Everyone knows that a good show needs a good theme song and credit roll. NCIS, Law and Order, The Unit, 24...need I say more. So, here's the newest 2nd Unit competition. In the spirit of DV Challenge, Horror Fest and others, we're holding a competition to create the Opening and Closing credit roll and theme song for El Papel. It should be 60 seconds long, youthful and upbeat to match the storyline and use your favorite form of NLE program, Flash, audio program and whatever else you'd like. The only restriction is that the material, and we mean all the material video and audio, motion and still, needs to be original.

What's the storyline? Well, you've all read it at www.2nd-unit.tv and if you haven't, we left it up for this week as well as last. Just think the docudrama AND 13 weeks of following the family as they live the life of the undocumented facing their specific issues as well as those of every day life.

The cast is comprised of Pablo, a young, Mexican college student in his Senior year at UCLA, his younger brother Juan, 15 and in high school making a daily chioce beteween life in the family and life on the streets with the influence of gangs and drugs and all that growing up pressures of youth in high school today entails, and Mama, the mother who's working two jobs to raise her family as well as helping in the political movement of immigration reform.

Now, like the industry itself, this is fun and games but it's serious fun and games with Sony handling distribution of the final docudrama and the series being pitched upon completion to American network and cable as well as Telemundo and Univision who are already waiting to see the finished 60-minute pilot/docudrama. So along with First Prize, you've also got the the motion picture industry looking directly at your work with complete screen credits. And what is first prize? A full copy of either Final Cut Pro or Adobe Creative Suite, your personal choice. As you know, we use both products at Blue Line/Hawkfeather and 2nd Unit and both companies, Adobe and Apple are strong supporters of our productions so it's up to you which flavor, Mac or PC, you'd like.

So there you have it. A tall order with and equally tall prize. Are there runner-up prizes? Yup and we're setting those right now but be assured, if you've ben following along with 2nd Unti, you know they'll be equally good. So roll up your sleves, put on your thinking hats, warm up your current versions of FCP or Premiere and their graphix, audio and special efx partner software programs and get to work. There have been other contests but none that'll get you a gig on network and cable television.

this is probably a naive set of questions, but how do you do a credit roll without knowing who to credit? do you just dummy in a bunch of non-names or latin text? and is this one segment or two? seems like opening and closing are often two separate entities which may echo each other but do separate things...

and does this mean you are keeping the title "el papel?" it seems that we might need to know the title to do an opening sequence. i like that title, personally,....

sounds like a really fun challenge, though, with awesome potential.

Actually not so naive. The easy answer is that it's the artistic aspect of title creation we're concernerd with and not the names of the players. Spike Lee or Rush Limbaugh, they're just names in the credit role and the same goes for the name of the docudrama and series. El Papel. Know the storyline and create the look and feel of the docudrama and series. The storyline? It's UCLA meets East LA. It has pieces of white, black brown, yellow and green. It has latino, black, caucasian, asian and every other thread of America. It has hip-hop and grunge, rap and SKA. It has gang-bangers and valedictorians. It's 90210 and it's East LA. It's 90201 meets East LA... So I guess it's 90022.

This is not an easy assignment but then again almost $2000 first prize is no small reward. You need to feel the story and you'll feel the beat. When you feel the beat, it's a result of what you see in your mind's eye. Shoot the images you see in your head, match it to the beat and you have the theme. It sounds easy and it is...at least 99% of it is. But it's that elusive 1% that just drives you crazy. Have you ever known what you've been looking for and tried to put it down on paper or film. Everytime you think you got it you step away and say, "That's good but it's just not there." And you'll probably do that 1000 times. And then that one second comes when you know, "I Got It." You can't describe it. You can't put it into words. It's just that feeling of, "That's it" that's so elusive and when you find it...when you hit it, well, "That's it." That's what you're looking for because that's what we're looking for. So don't worry aboutht the players or the title. Get to know the storyline and feel the beat. And by the way, we're looking for a beat, the music; NCIS, The Unit, 24, CSI. We're not looking for a theme song ala All in the Family. Again, know the storyline, feel the beat see the images put it all together... and we'll be here to help you along.

Here's another silly question: what's the deadline?

and, are you keeping the title "El Papel"?

Bob

I think so. The script has picked up on it and so it'll probably go from working to titled in the next couple of weks althjough with a stickie. Something like El Papel; In Search of Equality or El Papel; The Paper Chase.

So where do we send our submissions? And what format?