so, you know, being part of the development and trying to figure out what are some of these challenges that can be executed very quickly and over Zoom and um, you know, that whole process. But working with some of the these creators, a lot of them have started to function almost like mini and not even mini studios. Like, you know, you've got Mr. Beast, who he's got a full studio. He's huge. Beast Games on Amazon is fully self-produced, they don't have a another production company attached or any other secondary partners. It's them and Amazon. And you get, you know, Smosh, Good Mythical Morning. You get a lot of these creators with their own um, with their own studios. And so then the conundrum becomes why do they need production companies? We're just gonna self-produce and we'll sell it to a streamer or a traditional media outlet, or we'll just put it on YouTube and still make money from the ad revenue. So trying to carve that niche in development in order to sell them on why they need you to produce this specific show, and then also figuring out what creators kind of sit in the middle. Because you get a lot of creators that they belong on YouTube, you know, they that's their niche, that's their world, that's where they belong. And then you get the big conglomerates of Mr. Beast doesn't need us to produce his show.

SPEAKER_02 38:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:18

Who are the ones sitting in the middle where there's a show here, but they also don't have their own infrastructure. So that was a whole rabbit hole that you know, I I dove dove into last year or continue to dive into.

SPEAKER_02 38:31

Um yeah, which I also imagine is very fascinating research.

SPEAKER_01 38:35

Yes. Oh, I have seen so many. I thought I was in the loop on YouTube. I love YouTube, I watch a ton of YouTube. I was coming across creators and I was like, and who are you? Oh my god, you know, it's a lot of million of them. Well, and it's a lot of the ones for either younger kids or people outside of my my demographic. It it's it's so vast. Um, so it's really just kind of a treasure hunt. And um, I've had a bunch that I've stumbled across. We do a deal, we develop a show, either passed on or kind of development funded. Um, and then you just gotta keep going. It's it's really a volumes game with the creators, they like to be involved, um and just yeah, really selling them on why they need you versus I can just do it myself on my channel.

SPEAKER_02 39:25

I get it. We all want to be included and involved. Okay. So are there any emerging formats or audience behaviors right now that you think the industry is underestimating, considering how like your foot is in many doors right now?

SPEAKER_01 39:39

I think there's two, and they're both kind of things that we've touched on. Okay. I think the one is creator formats. I think it's still a couple years ahead of us. I think it's um, you know, they've they've tried it, you know, they did pop the balloon on Netflix, they've done with Beast Games, um, The Sidemen, uh a British YouTube channel had a version of Big Brother on Netflix. Um, so there've been some of these formats coming out, but I think there's gonna be big, especially with the ad-supported um creation of content, there's gonna be a big boom in creators double dipping. They're on YouTube, but they're also have their, you know, traditional media format. The other thing, which you know, that's kind of a futuristic, oh my god, we've got YouTubers creating TV now. What what is this newfangled thing? Um, I think there's gonna be a return of classic ensemble shows. Oh, I like it type like, oh my god, I grew up watching Jersey Shore.

SPEAKER_02 40:47

Probably was not of the right age for that, but nobody was. I was like, yeah, I was like cut.

SPEAKER_01 40:52

I'm like, look, get crazy. Um yeah, but I think people, and and this has been some of the response that I've seen from uh Real Housewives of Rhode Island and that we've seen as a company is people really enjoying kind of this old school everybody really knows each other, everybody has history, everybody they're they're having fun. You can tell that there's this lightness to it while still being dramatic. And you know, you get the omg gasp pearl-clutching moments, but you also get a lot of like levity and jokes and fun and um connected cast. Um, so I think there's going to be a lot of that as well. Um, and I think I mean it's really such an unpredictable industry. I'm sure I'm saying all of this, and the next thing is gonna be POV knitting shows or something. It's it's it's don't put that into the universe. We don't need a knitting. Hey, I can film that myself. I hope that goes on. If I can film that and sell it to CBS and make a million dollars, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:02

What would be like, okay, if you were to two questions. Yes. What would be a show that you would love to see, but you didn't want to be involved in producing, you just want to strictly enjoy it. And then what's a show that you really want to make?

SPEAKER_01 42:14

I'm trying to, I'm gonna use show because I've got a lot of ideas up here that I don't necessarily want to put out into the universe until I've sold them yet. But I'm gonna use existing shows. Um I really, really, really love any show about drugs, crime, prison, debauchery. That that I develop a lot of like Bravo, girly, you know, whatever game format. You want something hard. I want, I come home, I've seen every episode of intervention maybe four times, including the ones that they only have on daily motion. Wow. Um, so those are the types of shows I don't think I'd be necessarily uh I'll take that back. I I just I don't have a lot of experience producing those types of shows. And then there's some where I'm like, oh, this is a little bit too gritty for me. I don't know if I'd want to produce that, but I'll never say no to anything. I'll try anything once. Yeah, um, something like Maury too. I I love a good Maury. I would probably never want to produce it, but it's a ton of fun. Okay. Um, and then the show that I always wish that I had a hand in somewhere. It is one of the most interesting, well shot, well, you know, last chance you on Netflix. Boardwalk really just it's so good. It's the talent is great, the storylines are amazing, the it's shot really well, the music is good. It's another one where I've seen every season like three or four times, and it's I'll go back to it every single time.

