Ideas for a Office Sitcom?

R

RobbieD

Active member
Have access to a nice office with a few other locations in the same building.

Thinking of putting together a pilot of a sitcom series featuring 3 main guys and 1 girl. Most of the shots will take place in the office but there will be other locations as well. Thinking of having some colorful extras to make things more interesting as well.

The 3 guys will be single and will be starting up a DOT COM company (or running it) so most of the props will be computers and/or technology.

Just wanted to see if anybody has some really good ideas for the show. This will be a comedy so go hard....almost anything goes no matter how crazy you think it might sound.

Thanks all.
 
To get ideas, you need to be more specific than this:
What sort of ideas specifically?
You mean the type of company they will be running?
The kind of characters the office workers should be?
Or specific episode story ideas?
 
This is an easy genre to get trapped into the predictable.

My first thought is to make them true starts-ups trying to get the ellusive big investor. They are four partners working out of a makeshift office (garage, warehouse, bedroom-turned-home-office).

They need to work in close proximity, where sandwiches and post-its occupy the same space.

The woman is unavailable (not into men), and is there is a constant battle over the design of their product catering to men or women.

One of the guys is in touch with his fem side, and often sides with you female character. Occasionally your female character sides with the two men, and leaves the other on his own.

Episodes can lean toward presenting new ideas to wary investors, and how they continue to botch it up.

They are smart, but just can't put into laymen's terms what it is they are trying to accomplish. They talk way techie all the time.

Make the office void of anything living except one struggling plant as a metaphor. They water it but it never grows. One day it has a new leaf, and everybody reads it as a good omen.

Soon they start using the plant as a crystal ball for the business.

Let them have small successes as the episodes progress.

Other episodes can be outsiders trying to steal their ideas, a tech writer trying to put their idea into real words, one or two wants to give up, system failures, ridiculous ideas, personal issues that spill over into the cramped office, etc.

alex

www.alexwhitmer.wordpress.com
www.thegoloaffair.wordpress.com
 
There's a great documentary from 5 or 6 years back called STARTUP.COM that you should check out. Watch that, and then think of how you can make it funny. It's a really depressing movie, really, but there's tons of potential for jokes if you're paying attention.
 
I think trying to keep up the pretense from episode to episode of trying to get the company off the ground is going to become tiresome to the audience. To me, it's much more entertaining if the nature of their business is so unusual that it lends itself well to comedic situations. For instance, maybe their company is a talent agency, catering to all sorts of weird types and off-the-wall assignments. Different episodes could involve bizarre roles they have to try to find people for. Or bizarre people they have to deal with. Or any number of other things related to the movie/TV biz.

Just my 2 cents.
 
Like you, I'm also trying to make a web sitcom, and I think characters are more important than the setting. In The Office, the company is a paper company precisely to demonstrate that their work is unimportant. And the whole series revolves around one really interesting character - the incompetent boss. I would rather start by creating characters that would be fun to watch and then putting them in an environment that brings out the best in them. See what I mean?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top