Thought we'd share a few of the phrases that have become short cuts for the writing staff here on Eureka. It's a small taste of the kinds of things you'd hear if you were hanging out with us in the writers room.
Chocolate and Peanut Butter: When the combining of two sciences are discovered to be the source of the overall problem in an episode. (ex: Your chocolate got into my peanut butter and now the Earth is going to spin off its axis.)
Dr. "Science": A
guest star who plays a vital role in an episode as the cause of a problem, as a mislead for
who/what is behind a problem, or as an expert in a particular field who provides knowledge that informs the story. We use this name as short hand before we actually come up with the name of the character. (ex: Dr. Cloud works on new cloud seeding technology in order to create rain in otherwise dry climates. Dr. Cloud eventually became Dr. Paulo Herrera featured in episode 307, "Here Come The Suns".)
Eye Candy: The big, fun VISUAL sci-fi component of an episode. Rather than talk about a particular science problem, it’s always more fun to SHOW its effect.
Promise of the Premise: Borrowed from a book by screenwriter Blake Snyder, this phrase is a reminder to deliver on the built-up anticipation your audience has as they watch an episode. For example, when you think about a particular story idea, what is the key image that pops into your head? If you fail to deliver that image, you are not living up to the promise of the premise in eyes of your audience. Take the movie TWISTER. Going into it, the audience is expecting to see scenes in which the characters get caught in a tornado. Say what you will about its quality, but there's no arguing that TWISTER delivers on its promise.
Bananas on Bananas: The moment in the story/scene/plot where there are simultaneous things happening that have the same emotional or plot driving effect. This is something we work hard to avoid because often it can make the story confusing and disffuse the intended emotional impact of the episode. The phrase originates from the comedy writing world -- if you have two jokes right on top of one another, they cancel each other out. The banana represents the old school comedy bit of a guy slipping on a peel.
Eurekafied: A) When we approach the creation of each episode, we try to focus on plotlines that can only happen in Eureka. And so we "Eurekafy" the stories we want to tell. Nearly any show can do an episode about a dog show, but only in Eureka can we do a dog show that's about building the most realistic robotic dogs and judging them not by amazing tricks, but by how scruffy, smelly and flea ridden they are. This is the story we developed and told in episode 303, "Best In Faux." B) At the same time even things within an episode need to be "Eurekafied." An example of this would be when Eureka does a Egyptology story we don't just bring back artifacts from a pyramid we bring back the entire pyramid. This was how we told our Mummy story in episode 305, "Show Me The Mummy."
Banana Out: Our verbal interpretation of the musical sting for an Act Out that
leaves our characters shocked by a sudden, surprising revelation. Sound it
out by hitting the consonants hard and elongating the vowels…bah-nah-nah.
Simian Roadblock: The point in an episode when the investigation seems to hit a dead end, but one of our characters suddenly realizes a monkey has been hiding the true cause all along.
Okay, we made that last one up...but maybe we'll use it now.
What about the flaming goat?
Posted by: #1Amy-Fan | 06/04/2010 at 05:45 PM