SPEAKER_02 43:56

Wow, you've the shows you've mentioned, I maybe like new one. Which is why I love this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 44:03

I know nothing about unscripted. Oh, I was gonna say I can go even uh jerseilicious, which was like your salon jersey back in the day. Uh locked up abroad. That was an old favorite of mine.

SPEAKER_02 44:16

You say Jersey Licious and I think Fergalicious. Oh that's that's where I'm at. Great stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you are in a leadership role, which is really exciting. You are on a creative team, which probably means you have some managerial duties. I'm curious to know how your leadership skill set has evolved and what your approach to managing a team has been like and how it's evolved since you were an assistant. Because now you're on the other side.

SPEAKER_01 44:45

Yeah, I think I think there is a kind of an inverse. You know, you start as an assistant, and me personally, I started, I'm like, I know everything. I'm coming in here. I have four internships, I know everything about everything. And by having good leaders, I started to realize that good leaders don't know everything. And part of what makes them good is they recognize that and are making this a collaborative environment versus a dictatorship. And sometimes there's, you know, you always need somebody to steer the ship, you know, you need somebody to be in charge and put together those ideas and synthesize everything and pick the best one, pick a direction. But there's a difference between a manager who takes charge and a manager who wants to control everything and you know, wants to, you know, a micromanager.

SPEAKER_02 45:44

You get a lot of- Nobody wants to be micromanaged. Trust is so important. I feel like it is like the dying skill set of leadership these days. No one trusts anybody.

SPEAKER_01 45:55

Oh, totally. Yeah, it's either somebody is two hands off of like, oh, you got it, or somebody who's breathing down your neck. If you know, I'm the only person. Would you want that? Like, no. Yeah, exactly. Um, and I feel like a lot of them were probably micromanaged, you know, it's being managed is a lot of yeah, it's how you were parented. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So they were probably micromanaged at a certain point, and they were that person was probably micromanaged, and to them, that's management. But I think, you know, what when I'm working with people, it's all about the collaboration. A good idea can come from anywhere, it can come from the CEO, it can come from the janitor, it can come from your next door neighbor Steve. Hell yeah, Steve. Yeah, yeah. I've gotten ideas from just random people and we're talking, and you know, it's oh well, this, that, or the other. They say something, and I'm like, wait a minute. That's you got something there. Yeah, yeah. So it's really recognizing that and surrounding yourself with people who whose general taste you trust. Yeah. Because there's a certain taste level of you get it, you get what a good show looks like. Now, within those parameters of a good show, you go crazy.

SPEAKER_02 47:09

Yeah, hell yeah. Okay. So if somebody wanted to work in unscripted development with Chelsea Creative or just like, you know, in the unscripted role, what are some skills or things they should be working on to try to get in? And I say that with the obvious context that a lot of people already know Hollywood is really hard to work. It's hard to get in, it's hard to stay in, it's hard to move up. Obviously, everyone's trying to be proactive. What would you say to folks?

SPEAKER_01 47:37

I would say the number one thing to practice is resilience. It's it's demanding. I mean, it is you will pitch a hundred ideas, 99 will be no's, and one will, you know, get additional funding for more development. And that one might become a no, and every 99 of those becomes a show. Yeah. So it's a lot of resilience. And when you're developing these shows, you spend months on them. I mean, I've had shows that I've worked on for a year, and you put your heart and your soul, and you're a creative, and you're really developing this thing, and it goes to one network meeting and it gets passed on because, you know, oh, we've, you know, we just greenlit this and we don't need that, or uh, you know, we don't like this talent anymore, or we don't like any reason, um, business reasons, personal reasons, you just have to go with it. There's nothing you could do, there's nothing else you can do with it. You just kind you give yourself five minutes to wallow over that year of work, and then you just go on to the next one.

SPEAKER_02 48:45

Do you have a routine if you want to share? You don't have to for how you process that stressful moment of all of this, like a year plus like work and the passion you have, and you're like, breathe, walk away. How do you do all that? How do you process? How do you walk away?

SPEAKER_01 49:00

For me, I have to literally say the words on to the next one. And for me, it's like, it is what it is. I can't control it, it's nothing I did, but it it is a skill. I remember the first time we got something passed on, it was like the stages of grief. I was like bargaining. I was like, but what if we do this? And you know, and anger, it was like a whole thing. Yeah. And I remember just, you know, then it happens again and again. And I kept thinking, like, wow, if I'm gonna have this strong of a reaction to this every time, it you you just can't do it. It just takes such a toll on you. So you have to be willing to give the baby away. And even in terms of, you know, okay, if they pass on it, you're giving the baby away. But in development, also, too, if it goes into production, you're also kind of giving the baby away because that's when the development team goes hands off. And, you know, we'll get bits and pieces, but a lot of times production and showrunners kind of take over, and sometimes a show will come back and it's nothing like what you thought it was gonna be for better or for worse. And you just kind of have to look at it and go, Oh, okay, well, that's interesting. You you you just can't get attached after you after you pitch.

SPEAKER_02 50:14

Oh, that's like the hardest thing, too. You can't get attached, especially in development. And that also applies to scripted. I'm just like, that's such a hard skill set.

SPEAKER_01 50:23

Yeah, it's tough, especially too with the art versus business. You know, you want in development, you want to be an artist, you want to be creative, you want to be fun, you don't want I business developed ideas are so boring. You can tell when somebody's developing thinking, well, you know, this location and this thing here, and yeah, you know, versus somebody who's being free and developing from their heart. But then once that's done, you just you kind of have to put your business pants on and okay, I invented this project and now I have to sell it. And you gotta be a salesman versus a creative.

SPEAKER_02 50:57

This kind of leads me into a great way to kind of wrap out our conversation. I'm wondering if you remember a time when a show you pitched did not grow legs with the person, the company, whatever you call it, wherever it wanted to go, it didn't get there. You waited and then it found a life someplace else.

SPEAKER_01 51:17

I mean, it happens all. I wish I could I I'm trying to think of like what I'm saying. But if it happens all the time, that's great to know. It does, it does. It's something that if you're and this is what I tell people too, if you're passionate about an idea, keep it in your back pocket. Because it could be something that uh it's not right now, but it's right in two years. I mean, the Jeff Lewis Interior Design Project, I think we spent we started, oh, we started it started in development when I was an intern and it sold when I started as an assist or not right after I started as like a coordinator. Like it was in development for four years and it kept going uh and and and ebbing and flowing, and it just really is about timing. So if you really believe in something, keep it in your back pocket, reevaluate it. I would say, you know, you want to, when readdressing something, think of it though. Don't get attached to any of the concept necessarily. Look at actually what's happening and say, okay, I really want to make a dating show for dogs. I developed it as self-contained, and everybody's buying something arced right now, and I know it'll sell, so now I'm gonna redevelop it. And then I would watch that. It doesn't buy it doesn't sell, and then you gotta put it in your back pocket again. If you really believe in it, Godspeed, you know, if if that's what you gotta do, you do what you gotta do. Well, yeah, plenty of great ideas were once poo-pooed, it just took the right person and the right timing, and you know, believing in something is all you can do a lot of times in the business. And it's it's you gotta have hope and optimism and just stay hopefully, yeah, exactly 2026 Hollywood, just stay hopeful. Yeah, I I remember it was like survive in 25. There was something in 24.

SPEAKER_02 53:10

Oh, yeah, there's always something every year, and we're like we're we're still doing it, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:16

Yeah, it's like okay, and uh so I I'm I'm gonna say 27 is gonna be heaven. That's my oh I like that. I'm standing it now.

SPEAKER_02 53:25

I can't I will stand by that. Well, thank you so much for your time. This was so lovely to get to know you and your world and Chelsea Creative, and now I gotta watch literally any of the shows that you've mentioned because I knew nothing about you kept saying things. I was like, what is she talking about?

SPEAKER_01 53:42

If you need a guide, I got you. I I'll go through a whole it's like I've got like a library of unscripted up here, which is probably terrible. I should have like math skills or like know how to invest to change my tire, but it's like did you do your taxes? Jersey Licious, the argument between Teresa and Olivia in the parking lot. You know, if you know, you know.

SPEAKER_02 54:02

Hopefully, someone else also got a little bit of an education tonight.

SPEAKER_01 54:06

Thank you again so much for having me, Michelle.

SPEAKER_02 54:07

I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 54:08

Yay!

SPEAKER_00 54:09

Wow, there is a lot more that goes on in unscripted development than I ever realized.

SPEAKER_02 54:15

Yeah, I'm a little bit winded, but she was amazing, and I learned so much, which was the point of this.

SPEAKER_00 54:20

Caitlin, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today. It was lovely hearing about what you do. And if you're listening and think that you'd want to uh help other people learn about what you do in the film industry, please reach out to us. We are more than happy to schedule.

SPEAKER_02 54:36

We want to have a conversation with you.

SPEAKER_00 54:39

Yes. Thank you so much for listening. No, we are keeping that in there. Thank you so much for listening andor watching, and we will see you on the next one.